UAP Disclosure: The Official Timeline
Disclosure is not an event. It is a paper trail. Since 2017 the U.S. government has, step by step, acknowledged a secret study programme, confirmed its own pilots' videos, published a first official assessment, created a permanent UFO office, taken sworn testimony in Congress — and in 2026 begun releasing previously classified files in tranches. None of it confirms alien visitation; all of it is on the record. This page walks the timeline, and every milestone links to the file, hearing or report itself in this archive, so each step can be checked against its source.
The disclosure timeline
16 December 2017 — the secret programme is revealed
The New York Times reports on the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a UAP study effort that ran from 2007 to 2012, and publishes Navy cockpit footage of an unidentified object — the video now known as GIMBAL. The story moves UFOs from the fringe press to the front page, and pilots begin describing their encounters on the record. The footage and the programme are both in the archive: start with the GIMBAL case file and the glossary entries for AATIP and AARO.
April 2020 — the Pentagon confirms the Navy videos
The Department of Defense formally releases the three Navy videos — FLIR1, GOFAST and GIMBAL — and confirms they depict unidentified aerial phenomena. The Tic Tac footage, filmed by F/A-18 crews from USS Nimitz in November 2004, is no longer a leak: it is an official record of something the Navy could not identify.
August 2020 — a UAP Task Force
The Deputy Secretary of Defense approves a Navy-led UAP Task Force to standardise how sightings are reported and investigated — the first standing UAP body of the disclosure era, and the direct ancestor of today's AARO. Its lineage is traced in the AARO files and background.
25 June 2021 — the intelligence community's first assessment
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publishes a preliminary assessment of 144 UAP reports from government sources. Only one is identified with high confidence — a large deflating balloon; the report says the data on the rest is too thin to decide, and notes 18 incidents in which objects appeared to move against the wind or hold station in it. The assessment is the spine of our page on what the files actually prove.
May 2022 — Congress holds an open hearing
A House subcommittee hears defense officials in open session — the first public congressional hearing of the modern disclosure era — and officials screen Navy UAP videos for the committee. Those videos, and the later hearings' material, are collected on the Congress & hearings topic page.
15 July 2022 — AARO stands up
Under the FY2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon's interim synchronisation group is renamed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office — AARO — with a wider mission across air, sea and space domains and a duty to report to Congress. For the first time since Project Blue Book closed in 1969, the U.S. government has a permanent, public UFO office.
26 July 2023 — witnesses testify under oath
A House Oversight subcommittee takes sworn testimony from Navy pilot David Fravor — whose written statement describes the 2004 Tic Tac encounter and is reproduced in the Tic Tac case file — and from former intelligence officer David Grusch, who alleges the U.S. has run secret crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering programmes for decades. The Pentagon denies the claims; the hearing makes "disclosure" a legislative fight, carried on the Congress topic page.
March 2024 — AARO's Historical Record Report
AARO publishes Volume I of its Historical Record Report, a review of the entire U.S. government archive since 1945. Its verdict: no evidence that any government investigation confirmed a sighting as extraterrestrial technology, and no empirical evidence for secret reverse-engineering programmes — claims it traces largely to circular reporting. The report and AARO's case resolutions are in the AARO files.
November 2024 — AARO's verdict to the Senate
Testifying to the Senate, AARO states it has discovered no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology. Disclosure's paper trail, at this point, runs in both directions: more files than ever released, and an official verdict that they do not show aliens. Both halves are documented on Real UFO: are UFOs real?
9 September 2025 — the House task force hearing
The House Oversight task force holds its hearing "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection", screening new military UAP video and pressing officials on classification. The full transcript is a file in this archive: read the hearing transcript, and see the other material Congress has seen or demanded on the Congress & hearings page.
19 February 2026 — a presidential directive orders the files opened
A presidential directive orders the release of the government's UAP holdings, creating PURSUE — the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters — at the Department of War. Disclosure stops being a drip of leaks and hearings and becomes a scheduled publication programme.
6 March 2026 — Congress asks; 49 videos surface
Eight House members request 51 UAP records; AARO locates and posts 49 videos found on a classified network. The request, and what it produced, is tracked on the Congress & hearings page.
8 May 2026 — the PURSUE tranches begin
The Department of War publishes the first tranche of previously classified UAP records at war.gov/UFO, and the tranches keep coming — each one made entirely of cases the government officially lists as unresolved. The release tracker follows every tranche as it lands, with the gaps between them and an estimate of the next; every file is mirrored in the archive with its full text.
The UAP Disclosure Act
The legislative centrepiece of the disclosure fight is the UAP Disclosure Act, proposed by Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds in 2023 and reintroduced in 2024 as an amendment to the annual defense authorization act. Modelled on the JFK assassination records law, it would have created an independent review board to declassify UAP records on a deadline, with authority to take custody of recovered materials held by the government or its contractors. It was not enacted in full — the board and its powers were stripped in negotiations. What passed instead was narrower but real: the FY2024 defense act ordered federal agencies to review their UAP records and transfer them to a dedicated UAP Records Collection at the National Archives, whose holdings are part of what this archive mirrors — read the act itself in the archive. The fight over the full act is why "disclosure" now runs on two tracks: legislation in Congress, and scheduled releases under PURSUE.
What disclosure has — and hasn't — produced
Produced: an acknowledged programme history (AATIP, the UAP Task Force, AARO), officially confirmed videos, a first intelligence assessment, sworn testimony on the record, a standing archive at the National Archives, and — since May 2026 — hundreds of previously classified files released in the open, every one checkable in this archive.
Not produced: confirmation. AARO's historical review and its Senate testimony state plainly that no released evidence shows extraterrestrial technology, and its published case resolutions keep closing individual mysteries with ordinary answers — balloons, drones, fishing nets, parallax. The honest summary is the one the files support: sightings are real, some remain unexplained, and the disclosure process is now the best source there is for telling the difference. For the evidence itself, read what the declassified files actually show.
What happens next
The PURSUE tranches are still landing on a rough rhythm, and the release tracker estimates the next window from the gaps so far. New files appear in this archive automatically as each tranche is published — no announcement needed, and no account. If a future milestone changes the story — an enacted Disclosure Act, a new AARO report, a release that resolves the famous cases either way — it will be added to this timeline with its source attached.