16 programmes · 14 with public access
English-language UAP literature rests almost entirely on Blue Book. Meanwhile France runs a public database, Italy an unbroken register since 1978, Chile publishes resolutions — and the first serious state investigation was Swedish, in 1946.
United States Air Force
The largest historical corpus in the world. The holding covers case files, microfilm, photographs, film and administrative records, digitised by the National Archives. Mind the definition: “unidentified” means “not determined from the available information”, not “confirmed non-terrestrial”.
Department of Defense
The most important methodological change since Blue Book: AARO breaks the old “unidentified” category into three — resolved, unresolved for lack of data, and requiring further analysis. That distinction changes how the whole field counts.
Department of War
The largest release of holdings in this field since Blue Book was digitised. The tranches mix War Department records from 1947–1948 with recent AARO video and FBI witness interviews. Be precise about what this is: agencies are publishing files they held, not conclusions about what the files show. Nothing released so far asserts a non-human origin, and AARO’s own captions state what was reported, not what was established.
National Archives and Records Administration
Created under the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which obliges federal agencies to transfer digital copies of their UAP records to the National Archives. Structurally this is the more durable of the two American channels: PURSUE is a release programme run by the department that holds the files, RG 615 is an archive with a statutory accession requirement behind it. A release programme ends with an administration; an accession duty is harder to reverse.
CNES — the French space agency
The best-structured public collection in the world. A four-level classification: A identified, B probably identified, C insufficient data, D unexplained after investigation. Category D covers roughly 3% of the set and is further split into D1 and D2 by the consistency of the material.
Ministry of Defence
A serious archival problem: until 1967 part of the UFO documentation was destroyed on a five-year cycle, so much older material no longer exists. The post-1970 holding is far more complete. Report statistics show a marked sensitivity to media attention.
Aeronautica Militare
One of very few states that assigned the task to a named institution and never revoked it. The result is a uniformly maintained register spanning nearly half a century — comparable in quality to GEIPAN and almost entirely overlooked by English-language literature.
DGAC — the Chilean civil aviation authority
Not a ufology group but a unit of the state civil aviation authority. It requires original material for analysis, not screenshots from messaging apps, which destroy the data the work depends on. That is the standard the whole field should demand.
Department of Transport, DND, National Research Council
Project Magnet is often cited as proof that the Canadian government accepted an extraterrestrial origin for UFOs. That is an over-reading: it was the personal thesis of the programme lead, Wilbert Smith, not a state position. The programme closed without conclusive results. From 1968 the NRC collected reports.
Royal Australian Air Force
A model of disciplined procedure: a standard form with a list of hypotheses to be worked through in order, where “flying saucer” is one of the boxes rather than a conclusion. This is exactly how GEIPAN and AARO work today.
Swedish Armed Forces / FOI
The first serious state investigation into UAP in history — a year before the Kenneth Arnold sighting. This moves the field’s true starting date from 1947 to 1946.
Ministerio de Defensa / Ejército del Aire
Spain ran one of the most orderly declassifications in Europe and made the files available in the defence ministry’s digital library. A resource practically untouched by English-language researchers.
Força Aérea Brasileira / Arquivo Nacional
Brazil is the only state that sent a military unit into the field to systematically document UAP (Operação Prato), and the only one whose minister publicly confirmed multiple intercepts within days of the event (1986). The holding is among the most consulted in the National Archives.
A university consortium (incl. Østfold University College)
The only programme in the world studying UAP as a repeatable physical phenomenon rather than a set of historical events. An automatic station records the valley continuously. Methodologically the most advanced initiative in the field.
Belgian Air Force / SOBEPS
A rare instance of an air force collaborating with a civilian research association on the analysis. The F-16 radar recordings are among the most important datasets in the field’s history — and among the most frequently misread.
USSR Ministry of Defence and Academy of Sciences
The programme was created after the wave triggered by the Petrozavodsk phenomenon. A significant share of reports was tied to rocket launches from Soviet cosmodromes — that is, to the state’s own classified programmes. It is the clearest illustration of the mechanism that generates UAP with nothing unknown involved.