REFERENCE

GLOSSARY

This beat runs on acronyms, and most coverage assumes you already know them. Here is what 20 of them actually mean.

UAP: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. The term U.S. agencies adopted in place of UFO, broadened in 2022 from 'aerial' to 'anomalous' so it covers objects in space, on the water and underwater as well as in the air.
UFO: Unidentified Flying Object. Still the common term, and still the one used in law, executive orders and the titles of most released files.
AARO: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. The Pentagon body established in July 2022 to detect, identify and attribute unidentified objects near U.S. installations. Reports to Congress annually; first director Sean Kirkpatrick, succeeded by Jon Kosloski in 2024.
UAPTF: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. The Navy-led predecessor to AARO, established August 2020, which produced the data behind the 2021 ODNI preliminary assessment.
AATIP: Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The Pentagon effort reported in 2017 whose existence began the modern disclosure era.
ODNI: Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Publishes the annual consolidated UAP report jointly with the Department of Defense.
PURSUE: Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. The program created to execute the February 2026 disclosure order, under which the Department of War began publishing UAP files at war.gov/UFO.
NDAA: National Defense Authorization Act. The annual defence bill, and the vehicle through which almost every UAP legal requirement has been enacted — including AARO's creation and its reporting mandates.
UAP Disclosure Act: Legislation modelled on the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, proposing a records collection at the National Archives, an independent review board with subpoena power, and a presumption of disclosure. Passed the Senate in 2023; gutted in conference. Reintroduced repeatedly since.
Transmedium: An object that operates in more than one medium — typically moving between air and water. Named explicitly in AARO's founding charter.
Tic Tac: The object reported by Navy aviators off Southern California in November 2004 during the USS Nimitz encounter, described as a smooth white oblong with no wings or exhaust.
GoFast: One of three Navy videos officially released by the Pentagon in April 2020. AARO's 2024 reconstruction concluded the object's apparent speed is a parallax effect and it is neither as low nor as fast as it appears.
Gimbal: A second of the three 2020 Navy videos, showing an object that appears to rotate. Skeptical analysis attributes the rotation to the aircraft's gimbal-mounted camera system rather than the object.
Immaculate Constellation: An alleged unacknowledged special access program, named in a whistleblower report submitted to the House Oversight Committee in 2024, said to consolidate UAP imagery outside normal reporting channels. Denied by the Department of Defense and never confirmed.
SAP / USAP: Special Access Program, and its unacknowledged variant. A classification tier with access lists so restricted that oversight bodies may not know a program exists — the mechanism at the centre of most concealment claims.
SCIF: Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. The secure room in which classified UAP briefings and testimony take place.
NUFORC: National UFO Reporting Center. A long-running civilian body whose public sighting counts are the most-cited continuous record — and are strongly driven by news attention and satellite launches, not just aerial activity.
GEIPAN: The civilian UAP investigation unit inside CNES, France's national space agency. Founded as GEPAN in 1977, it is the longest continuously operating state UAP programme in the world.
Sky Canada Project: A review by Canada's Office of the Chief Science Advisor, which in 2025 recommended designating a federal body to collect and investigate public UAP reports.
Article 4: The North Atlantic Treaty's consultation clause, invoked by Poland in September 2025 after between nineteen and twenty-three drones crossed into its airspace.