UFO / UAP Glossary
Plain-English definitions of every acronym in the Trump PURSUE UAP disclosure. Each term links to one or more file examples on this site so you can see the concept applied in actual records.
- PURSUE
- Presidential Unsealings and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. The Trump administration's official program to declassify and publicly release U.S. government records on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Spans the FBI, the Department of War, NASA, and the State Department. Full PURSUE explainer → · See the archive →
- UAP
- Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. The current official U.S. government term, adopted in 2022 to replace UFO. Covers underwater and transmedium objects in addition to aerial ones.
- UFO
- Unidentified Flying Object. The historical, public-facing term used since the 1940s for the same phenomena now formally called UAP.
- AARO
- All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. The DoD office tasked with synchronizing UAP detection, identification, and reporting since 2022. Receives MISREPs from operational units. The PURSUE release includes 27 files at score 66 sharing the AARO "unresolved with no formal review" disposition - see our AARO Unresolved UAP deep dive for the full cluster.
- DVIDS
- Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. The U.S. military's public media platform. Hosts the PURSUE video archive. Every video on this site links back to its DVIDS source.
- MISREP
- Mission Report. The standardized form U.S. military services use to record operational events, including UAP sightings. MISREPs feed into AARO's analytical pipeline.
- FMV
- Full-Motion Video. Sensor footage from military aircraft and reconnaissance platforms. The source of most UAP video evidence in PURSUE.
- SWIR
- Short-Wave Infrared. A sensor wavelength band, roughly 1.0 to 2.5 micrometers. Some PURSUE files document UAP visible only on SWIR sensors and invisible on standard IR or EO. The Greece January 2024 file → is the canonical example.
- IR
- Infrared. A heat-based sensor band, longer wavelength than visible light. Standard on military FLIR pods.
- EO
- Electro-Optical. A visible-light sensor band, similar to a high-resolution camera. Often used in conjunction with IR for multi-sensor confirmation. The Syria July 2022 file uses simultaneous IR + EO capture.
- INDOPACOM
- U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Geographic combatant command covering most of Asia and the Pacific. Source of several PURSUE entries.
- CENTCOM
- U.S. Central Command. Geographic combatant command covering the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. Source of the majority of PURSUE military entries (Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, UAE). Browse the Pentagon UAP files →
- AFRICOM
- U.S. Africa Command. Geographic combatant command covering Africa. Represented in PURSUE by the Djibouti 2025 file, an AARO-submitted unresolved UAP report from the AFRICOM area of responsibility.
- 62-HQ-83894
- FBI headquarters case file aggregating UAP-related investigations from June 1947 through July 1968 - 21 years of running investigative records. 18 PDFs in the PURSUE release (10 sections, 7 serial-numbered records, 1 sub-file), including pages newly declassified beyond what the public FBI Vault has previously posted. Full 62-HQ-83894 deep dive → · Browse all FBI files →
- Anomalousness Index
- This site's 0 to 100 score reflecting evidentiary weight that an encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. NOT a probability of extraterrestrial origin. Six weighted components: sensor quality (0.25), witness credibility (0.20), corroboration (0.20), kinematic anomaly (0.15), mundane-explanation availability (0.10), official disposition (0.10). Full rubric (JSON) →
- DoW-UAP-D## / DoW-UAP-VM##
- Department of War UAP file identifier conventions visible in the PURSUE Release 01 metadata. "D" prefixes appear on documents and transcripts (e.g. DoW-UAP-D10 referenced from the Middle East May 2022 mission report). "VM" prefixes appear on visual / image files. The numbering is internal to war.gov's release catalogue.
- DOW-UAP-PR##
- Department of War UAP "Public Release" file identifier prefix introduced for the May 22, 2026 PURSUE Release 02. The PR050-PR099 range covers the 51 newly declassified sensor videos in Release 02. (Release 01 used the D## / VM## conventions described above.) Release 02 ingest status →
- ODNI
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The coordinating head of the U.S. intelligence community. New to PURSUE in Release 02 with one file - a currently serving senior official's first-hand account of glowing orbs seen from a helicopter near a sensitive military facility in late 2025. The ODNI helicopter encounter →
- CIA
- Central Intelligence Agency. New to PURSUE in Release 02 with one file: a 1973 intelligence information report in which a human source describes a bright-green, luminous unidentified object observed in the USSR. The 1973 CIA USSR report →
- DOE
- U.S. Department of Energy. Steward of the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex. New to PURSUE in Release 02 with three files tied to nuclear-program sites and personnel (PANTEX, Los Alamos). The DOE nuclear UAP files →
- IIR
- Intelligence Information Report. A raw intelligence report explicitly characterized as informational rather than finally evaluated. The CIA's 1973 USSR file is an IIR, as are several Release-02 Pentagon sensor videos (for example IIR 1777, the Karaganda Airport file).
- USPER
- U.S. Person. Intelligence-community shorthand for a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, whose identity is protected under intelligence-oversight rules. The ODNI Release-02 file is titled a "USPER Narrative" for this reason.
- FLIR
- Forward-Looking Infrared. A heat-imaging sensor pod mounted on military aircraft, the source of much UAP video. Several Release-02 files are FLIR captures, including the F/A-18 FLIR UAP file.
- Tic Tac
- A UAP shape descriptor - a smooth, white, oblong object with no visible wings, control surfaces, or exhaust, resembling the candy. The descriptor entered public use after the 2004 USS Nimitz encounter. Two Release-02 files document "TIC TAC" UAP recorded on infrared by a U.S. Coast Guard C-144 near Tyndall on 24 April 2024: UAP 1 and UAP 2.
- USO
- Unidentified Submerged Object. A UAP observed in, entering, or leaving water - the transmedium subset. Several Release-02 Pentagon videos describe over-water or USO encounters, such as the UAP / USO formation file.
- Transmedium
- Moving between domains - air, water, and space - without apparent change in performance. A defining feature of the modern UAP definition, and the reason "Aerial" was dropped from the acronym in 2022 in favor of "Anomalous."
- NORTHCOM
- U.S. Northern Command. The geographic combatant command covering the continental United States, Alaska, Canada, and Mexico. Release 02 includes NORTHCOM and Southeastern-US captures - the disclosure's first clear domestic-airspace angle. The Release 02 Pentagon videos →
- EUCOM
- U.S. European Command. The geographic combatant command covering Europe. Represented among the Release-02 Pentagon sensor videos.
- USCINCPAC
- U.S. Commander in Chief, Pacific (the post later restructured into today's U.S. Indo-Pacific Command). The 1985 Papua New Guinea State Department UAP cable was addressed to USCINCPAC. The diplomatic UAP cables →
- PANTEX
- The Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas - the United States' only nuclear-weapons final-assembly and disassembly facility. The DOE Release-02 set includes a Pantex Unidentified Object Incident Report with an enhanced image from a ground surveillance radar tower.
- Nap-of-the-earth
- A very low-altitude flight profile that hugs the contours of terrain to avoid detection. The term appears in the ODNI Release-02 helicopter account - war.gov issued a correction changing a "map-of-the-earth" typo to the correct "nap-of-the-earth."