How to Read a Declassified U.S. Government UAP Record

U.S. government UAP records come in many forms — FOIA releases, case resolution reports, annual assessments, and historical collections. Knowing how to read one helps you separate what an agency actually concluded from what the raw data shows, and avoid misreading metadata as substance.

Start with the Metadata

Every record has metadata that tells you what you are reading before you read a word of the content:

• Agency: Which agency produced the record (e.g., AARO, ODNI, NARA, NASA)? Each has a different mandate and methodology.
• Date: When was the document created? UAP records span decades; a 1950s Air Force report and a 2025 AARO case resolution use different frameworks entirely.
• Record type: Is this a raw sensor report, an assessed case resolution, a policy document, or a press release? These serve different purposes.
• Sensor or collection method: How was the data gathered? The Go Fast footage, for example, was recorded by a U.S. Navy F/A-18F’s Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) sensor in January 2015 — a thermal imager, not an optical camera. Understanding the sensor matters when evaluating what it can and cannot measure.

Agency Conclusion vs. Raw Report

A key distinction in any case file is the difference between what the data shows and what the agency concludes about that data.

Raw reports record what a sensor or observer captured at the time. An agency’s assessed conclusion applies additional analysis, methodology, and context afterward. These can differ significantly.

Worked Example: The AARO Go Fast Case

The AARO “Go Fast” case resolution report, dated 6 February 2025, demonstrates this clearly. The raw FLIR footage — recorded in January 2015 off the eastern coast of Florida and released by the Department of Defense in 2020 — appears to show an object moving rapidly just above the ocean surface. That is what the sensor recorded.

AARO’s assessed conclusion, reached through geometric reconstruction of aircraft and object positions, is different: the object’s altitude was approximately 13,000 feet above sea level, and its wind-compensated speed was roughly 2 m/s (5 mph) to 41.3 m/s (92 mph). The apparent high speed in the video is attributable to motion parallax — an optical effect in which a slow-moving object observed from a moving platform appears to move much faster than it actually does. AARO states it could not definitively identify the object but found it displayed no anomalous performance characteristics.

The record on this archive is at /uap/records/aaro-gofast-case-resolution/. The assessment in that record reflects AARO’s stated methodology and conclusions — not an independent conclusion by this archive.

Status Terminology

UAP records use specific status terms that are worth understanding precisely:

• Resolved / Attributed: The agency assessed the observation as consistent with a known or mundane explanation (aircraft, sensor artifact, atmospheric effect, etc.). This means the agency’s analysis found a plausible explanation — it does not mean the footage is fabricated.
• Unresolved / Unattributed: The agency could not identify a conventional explanation given the available data. This means the data was insufficient or no match was found — it does not assert the observation is anomalous in origin.
• Insufficient data: A separate category in some reports indicating the record lacks the information needed to reach any assessment.

How to Get to the Official Source

This archive links to official agency sources for every record. The steps to verify independently:

1. Check the record’s sourceUrl — the direct link to the agency document.
2. Check the officialLandingUrl — the agency’s landing page for the collection containing the document.
3. If the original URL is unavailable, check the archived snapshot in archiveUrls.

For the Go Fast case, the official PDF is hosted at aaro.mil and linked from AARO’s Case Resolution Reports page. That page is the authoritative access point.

What This Archive Is and Is Not

Records on this archive are organized and summarized to help researchers navigate public-domain U.S. government documents. The archive does not conduct its own UAP investigations, does not make independent assessments about observed phenomena, and is not affiliated with any government agency. All assessments quoted here come from the sourced agency documents.