Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) is the official designation adopted by the United States government for observed objects or phenomena — aerial, transmedium, or otherwise — that cannot be attributed to known aircraft, natural occurrences, or other conventional explanations. The term superseded the older “Unidentified Flying Object (UFO)” and its intermediate form “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)” as part of a terminological standardisation included in legislation; the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force was established explicitly to investigate what were once called UFOs and are now officially called unidentified anomalous phenomena.¹ The subject carries a long institutional history of official dismissal: the US government had publicly sidelined UFO investigation since closing its Project Blue Book programme in 1969,² and for decades the US Air Force, FBI and CIA maintained a posture of denial — dispelling and debunking reported sightings.³ This posture shifted materially from 2017 onwards, when the United States government acknowledged the existence of UAP after decades of public denial.⁴

The most significant institutional programme of the modern era was the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), confirmed to have existed and to have pursued research into unidentified aerial phenomena.⁵ Its stated mission was to collect and analyse information involving anomalous aerial vehicles (AAV), known in the vernacular as UFOs.⁶ AATIP was part of a $22 million programme sponsored by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.⁷ Luis Elizondo took over the programme in 2010 and concentrated on the national security implications of UAP documented by US service members.⁸ Following his departure from the United States Department of Defense (DoD), Elizondo became a public advocate for disclosure, describing UAP exhibiting characteristics including anti-gravity, hypersonic velocities, instantaneous acceleration, low observability, and transmedium travel. In April 2020 the DoD authorised the release of three unclassified United States Navy (USN) videos of UAP,⁹ with the phenomena in those videos remaining officially characterised as unidentified.¹⁰

Military encounters drove much of the renewed institutional attention. Ryan Graves, a US Navy aviator, reported that his F/A-18 squadron began detecting UAP hovering over restricted airspace south-east of Virginia Beach in 2014, following an upgrade to their radar systems.¹¹ Pilots in that area reported observing such objects every day for at least a couple of years.¹² The 2004 USS Nimitz UAP encounter remains the most extensively documented individual military case: David Fravor described the observed object as smooth and white, Tic Tac-shaped, with no wings, no visible propulsion, no windows, and no visible probes.¹⁷ Radar data from that encounter recorded the object descending from approximately 8,500 metres to the ocean surface in 0.78 seconds.¹⁸ Similarly, objects observed off the Eastern Seaboard by Graves’s colleagues were detected at zero airspeed — completely stationary in category four hurricane winds¹⁹ — before accelerating to supersonic speeds of Mach 1.1 to 1.2 in rapid, erratic manoeuvres.²⁰ Elizondo described UAP capable of manoeuvres of 600 to 700 G-forces,¹³ speeds of approximately 21,000 kilometres per hour,¹⁴ with no obvious propulsion, no wings, and no control surfaces,¹⁵ and apparent transmedium capability through air, water, and possibly space.¹⁶ The 2014 Virginia Beach UAP encounter and the Late 2025 test range Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) helicopter encounter are among other documented events associated with this body of evidence.

Congressional engagement intensified over the same period. The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Secretary of Defense to deliver a report on UAP sightings,²¹ and United States Congress pressed for answers through multiple public hearings and classified briefings.²² The FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act called for reporting on material retrieval, analysis, reverse engineering, and development involving UAP going back decades.²³ Christopher K. Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, was instrumental in arranging classified briefings for congressional members and worked alongside Luis Elizondo to bring the issue before Congress and the public. David Charles Grusch, who served as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)’s co-lead for UAP analysis, testified that he believed the US government is in possession of UAP, based on interviewing over 40 witnesses across four years.²⁴ He further alleged that UAP legacy programmes had long been concealed within multiple agencies without appropriate reporting to oversight authorities,²⁵ and that UAP-related classified information had been withheld from Congress to thwart legitimate oversight.²⁶ Jonathan Grey, an intelligence officer at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, stated that multiple agencies had deployed sophisticated sensor platforms in triplicate to observe and characterise anomalous machines determined not to be of earthly origin. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was subsequently established to consolidate and formalise the US government’s investigative function. Senator Marco Rubio publicly called for a systematic process to catalogue and analyse UAP data, while Matt Congressman Gaetz was among legislators who sought hearings on the subject.

Beyond the US military context, UAP sightings have been reported globally and across many decades. The Westall Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sighting 1966 in Australia involved students, teachers, and local residents, with Andrew Greenwood describing a grey, cigar- or cylindrical-shaped object that moved with precision,²⁷ and independent witnesses independently producing consistent drawings of the object. The 1991 Exmouth Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sighting (Annie Farinaccio) involved Annie Farinaccio observing a diamond-shaped craft with lights at the bottom hovering directly above a moving vehicle,²⁸ exhibiting instantaneous high-speed departure and complete silence. Ross Coulthart has reported that the Australian government holds thousands of UFO sighting reports going back decades, many once classified. David Marler, a researcher who has spent years compiling files on UAP, noted that accounts are now coming from credible senior-level government and military officials, and that official admissions by the US government represented a significant shift in public perception of the subject. Americans for Safe Aerospace, an organisation founded by Ryan Graves, has worked to establish reporting pathways for commercial aviators who encounter UAP but lack a formal mechanism to report the safety issue.

The question of origin remains unresolved within official channels. Elizondo and his government colleagues determined that the phenomena they studied did not appear to originate from any known country.⁴ The DoD has acknowledged it does not know what the objects in released imagery are.¹⁰ David Fravor assessed UAP as a potential national security threat because the technology encountered was far superior to anything the United States possessed and could be deployed anywhere.²⁹ Ryan Graves considered the sustained presence of unidentified targets in military airspace a security risk, noting that the inability to identify friend from foe creates openings for adversaries to exploit.³⁰ NASA has also engaged with the subject, reflecting broader acknowledgement that UAP warrant systematic scientific attention. A persistent institutional and social stigma has historically suppressed reporting, with the subject long treated with scepticism or ridicule in scientific, military, and political contexts;³¹ that stigma has been widely noted to have eased since the formal admissions by the DoD, though the fundamental questions of what UAP are, where they originate, and whether they represent non-human intelligence remain matters of active investigation and substantial public and governmental debate.