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We have studied the effects of proton irradiation on the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with AlN buffer layer as well as conventional GaN buffer layer. It was found that a short time proton irradiation (~ 50 sec) can promote beneficial effects on device performances, which results in great reduction in the off-state leakage current and the gate leakage current without degrading the output current and transconductance. The pulsed I-V measurement demonstrated that both devices exhibit greatly improved current dispersion characteristics and, particularly, the device with AlN buffer layer shows stronger radiation hardness than that of the device with GaN buffer layer. These interesting results are believed to be due to the hydrogen passivation with thermal annealing effect during the proton irradiation. It is expected that the proper irradiation condition such as fluence, energy, and time is crucial to improve the device performances, rather than to deteriorate the performances.