Encounter Atlas
US

Official releases / Countries

United States: official UFO files

Who collected UFO reports in the United States: Project Sign, Grudge and Blue Book (1947 to 1969); AATIP and AAWSAP (2007 to 2012); UAP Task Force (2020); AARO (2022 to now).

The US Air Force began collecting flying-saucer reports in 1947 and ran Project Blue Book until 1969, when the Condon Report concluded the subject held nothing for science. For nearly 50 years after that, the official line was that the government had no UFO programme.

That changed in December 2017 when newspapers revealed AATIP, a small Pentagon study, and Navy pilot videos leaked. Congress pushed back hard: an intelligence assessment in 2021, a permanent office (AARO) in 2022, open hearings from 2022 onward and a law in 2023 ordering every agency to send its UFO records to the National Archives.

In 2026 the Pentagon began the PURSUE releases, posting hundreds of declassified files and videos, including cases it admits it cannot explain.

Our data: US federal records are in the public domain, so we map Blue Book, the FAA pilot reports and the PURSUE files in full.

Official releases

  1. Jul 2026

    USUnited StatesReport

    AARO FY2025 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP

    All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

    AARO's fourth yearly report to Congress, published months after its deadline. It logs 319 new reports, closes hundreds of older ones, and credits a large share of sightings to sunlight glinting off satellites, using new 3D modelling tools.

    Official sourceDetails

  2. May 8, 2026

    USUnited StatesDocuments450 records in 6 tranches (270 PDFs, 134 videos, 30 images, 16 audio)

    PURSUE: the Pentagon's rolling UAP file releases

    US Department of War (Defense), with ODNI, FBI, CIA, NASA, State Department and others

    After a presidential order in February 2026, the Department of War began posting declassified UAP records on war.gov in batches every few weeks. Six tranches went up between May 8 and September 18, 2026: Project Blue Book files and films, FBI and CIA memos, State Department cables, NASA mission records, AAWSAP research papers and modern military sensor videos.

    Official sourceDetails

  3. Sep 9, 2025

    USUnited StatesHearing

    House hearing: Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency

    House Oversight, Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets

    Chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, the task force heard from Air Force veterans, a police chief who saw a UAP, journalist George Knapp and a whistleblower-law expert about sightings and how AARO handles them.

    Official sourceDetails

  4. Apr 2025

    USUnited StatesDataset575 reports

    FAA pilot UAP reports (RG 615)

    Federal Aviation Administration

    Hundreds of short incident reports from the FAA's Washington Operations Center and its Skywatch system: an airliner or business jet crew radios air traffic control about lights, orbs or objects, and the FAA logs the callsign, aircraft type, altitude, position and what was seen. Many note whether radar saw anything and a few say the lights matched Starlink satellites.

    Official sourceDetails

  5. Apr 2025

    USUnited StatesDocuments30 items

    Pentagon and AARO records (RG 615)

    Office of the Secretary of Defense / AARO

    AARO's own paperwork transferred to the Archives: case resolutions such as Go Fast, Puerto Rico and the Eglin object, the Oak Ridge analysis of a claimed metal fragment, papers on parallax and Starlink flares, briefing slides, hearing transcripts and the annual reports.

    Official sourceDetails

  6. 2025

    USUnited StatesDocuments38 items

    NSA records on UFOs (RG 615)

    National Security Agency

    A mixed bag the NSA turned over: State Department airgrams about sightings in Angola, Tunisia and Antarctica, the Joint Chiefs report on the 1976 Tehran jet chase, a Guantanamo sighting report, NSA Technical Journal essays on talking to extraterrestrials, and court papers from a 1980 lawsuit against the agency.

    Official sourceDetails

  7. 2025

    USUnited StatesDocuments13 items

    State Department UFO cables (RG 615)

    Department of State

    Diplomatic cables from embassies reporting local UFO stories: lights over the eastern Caribbean, a strange glow over Kuwait, pilots in Tajikistan, sightings in Argentina and Afghanistan, and a Moscow cable headed "UFOs over Georgia".

    Official sourceDetails

  8. 2025

    USUnited StatesVideos12 videos

    Customs and Border Protection UAP videos (RG 615)

    US Customs and Border Protection

    Twelve sensor videos recorded by CBP aircraft between 2013 and 2021, released as files labelled "Video pertaining to Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon" 1 to 10.

    Official sourceDetails

  9. 2025

    USUnited StatesDocuments30 items

    Department of the Air Force UFO records (RG 615)

    Department of the Air Force

    Unit histories and correspondence that mention UFOs: the 1947 MacDill Field history, 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron histories, the 1948 "Estimate of the Situation", Curtis LeMay papers, Fifth Air Force intelligence summaries and Air Force Regulation 200-2.

    Official sourceDetails

  10. 2025

    USUnited StatesDocuments6 items

    FBI Guardian UAP case files (RG 615)

    Federal Bureau of Investigation

    Recent FBI tip files: a report of UAP seen by Anoka, Minnesota police, and possible UAP hovering near a site in the 2024 drone wave, with an FD-302 interview form.

    Official sourceDetails

  11. Nov 19, 2024

    USUnited StatesHearing

    Senate Armed Services open hearing with AARO's director

    Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities

    AARO director Jon Kosloski briefed senators in public on the FY2024 report and walked through example cases with slides, including ones AARO could not yet explain.

    Official sourceDetails

  12. Nov 14, 2024

    USUnited StatesReport

    FY2024 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP

    Department of Defense / ODNI (AARO)

    AARO received 757 reports in the year, 392 of them from the FAA. It resolved dozens as balloons, birds, drones and satellites, flagged 21 for deeper study, and archived 444 for lack of data. Reports near nuclear sites and from US forces over East Asian seas are broken out.

    Official sourceDetails

  13. Nov 13, 2024

    USUnited StatesHearing

    House hearing: UAP, Exposing the Truth

    House Oversight Committee

    Retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, former AATIP official Luis Elizondo, journalist Michael Shellenberger and former NASA official Michael Gold testified about alleged hidden UAP programmes and called for disclosure.

    Official sourceDetails

  14. Mar 8, 2024

    USUnited StatesReport

    AARO Historical Record Report, Volume 1

    All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

    Congress asked AARO to review the government's entire UFO history. Volume 1 walks through Blue Book, the Robertson Panel, the Condon study, AAWSAP and AATIP, and claims of crashed craft and reverse engineering, and finds no evidence that any government programme recovered alien technology.

    Official sourceDetails

  15. Feb 2024

    USUnited StatesReport8 case reports

    AARO case resolution reports

    All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

    Short write-ups explaining individual cases: the Navy's Go Fast video, the 2013 Puerto Rico object, "Southeast Asia triangles", "atmospheric wakes", a Western United States sighting, an Eglin AFB object, a Mount Etna object and an Al Taqaddum object in Iraq. Each shows the imagery and AARO's explanation.

    Official sourceDetails

  16. 2024

    USUnited StatesDocuments9 series, 717 items online (October 2026)

    UAP Records Collection opens at the National Archives (Record Group 615)

    National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

    The 2024 defence bill (NDAA FY2024, section 1841) ordered every federal agency to find its UFO and UAP records and hand copies to the National Archives. NARA created a new record group, RG 615, to hold them. By 2026 it had nine series from the FAA, Pentagon, ODNI, NSA, FBI, State Department, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Customs and Border Protection and the Air Force.

    Official sourceDetails

  17. 2024

    USUnited StatesDocuments9 items

    Nuclear Regulatory Commission UAP and drone records (RG 615)

    Nuclear Regulatory Commission

    Briefings and emails on how nuclear plants should report drones and UAP flying over them, including a chain about drone sightings near the Pilgrim plant in Massachusetts.

    Official sourceDetails

  18. 2024

    USUnited StatesReport4 items

    ODNI UAP reports (RG 615)

    Office of the Director of National Intelligence

    Archival copies of the four intelligence community UAP reports: the 2021 preliminary assessment, the 2022 annual report and the FY2023 and FY2024 consolidated reports.

    Official sourceDetails

  19. Oct 2023

    USUnited StatesReport

    FY2023 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP

    ODNI and Department of Defense (AARO)

    AARO's first full-year report. It received 291 new reports, most of lights or round objects at altitude, bringing the running total to 801. Many were later matched to balloons, drones and clutter.

    Official sourceDetails

  20. Sep 14, 2023

    USUnited StatesReport

    NASA UAP Independent Study Team report

    NASA

    NASA asked 16 outside experts how science could study UAP. Their report says the main problem is poor data, recommends better sensors, citizen reporting apps and less stigma, and finds no evidence of extraterrestrial origin. NASA named its first director of UAP research the same day.

    Official sourceDetails

  21. Jul 26, 2023

    USUnited StatesHearing

    House hearing: UAP, Implications on National Security (Grusch hearing)

    House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security

    Former intelligence officer David Grusch testified under oath that the US has a long-running programme to retrieve crashed craft and "non-human biologics". Navy pilots David Fravor (Tic Tac) and Ryan Graves described their encounters.

    Official sourceDetails

  22. Apr 19, 2023

    USUnited StatesHearing

    Senate hearing on AARO's mission and budget

    Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities

    AARO's first director, Sean Kirkpatrick, gave senators an open briefing, showing a video of an orb over the Middle East and saying the office had found no evidence of extraterrestrial activity.

    Official sourceDetails

  23. Jan 12, 2023

    USUnited StatesReport

    2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

    Office of the Director of National Intelligence

    The follow-up to the 2021 assessment. It added 366 reports, 247 of them new, for a total of 510. About half were tentatively matched to balloons, drones or clutter; 171 stayed uncharacterised, and a few appeared to show unusual flight.

    Official sourceDetails

  24. May 17, 2022

    USUnited StatesHearing

    House Intelligence hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

    House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation

    Under Secretary of Defense Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray testified in public and showed two short Navy clips, one of which they could not explain.

    Official sourceDetails

  25. Jun 25, 2021

    USUnited StatesReport9 pages

    Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

    Office of the Director of National Intelligence (UAP Task Force)

    A nine-page unclassified report to Congress on 144 military UAP reports. Only one was explained (a deflating balloon). In 18 incidents observers described objects that seemed to move without visible propulsion, and there were 11 near misses with aircraft.

    Official sourceDetails

  26. Apr 27, 2020

    USUnited StatesVideos3 videos

    Navy UAP videos: FLIR, Gimbal and GoFast

    Department of Defense / US Navy

    The Pentagon formally released three infrared videos taken by Navy F/A-18 crews, one from the 2004 Nimitz "Tic Tac" encounter and two from 2015 off the East Coast. They had leaked in 2017; the release confirmed they were real and unclassified.

    Official sourceDetails

  27. Jan 2016

    USUnited StatesDocuments

    CIA reading room: "UFOs: Fact or Fiction?"

    Central Intelligence Agency

    The CIA's online reading room gathers its declassified UFO documents into one collection: memos from the early 1950s, the Robertson Panel papers, foreign sighting reports and analysis of the U-2 and OXCART spy planes that were often mistaken for UFOs.

    Official sourceDetails

  28. Apr 2011

    USUnited StatesDocuments

    FBI Vault: UFO files and the Hottel memo

    Federal Bureau of Investigation

    The FBI's online reading room includes its 1940s and 1950s flying-saucer file and a one-page 1950 memo from agent Guy Hottel passing on a third-hand story about three saucers and small bodies recovered in New Mexico. The memo became the most viewed page in the Vault.

    Official sourceDetails

  29. Jun 24, 1997

    USUnited StatesReport

    The Roswell Report: Case Closed

    US Air Force

    The Air Force's second Roswell report tackled stories of alien bodies. It traced them to crash-test dummies dropped from high-altitude balloons in the 1950s and to real accidents, including a 1956 KC-97 crash, which witnesses may have merged with 1947 in memory.

    Official sourceDetails

  30. Jul 28, 1995

    USUnited StatesReport

    GAO: Results of a search for records on the 1947 Roswell crash

    General Accounting Office

    At Rep. Steven Schiff's request, Congress's auditors searched government files for Roswell records. They found that key Roswell Army Air Field administrative and outgoing message records from 1945 to 1949 had been destroyed without a recorded authority.

    Official sourceDetails

  31. Jul 1994

    USUnited StatesReport

    Report of Air Force Research Regarding the "Roswell Incident"

    US Air Force

    Prompted by a congressional records search, the Air Force concluded that the 1947 Roswell debris came from Project Mogul, a then-secret string of balloons and radar reflectors meant to listen for Soviet nuclear tests.

    Official sourceDetails

  32. 1976

    USUnited StatesDocuments10,622 case folders (12,618 sightings)

    Project Blue Book case files

    US Air Force

    The Air Force investigated 12,618 sightings before closing Blue Book in December 1969; 701 stayed unidentified. The declassified files went to the National Archives, which now has 10,622 case folders scanned online.

    Official sourceDetails

  33. Jan 1969

    USUnited StatesReport

    Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (the Condon Report)

    University of Colorado for the US Air Force

    An Air Force-funded study led by physicist Edward Condon concluded that further UFO research was unlikely to advance science. The National Academy of Sciences endorsed it, and the Air Force used it to justify shutting Blue Book.

    Official sourceDetails

  34. Jul 29, 1968

    USUnited StatesHearing247 pages

    House Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects

    House Committee on Science and Astronautics

    Six scientists, including J. Allen Hynek, James McDonald and Carl Sagan, gave Congress their views on whether UFOs deserved serious study. Written papers from others were added to the record.

    Official sourceDetails

  35. Apr 9, 1958

    USUnited StatesReport

    Robertson Panel report

    CIA Scientific Advisory Panel

    In January 1953 a CIA-convened panel of scientists led by H.P. Robertson reviewed the best Air Force cases and films. It found no threat and no new physics, and recommended a public education campaign to take the mystery out of UFOs. A cleaned-up version came out in 1958.

    Official sourceDetails

Case files by state

Three official US datasets are mapped on this site: 10,622 Air Force Project Blue Book folders (1947 to 1969), 575 FAA pilot reports and the PURSUE files.

PURSUE files placed in the United States