The Black Vault has published a 170-page CIA FOIA release package (case F-2021-02420) documenting decades of correspondence between UFO researcher and government transparency advocate Larry W. Bryant and the Central Intelligence Agency. The collection encompasses administrative records, appeals, fee disputes, litigation records, and Bryant's repeated attempts to obtain CIA documents related to unidentified flying objects, alleged intelligence operations, and named individuals. Bryant also contributed to UFO Magazine and sought formal recognition from the CIA as a representative of the news media for fee-waiver purposes.
Among the most notable subjects covered is Bryant's effort to obtain CIA records pertaining to the November 1986 Japan Airlines UFO encounter over Alaska and a reportedly subsequent meeting held at Federal Aviation Administration headquarters in 1987. In a September 30, 2008, response, the CIA formally stated that there was "no organized CIA effort to do research in connection with UFO phenomena" and that the agency had not maintained an organized UFO intelligence collection effort since the 1950s. Additional correspondence concerns Bryant's requests for records on John Joseph McCarthy Jr. and Project CHERRY — requests the CIA refused under FOIA exemptions covering classified information and intelligence sources and methods — as well as Bryant's interest in UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass and FBI records obtained about him through FOIA.
The Department of the Navy released more than 1,300 pages of emails and related records involving former Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott W. Bray on September 23, 2026, following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Black Vault on May 24, 2022. The request, filed under FOIA case number DON-NAVY-2022-008648, sought all emails sent to, from, or copied to Bray containing terms including "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena," "UAP," "UAPTF," "UFO," "AATIP," and "AAWSAP." Of the 1,321 responsive pages located, 302 were withheld in their entirety, while 1,019 were released with redactions under multiple FOIA exemptions.
The released records provide extensive documentary insight into the Navy and Pentagon's internal UAP communications during the period in which the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force was established and grew into a formal government effort. The correspondence names a wide range of senior officials and covers congressional briefings, public-affairs strategy, the April 2020 release of Navy UAP videos, the 2021 ODNI UAP assessment, classification questions, and media inquiries. Bray himself testified publicly before a House Intelligence subcommittee on May 17, 2022, alongside Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, in the first open congressional UAP hearing in decades.
The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has moved to issue a sole-source contract to the National Unidentified Flying Object Historic Records Center (NUFOHRC), a New Mexico-based nonprofit that holds what a Defense Department source described as the world's largest private collection of UAP-related historical records. Details of the planned commercial data subscription were first disclosed in a Defense Department contracting notice reported by DefenseScoop on September 2, 2026. The subscription would grant AARO digital access to NUFOHRC's proprietary data, metadata, and analytical products, with particular emphasis on materials predating 1990.
The move represents AARO's latest step to fulfill congressional mandates requiring a comprehensive review of U.S. government UAP involvement dating back to 1945, as directed by the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. NUFOHRC, founded and led by UAP historian David Marler, holds hundreds of thousands of unique case files — including the complete archives of early civilian scientific UFO research groups and personal files of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who worked on the Air Force's Project Blue Book. The proposed contract structure includes a one-year base period with four one-year option periods; the total estimated cost was not disclosed.
The U.S. Department of War released its third batch of UAP files on June 13, 2026, under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The release includes a previously undisclosed CIA document describing a disc-like object observed over Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe in 2008, reports of a translucent "potato"-shaped object seen near Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs in 2024, and footage of apparent luminous orbs assessed by analysts to likely be sky lanterns. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell stated that WAR.GOV/UFO had received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since its May 8, 2026 launch and confirmed that the Department of War and agency partners are actively preparing the next release.
The article, written by Micah Hanks of The Debrief, also highlights a video from the second PURSUE batch — designated DOW-UAP-PR061, "Spherical UAP [CALLSIGN] 2021/04/12 vid 0" — which captured on April 12, 2021 from a U.S. military drone operating within USCENTCOM's area of responsibility appears to show a small, light-colored spherical object descending, changing direction, and moving into shadowed terrain. Hanks argues this video, while not extraordinary, is consistent with AARO's own "target package" for genuine UAP as characterized by former AARO director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick in April 2023, and raises the broader question of whether higher-quality UAP data that informed AARO's technical signature data remains classified and unreleased.
On June 9, 2022, NASA announced it was commissioning an independent study team to examine unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) from a scientific perspective. The study focused on identifying existing data holdings, determining how best to collect future data, and assessing how NASA's scientific capabilities could advance understanding of UAP. The effort was organized under NASA's Science Mission Directorate in consultation with the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and was governed by terms of reference consistent with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
The UAP Independent Study Team held a public meeting on May 31, 2023, broadcast live and open to public participation. On September 14, 2023, the team published its final report containing a series of recommendations for advancing the scientific study of UAP. The initiative reflects NASA's stated commitment to scientific transparency and rigor, and represents the first formal, agency-wide scientific study of UAP conducted by a civilian space agency. Contact for UAP inquiries was designated as Daniel A. Evans of NASA.