Acronym soup, in plain English
The disclosure beat hides behind initials — half the people using them couldn't expand them under oath. Here are the 20 terms you actually need, defined straight, linked to the cases that make them concrete.
Agencies, offices & programs
Who is officially looking — and who used to.
- AARO All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
- The U.S. Department of Defense office established in 2022 to track and investigate UAP across air, sea, space and trans-medium domains. The current official body.
- UAPTF UAP Task Force
- The 2020 U.S. Navy–led task force that preceded AARO and produced the June 2021 preliminary assessment.
- AATIP Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
- The 2007–2012 Pentagon program, revealed by the 2017 New York Times report, that studied military UAP encounters.
- AAWSAP Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program
- The broader, earlier DIA-funded contract (Bigelow Aerospace) that AATIP grew out of; scope included exotic propulsion and paranormal-adjacent research.
- ODNI Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- The U.S. intelligence umbrella office that co-authors the unclassified UAP assessments delivered to Congress.
- Project Blue Book
- The U.S. Air Force UFO investigation that ran 1952–1969, cataloguing ~12,000 sightings before being closed by the Condon Report's verdict.
Core terms
The vocabulary the modern era actually uses.
- UAP Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena
- The current official term. Originally 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomena'; broadened in 2022 to include objects observed in space, underwater, and crossing between mediums.
- UFO Unidentified Flying Object
- The legacy term, coined by the USAF in the 1950s. Still accurate, but carries decades of tabloid baggage the newer 'UAP' was meant to shed.
- NHI Non-Human Intelligence
- The deliberately neutral term for whatever is behind the phenomenon — sidesteps assuming 'extraterrestrial' and covers other hypotheses (interdimensional, cryptoterrestrial, unknown).
- Trans-medium
- Moving between air, water and space without slowing or visibly changing configuration — e.g. entering the ocean at speed and continuing. One of the five observables. → Aguadilla 2013
- The Five Observables
- The AATIP-era checklist of UAP performance — anti-gravity lift, instant acceleration, hypersonic without signature, low observability, trans-medium travel — that made a sighting worth escalating. → Read the breakdown
- Disclosure
- The slow, contested process of official government acknowledgment — of records, programs, and ultimately the nature of the phenomenon. The thing this site tracks.
Programs, claims & evidence
The contested middle — claimed, sworn to, or filed.
- Legacy program
- Alleged decades-old, compartmented U.S. efforts to recover and reverse-engineer non-human craft. Sworn to under oath by David Grusch in 2023; not officially confirmed. → The biology question
- Crash retrieval
- The recovery of allegedly non-human vehicles or materials — the core claim of the legacy-program testimony.
- SAP / USAP (Unacknowledged) Special Access Program
- Highly compartmented U.S. programs. A USAP's very existence is classified — the structure whistleblowers say has hidden UAP work from Congress.
- FOIA Freedom of Information Act
- The U.S. law that forces release of government records on request. The engine behind archives like The Black Vault.
- Tic-Tac
- The smooth, wingless white object filmed during the 2004 USS Nimitz encounter off California — named for its shape.
- Gimbal / GoFast / FLIR1
- The three U.S. Navy infrared videos officially acknowledged by the Pentagon in 2020 — the footage that moved the topic from fringe to filed.
- Foo fighters
- WWII-era glowing objects reported by Allied and Axis pilots — the modern phenomenon's earliest well-documented military sightings. → Orb morphology
- UAP Disclosure Act
- The 2023 Schumer–Rounds amendment that sought eminent-domain control of recovered NHI material and a records-review board. Largely stripped before passage. → Why it still matters
A term we're missing? The tip line takes corrections too — citations or it didn't happen.