// AARO DECISION SIM

Step into the analyst's chair.

Six real, declassified cases. Three choices. You're not graded on whether you guess what AARO did — you're graded on how you reasoned with the evidence available.

CASE FILE · NIMITZ-2004

November 2004, off Baja California. USS Princeton's SPY-1 radar tracks objects descending from 80,000 ft to sea level in seconds. Two F/A-18s are vectored in and visually confirm a tic-tac-shaped craft. ATFLIR pod records video. Multiple military witnesses across two ships and two aircraft.

CASE FILE · GIMBAL-2015

Off the U.S. East Coast, 2014–2015. Navy ATFLIR pods record two distinct events — one object rotating against the wind ('GIMBAL'), another moving low and fast over water ('GO FAST'). Crews report objects appearing daily on radar for months.

CASE FILE · RENDLESHAM-1980

December 1980, RAF Woodbridge (UK), a NATO nuclear-weapons site. USAF security personnel report lights in the forest over three nights. Deputy Base Commander Lt Col Charles Halt records audio of personnel reporting an object 'beaming down' over the base. Soil samples taken from a landing site.

CASE FILE · PHOENIX-1997

March 1997, Arizona. Thousands of witnesses across 300 miles report a V-shaped formation of lights moving silently overhead. Then-Governor Fife Symington publicly mocks the sightings, only to admit a decade later that he too saw it and believed it was 'otherworldly'.

CASE FILE · GRUSCH-2023

July 2023. Former intelligence officer David Grusch testifies under oath before the House Oversight Committee that the U.S. government runs a decades-long crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program. He names no programs publicly but says he provided specifics to the IC Inspector General.