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.