What are UAPs?

“UAP stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena — the U.S. government's official replacement for the term UFO since 2022.”

UAP stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. It is the U.S. government's current official term for what the public calls UFOs. Congress and the Pentagon adopted UAP in 2022 to broaden the original aviation-only term "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" to include trans-medium objects observed in space, in the air, on the surface, and underwater. The term is defined in 50 U.S.C. § 3373 and is used by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and the Department of War's PURSUE program. The 2026-05-08 PURSUE Release 01 catalog uses UAP across all 162 declassified files, covering FBI, USAF, USN, NASA, and State Department records spanning 1947 to 2026. UAP includes both confirmed objects of unknown origin and cases later resolved as drones, balloons, parallax illusions, or sensor artifacts.