Frequently Asked Questions

UAP stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (originally ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’). It is the U.S. government’s modern term for what used to be called UFOs. The word ‘anomalous’ was added in 2022 to include objects seen in space, underwater, or moving between air and water.

No. As of October 2026, no official U.S. government report has concluded that any UAP is extraterrestrial. AARO says it has found no verifiable evidence of alien technology. However, several former officials have testified under oath that such evidence exists and has been hidden — claims the Pentagon disputes.

In February 2026 the President ordered agencies to start releasing UFO and UAP files. Between May 8 and September 18, 2026, the Pentagon published about 450 files across six releases at war.gov/ufo — videos, FBI and CIA records, Cold War documents and recent military sightings. In July the House voted for an independent UAP review board, which the Senate has not yet agreed to. So far, no official report has concluded that any UAP is extraterrestrial.

Disclosure is the idea that governments will officially acknowledge what they know about UAP — and possibly non-human intelligence. Supporters see the events since 2017 as a slow, ongoing disclosure process.

Yes. The Pentagon formally released and confirmed the FLIR1, Gimbal and GoFast videos in April 2020. What they show is still debated: some analysts argue they can be explained by camera effects, glare and parallax; the pilots who were there say the objects were real and extraordinary.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, created in 2022. It is the Pentagon’s official office (the Department of Defense, also called the Department of War since September 2025) for collecting and analyzing UAP reports across all military branches and intelligence agencies.

Most reports are explained as balloons, drones, satellites (such as Starlink trains), birds, aircraft, or sensor artifacts. That is expected — and it is why the small percentage of truly unexplained cases matter so much.

Nothing, in practice. ‘UFO’ (unidentified flying object) was the U.S. Air Force’s term from the early 1950s. The government now says ‘UAP’ — unidentified anomalous phenomena — partly to drop decades of stigma, and partly because the reports include things seen in space and underwater, not just objects that fly.

The U.S. Air Force’s UFO investigation from 1952 to 1969. Together with its predecessors, Projects Sign and Grudge, it logged 12,618 reports from 1947 on, and 701 were never identified. It closed after the Air Force-funded Condon Report concluded that further study was unlikely to be useful. Several Blue Book files are part of the Pentagon’s 2026 releases — see the Tremonton film.

The object Navy pilots David Fravor and Alex Dietrich reported off San Diego on November 14, 2004: white, smooth, wingless and about 40 feet long, tracked for days by the cruiser USS Princeton. A later flight filmed it on infrared — the FLIR1 video. Read the case file or watch the video.

On July 26, 2023, the former intelligence officer told a House Oversight subcommittee, under oath, that he had been informed of a multi-decade program that recovers and reverse-engineers craft of non-human origin. He said he had not seen craft himself; his account rested on interviews with more than 40 witnesses. The Pentagon denies it, and AARO’s 2024 historical report found no verifiable evidence for such a program. See his profile and the hearing.

A 2023 bill by Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds, modeled on the JFK Records Act, to create an independent board that would review and release government UAP records. Congress passed only a scaled-back version, which created the National Archives’ UAP Records Collection. In July 2026 the House voted for an independent review board; the Senate has not yet agreed.

Between May 8 and September 18, 2026, the Department of War published about 450 files at war.gov/UFO under a program called PURSUE: FBI, CIA, NASA and military records, videos, audio and images. Every file is listed here, with the government’s description and our archived copy.

The official answer is no. In 1947 the Army first announced a recovered ‘flying disc’, then said it was a weather balloon. Air Force reports in 1994 and 1997 identified the debris as Project Mogul, a classified balloon program, and explained the ‘alien body’ stories as crash-test dummies from later years. Many witnesses still dispute that. Read the Roswell case file.

Current and former U.S. government employees can report through AARO’s secure form. Civilians in the U.S. can report to organizations such as the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) or MUFON. Note the time, direction, duration and weather, and capture photos or video if you safely can.