The year I missed – Disclosure from October 2025 to October 2026

President Trump posted on Truth Social, reposted by the White House:

"Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters." – President Donald Trump

No executive order, memorandum or Federal Register notice has been published since. The Pentagon's PURSUE programme and ODNI's July memorandum both cite "the President's direction" without releasing it. The directive exists publicly only as that post.

The Department of War launched the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) with roughly 160 files from 1944 onward, then published five more tranches: May 22 (64 files, 51 of them videos), Jun 12 (72), Jul 10 (40), Aug 7 (41) and Sep 18 (71).

"The Department of War is in lockstep with President Trump to bring unprecedented transparency regarding our government's understanding of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena" – Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War (release)

The headline items: the infrared video of the Feb 12, 2023 Lake Huron shoot-down by an F-16; AC-130J footage of roughly 25 "cold orbs" over the Gulf of Oman in 2021; a CENTCOM mission report and video from July 29, 2025 of six spheres over the Middle East, crew-estimated at 480 mph, status unresolved; 37 of the 38 AAWSAP reference documents; and a 1952 Edward Ruppelt briefing recording. The Pentagon's own caveat, repeated across releases, is that many materials "have not yet been analyzed" and "lack a substantiated chain-of-custody".

The scientific reception was muted. The Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies found that "critical metadata, such as time, date, location, range, altitude, speed, etc., that would allow for a detailed analysis of the videos, were redacted" and that "Materials are missing for four decades of UAP reporting, from 1974 to 2015." Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, put it in five words: "Data alone is not disclosure."

ODNI confirmed in a written statement that "ODNI — alongside FBI and DOW — established a UAP Governance Board to provide guidance, recommendations and coordination at the interagency level." Its charter, chair and membership haven't been published. Days earlier, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb announced a UAP Science Advisory Council he chairs at the government's request, with members including Garry Nolan, Tim Gallaudet and Michael Shermer. It's advisory only: no clearances, unclassified data.

By late September, Politico reported that the council had received videos and documents from the six releases but not the underlying sensor data (range, altitude, speed), and that Loeb had given the government until the end of 2026 to deliver it before reassessing his role.

In late July the President directed the Pentagon and the intelligence community to waive prior NDAs for people with UAP information. The directive's text hasn't been released. ODNI's implementing memorandum, made public by Rep. Eric Burlison, says such people "shall have prior non-disclosure agreements (NDA), agreements, oaths, or commitments waived when speaking with authorized government representatives of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) or PURSUE." On Sep 14 the Department of War issued its own waiver, "strictly for communications directed to the PURSUE team." Two things it isn't: public disclosure, and criminal immunity. Burlison warned it is "uncertain whether the abrogation of NDAs will apply to testimony received by Congress" and advised anyone coming forward to bring a member of Congress.

The report (mirror) covers June 2024 to May 2025: 319 new reports, 370 cases resolved to conventional causes (238 of them satellite flares, found with a new 3-D modelling tool), 191 parked for lack of data, 9 referred for further analysis. Drone notifications near nuclear sites rose from 18 to 50, none classed as UAP.

"To date, no evidence suggests that a USG or private entity has ever captured or exploited UAP-derived materials."

"The single maritime domain UAP case AARO received involved a report from U.S. Navy assets operating off the coast of Virginia. The report described approximately 100 airborne UAP and two, likely uncrewed, surface systems. AARO is actively investigating this event in coordination with the reporting unit." – AARO FY2025 Consolidated Annual Report

The office spent the spring under fire from its overseers. Rep. Tim Burchett introduced a bill on Apr 6 to terminate AARO within 60 days and bar any successor; it hasn't moved. By May 15 Rep. Anna Paulina Luna was posting that director Jon Kosloski "has proven through action that he is working in good faith on declass efforts."

Public Law 119-60 requires AARO's congressional briefings to detail every UAP intercept by NORAD or NORTHCOM, with the first reaching back to January 1, 2004 (Sec. 1671); orders the DNI and Secretary of Defense to make UAP data available to AARO "immediately" (Sec. 1672); and gives AARO 180 days to account for the classification guides applied to UAP (Sec. 1673). The Schumer–Rounds UAP Disclosure Act was not in the final text, and nobody on the record knows who removed it: Senate Appropriations chair Susan Collins said "I don't know. Never heard of it."

After the Rules Committee first left it out in June, Burlison's amendment was adopted by voice vote and the House passed H.R. 8800 216–212. Sections 1761–1772 create a UAP Records Collection at the National Archives, a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Review Board with subpoena power and accelerated special-access clearances for its staff, $20 million for FY2027, and a sunset of September 30, 2030. The eminent-domain clause survived:

"The Federal Government shall exercise eminent domain over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities in the interests of the public good." – Sec. 1767, H.R. 8800 as passed by the House

"The government belongs to the American people. For too long, UAP records have remained scattered across agencies and outside meaningful oversight." – Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) (statement)

It's the first time the full Act, eminent domain included, has passed a chamber. The Senate is the problem. Sen. Chuck Schumer filed the Senate version as an amendment on Jun 24, but a cloture vote to take up the Senate NDAA failed 50–46 on Jul 14 and the bill hasn't returned to the floor. Told in August that his Act was in the House-passed bill, Sen. Mike Rounds said: "No, I hadn't heard that." Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, asked about the Senate text: "Wait — is it not in our version?" (Ask a Pol). Conference will decide it. The House Task Force hasn't held a UAP hearing since Sep 9, 2025, and Rep. Robert Garcia, Oversight's ranking Democrat, says decisions about any UAP committee wait until after the Nov 3 midterms.

Last October's watchlist carried reports that first-hand witnesses to alleged legacy programmes were giving testimony to the Intelligence Community Inspector General and might go public. A year on, no new named witness has testified publicly or under oath. What did happen:

• Dec 24, 2025 – Skywatcher, the private group fronted by Jake Barber, posted a holiday thread saying serious inquiry "demands skepticism, peer review, and patience" and "More to come soon." The account hasn't posted since, and no field data or paper has been published. AARO said in February 2025 it was investigating Barber's claims and hasn't published a result.
• May 13 – James Erdman, a CIA officer who led ODNI's Director's Initiatives Group, testified under subpoena to the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the group's remit included UAP and that the CIA monitored its staff's "contact with whistleblowers". The CIA called the hearing "dishonest political theater."
• Jun 9 – David Grusch appeared on the Capitol steps with Reps. Luna, Burchett, Burlison and Moskowitz to call for release of files and passage of the Disclosure Act. A press conference, not testimony.
• Aug 11 – After journalist Jeremy Corbell said an ODNI source had described whistleblower Dylan Borland's IC IG testimony to him, the Inspector General's office told Liberation Times it "is required by law to protect from public disclosure the identity of confidential whistleblowers" and that unauthorised disclosure could be referred to the FBI. It confirmed neither the testimony nor an investigation.
• Sep 30 – Grusch, who left Burlison's staff over the summer, told Joe Rogan he had personally viewed video of a retrieval operation showing three or four dead non-human bodies, "human looking", which he declined to date. It's his own account, on the record. No footage or document accompanies it, and AARO's position that it has found no evidence of recovered materials is unchanged.

One claim from August remains unanswered. According to Ross Coulthart, citing unnamed sources, the President authorised the military to engage unidentified objects near White Sands. The Department of War told Liberation Times a records review "did not find any footage" of a related sighting and referred questions about orders to the White House, which didn't reply.

A team including Galileo Project researchers argued that the Earth-shadow assumption behind last October's "pre-Sputnik transients" result "is shown to be false" and that the nuclear-test correlation disappears after normalisation. Beatriz Villarroel and co-authors replied on Feb 16 that the critique "conflates object-level validation with ensemble-level statistical inference." Two independent preprints since split, one replicating and one calling the association "inconclusive". None of the replies is peer-reviewed yet.

Security forces at Barksdale Air Force Base, home to B-52s, observed "multiple waves of 12-15 drones" over a week, per a briefing document reported by ABC and partly confirmed by the base. Gen. Gregory Guillot, NORTHCOM commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that in the first hours of Operation Epic Fury a counter-drone kit "successfully detected and defeated sUAS operating over a strategic U.S. installation." Operators remain unidentified.

Japan's cross-party UAP study group, chaired by former defence minister Yasukazu Hamada, handed the Chief Cabinet Secretary a proposal on May 28 to centralise UAP intelligence at the Cabinet Secretariat, prompted by the July 2025 Genkai nuclear-plant sighting. France's National Assembly hosted a parliamentary colloquium on UAP research on Jun 29. The European Commission told Euronews UAP "are the responsibility of EU member states". In the UK, Clive Lewis MP said he had been "definitely misled" after the MoD denied taking part in UAP groupings despite a 2023 Pentagon agenda listing UK participation in a Five Eyes UAP caucus. On Oct 2 a Bundestag group filed a formal question asking which federal body is responsible for UAP reports. Nick Pope, who ran the MoD's UFO desk in the 1990s, died on Apr 6, aged 60.