Claim ledger

“The FLIR1 video shows Fravor’s encounter with the Tic Tac.”

FLIR1 was recorded on a later sortie, after Fravor’s aircraft had returned. These are two separate events. No publicly available material establishes that the object Fravor saw and the object on the video are the same object.

“The Tic Tac entered the ocean.”

Contradicted by the witness himself. Fravor testified that they did not see the object underwater — they saw a disturbance on the surface, and when they turned back it was gone. The popular version elaborates on something the witness explicitly did not say.

“The RB-47 tracked the object on three independent radars at once.”

The RB-47H’s onboard equipment was an ELINT / direction-finding suite — a passive receiver of other emitters, not a radar returning echoes off objects. It gave bearing, not range. Without range there is no trajectory and no speed. That distinction is fundamental.

“The Ubatuba samples are extraterrestrial metal.”

Analysis showed high-purity magnesium, achievable by industrial methods known in the 1950s. Regardless of the analysis: the letter’s author was never identified, so no chain of custody links the samples to any event at all.

“The magnesium-bismuth sample is a fragment of extraterrestrial technology.”

The material was tested. Results indicated a terrestrial alloy, and subsequent laboratory analysis assessed it as consistent with ordinary alloy used in industrial applications. No properties beyond known metallurgy were found.

“The KONA BLUE programme held biological material of non-human origin.”

KONA BLUE existed as a *proposed* programme. It was never formally approved, never funded, and never received any material. The existence of a document describing a proposed programme is not evidence that the programme operated.

“The Petit-Rechain photograph shows a triangular craft from the Belgian wave.”

In 2011 the photographer admitted on Belgian television that he had built the object from painted styrofoam with lights at the corners, hung on threads. In 2022 he was reported as claiming he had been paid to call it a hoax. That retraction has no documentary support — and it does not rescue the image either way: a photograph whose own author has given two contradictory accounts of making it cannot carry evidential weight. We record the whole sequence because the image is still reproduced, and its circulation distorts how the — otherwise strong — Belgian case is read.

“GOFAST shows an object racing just above the ocean surface.”

The data needed to work it out is on the video itself: viewing angle and range to target are displayed on the HUD. Once applied, the object sits high above the surface rather than near it, and its speed is on the order of the wind. The sense of velocity comes from the motion of the observing aircraft — parallax.

“The Aguadilla video shows an object entering the ocean and splitting in two.”

A 3D trajectory reconstruction established that the objects did not enter the water and did not split, and that they moved at roughly wind speed. The ‘water entry’ is an object passing behind a shoreline viewed at a shallow angle; the ‘split’ is two objects present throughout, momentarily unresolvable at the sensor’s resolution.

“The USS Russell video shows pyramid-shaped craft.”

The shape of a defocused point of light is the shape of the lens aperture, not the shape of the object. A lens with a triangular aperture turns every distant light into a triangle. The video is authentic and there is no pyramid — both statements are true at once.

“Kenneth Arnold saw saucer-shaped objects.”

Arnold described a manner of motion — the objects skipped like a saucer thrown across water. The press moved the metaphor from the motion to the shape. Within weeks ‘flying saucer’ had become a ready-made perceptual template for hundreds of subsequent witnesses. Every wave after 1947 must be read with that correction applied.

“The Petrozavodsk ‘jellyfish’ phenomenon was inexplicable.”

The phenomenon matches a Soyuz launch from Plesetsk — a propellant release in the upper atmosphere, lit by a Sun already below the horizon. Thousands of witnesses and total failure to recognise the phenomenon were not evidence of anything unusual; they were evidence that the programme was secret.

“Foo fighters were an enemy weapon.”

After the war German weapons programmes were examined and no corresponding system was found. More tellingly, Axis crews reported the same phenomena — each side suspected the other of possessing the same non-existent weapon.

“The 1561 Nuremberg woodcut documents an aerial UFO battle.”

The broadsheet is authentic; the interpretation is not. Publications of this kind were a sixteenth-century blend of sensational press and religious commentary, in which ‘signs in the sky’ were a generically expected element. Observation cannot be separated from iconography.

“The Chilean Navy video shows an object venting material.”

After two years of investigation CEFAA identified the object as a scheduled passenger aircraft and the ‘venting’ as contrails dispersing in a high-humidity layer. Settling it required a flight plan — data the operators in the air simply did not have.

“Radar confirmed an object over Rendlesham Forest.”

The UK Ministry of Defence file is unambiguous on this point: no radar confirmation of an unidentified object in that area and timeframe was found. This matters, because the events unfold between two NATO air bases in a densely covered radar environment.

“The Mexican Air Force filmed eleven objects surrounding its aircraft.”

The heat sources were real and the sensor worked correctly. They were also stationary, on the surface, roughly 200 km away — gas flares at the Cantarell offshore oil field. The apparent motion and encirclement came from the aircraft's own turn. Third instance of the same failure mode as GoFast and Aguadilla: competent operators, working sensor, assumed range.

“Hypnosis recovered the Hills' memory of being taken aboard a craft.”

Hypnotic recall does not retrieve buried memories. Decades of experimental work establish that it reliably produces vivid, detailed, confidently held accounts of events that did not occur, indistinguishable to the subject from real memory. A hypnotically produced narrative is not weak evidence about the past — it is not evidence about the past at all. The witnesses were by all accounts sincere; the method is the problem.

“Targets over Washington moved at up to 7,000 mph.”

This is not a measurement. It is the distance between successive returns divided by time, assuming the returns are the same object. Under anomalous propagation — meteorologically confirmed on those nights — that is precisely the assumption that fails first.

“The Cash–Landrum witnesses suffered radiation injuries from the object.”

The medical record proves the witnesses were ill. It does not prove the object made them ill. The federal court dismissed the suit on precisely that basis. The distinction between ‘documented illness’ and ‘documented cause’ decides this case.

“F-16 radar recorded accelerations impossible for known technology.”

The recordings are authentic, but an F-16 radar does not display the target’s raw position — it displays the output of a tracking filter that smooths and predicts a trajectory. When the filter drops one target and acquires another, the record shows a jump that looks exactly like extreme acceleration. This is the single best lesson in the database: you must know whether you are looking at a measurement or at a software product.

“Kaikoura is a confirmed radar–film correlation.”

The temporal correlation exists, but analysis indicated that part of the lights match squid-fishing boats seen through an inversion layer, and part match bright planets. The radar returns may have been independent echoes from anomalous propagation. One night, two independent error mechanisms.

“FAA radar confirmed an object alongside JAL 1628.”

Radar returns occurred, but the FAA analysis did not conclusively establish that they came from a separate object — a split return from the 747 itself was among the possibilities considered. Meanwhile an unusually bright Jupiter–Mars pairing sat low on the horizon in the direction of the first sightings.

“The Phoenix Lights were flares from a military exercise.”

True of the ~22:00 episode — and only of that one. That episode produced most of the footage. The ~21:00 episode is a separate event an hour earlier and is not explained by flares. Conflating the two is the source of most confusion around the case.

“Sixty children independently confirmed the same event.”

The accounts are not independent: the children spoke to one another before the interviews, and some of the recorded questions are leading. It is no longer possible to separate what they saw from what was suggested during questioning. This is a case for witness psychology, not for physics.

“The USSR officially confirmed a UFO landing at Voronezh.”

A press agency dispatch is not an investigative document. The state character of the publisher does not raise the source tier — what matters is whether an investigation stands behind the statement. None did.

“Project Blue Book left 701 cases unexplained — meaning 701 unknown craft.”

The number 701 is correct: of 12,618 reports investigated, that many remained in the ‘unidentified’ category. But ‘unidentified’ means ‘it could not be determined from the available information what this was’ — not ‘it was proven to be non-terrestrial’. In the great majority of those cases the constraint was data quality, not the nature of the object.

“A substantial share of UAP reports remains unexplained.”

The French database — the best-structured public collection in the world — shows a different picture: roughly two thirds identified or probably identified, roughly thirty per cent unresolvable for lack of data, and roughly three per cent unexplained after full investigation. Three per cent is not ‘a substantial share’ — but it is not zero either.

“The CIA ordered the truth about UFOs to be concealed.”

The panel did recommend measures to reduce public interest in UFOs — that is a documented fact and a real instance of narrative management. The motivation, however, was Cold War: fear of saturating air defence channels with false alarms and of panic being exploited by the USSR. Nothing in the record indicates the panel held knowledge of a non-terrestrial origin for anything.

“The Mosul footage shows an object with extraordinary properties.”

AARO presented the footage with an explicit caveat: there is too little data to state anything, and absence of resolution does not imply anomaly. This is exemplary institutional conduct — the category ‘unresolved for lack of data’ must exist separately, or every blurry pixel becomes evidence.

“The MOD judged the Cosford object to exceed anything in the UK inventory.”

The internal assessment says this, and it is a genuine documented instance of a defence ministry taking a UAP report seriously in writing. But the same file, and later analysis, identified a Russian rocket stage re-entering over the UK that night, producing widely observed fireballs along the reported corridor. Institutional concern and a prosaic cause are both real and not in conflict.

“The Tic Tac covered 60 nautical miles in under a minute.”

The figure comes from dividing a distance relayed to the pilot over the radio by a duration recalled from memory. To treat it as a velocity measurement you must assume both radar returns were the same object and that there was no loss and reacquisition of track. Neither assumption can be checked today.

“The object dropped from 80,000 ft to sea level in a fraction of a second.”

This comes from an operator’s recollection, not from a radar record. No raw track file exists publicly on which the trajectory could be reconstructed.

“The object actively jammed the aircraft’s APG-73 radar.”

A witness statement about system behaviour. The radar tape in question has not been released publicly and — per AARO leadership — was not provided for analysis.

“Radar and visual sightings corroborated each other to the second.”

The correlation is documented at the level of ‘same time, same area’. No material exists that would let a specific return be matched to a specific sighting on one timeline.

“The object moved into position behind the intercepting fighter.”

Recorded in a contemporaneous file, which places it above a typical recollection. But no airborne radar record survives against which the geometry could be checked.

“Project SIGN produced a document concluding UFOs were interplanetary.”

The document does not survive in the archives and its existence has never been independently confirmed. An interesting historical thread; not evidence of concealed knowledge, nor of its absence.

“A craft of non-terrestrial origin was recovered at Roswell.”

The entire dramatic structure of the case comes from testimony written down more than thirty years later. Documents from 1947 confirm a press release and its retraction the same day — nothing more.

“Non-human bodies were recovered at Roswell.”

No publicly verified material of any kind. USAF investigations in the 1990s pointed to anthropomorphic test dummies used in parachute programmes as a possible source for part of the testimony, though their chronology does not fully overlap with 1947.

“The US government holds a dozen or more recovered non-human craft.”

AARO’s historical review found no empirical evidence supporting these claims. Critically, several of those relaying the information held second- or third-hand knowledge rather than direct access to the programmes described.

“The helicopter gained several hundred metres with the collective set to descend.”

Four independent accounts is substantial, but they remain accounts. No flight recorder data survives — we have an instrument reading remembered by the crew, not a machine record.

“UAP caused Minuteman missiles to go offline at Malmstrom AFB.”

If this were documented the way it is narrated, it would be the single most important claim in the field. We have consistent officer testimony and we have the fact of the faults. We do not have a publicly available document joining the two on one timeline. Remembered correlation is not recorded correlation.

“Socorro was a student hoax.”

The hypothesis deserves serious treatment and carries the same defect as the hypotheses opposing it: no material confirmation was ever produced. No apparatus, no credible admission, no reconstruction reproducing the traces and the sound.

“Residents of Colares suffered injuries caused by UAP.”

The most heavily exploited and most poorly documented element of the case. No publicly available medical record permits the described symptoms to be attributed to any specific cause.

“The object in the GIMBAL video performs a 90-degree rotation.”

The ATFLIR pod is gimbal-mounted, and at certain viewing angles the mount rolls the image frame. What rotates is the frame, not the object. Settling it requires the pod’s metadata — which exists and simply is not public. This is a rare case where very little is missing.

“The objects around USS Omaha entered the ocean.”

The publicly available material does not show this conclusively. Loss of a sensor track is not evidence of submergence — an object can drop below detection threshold, leave the field of view, or fade thermally.

“A single enormous triangular craft passed over Phoenix.”

The decisive question is whether witnesses saw lights joined by one hull, or saw a formation of lights and closed a dark shape between them. The brain does this automatically. Without radar, or footage showing stars being occulted, it cannot be settled.

“The military secured the Westall site and ordered pupils to stay silent.”

Not confirmed by any document. An element of the narrative that appeared in testimony gathered more than thirty years after the event.

“The military captured a living non-human being at Varginha.”

The primary account is short and modest: three people saw something unusual. Everything else — the military, the hospital, the body, the covert transport — comes from layers added later by people who saw nothing themselves.

“The Ghost Rockets were Soviet missile tests.”

The lead hypothesis of the state conducting the investigation. Never confirmed: no debris was recovered, and after the Soviet archives opened no programme matching the wave’s scale and geography was identified.

“East Coast pilots were seeing UAP almost daily.”

The testimony is consistent and comes from multiple independent pilots. But no publicly available report statistics for that period exist against which the frequency could be checked.

“USAF personnel touched a landed craft and saw symbols on its hull.”

Lt Col Halt’s memorandum of 13 January 1981 — the primary document — describes lights, ground indentations and elevated radiation readings. It does not describe a landed craft, touching a hull, or symbols. All of those appear in the later layer.

“The Ministry of Defence lost six negatives from Calvine.”

The negatives went to a state institution and have not been located. That much is established. What is not established is whether they were lost by accident or destroyed under routine records disposal. The effect is the same: the case is open because the evidence disappeared into an administration.

“An underwater recovery operation was conducted at Shag Harbour.”

Canadian government documents confirm the report, the multiple sightings, the rescue operation, the absence of any missing aircraft, and the formal closure without identification. They confirm nothing from the narrative about a recovery, a military operation, or submarines.

“The object over O’Hare punched through the cloud layer, leaving a hole.”

Fallstreak holes are a known phenomenon, produced when an aircraft passes through a layer of supercooled droplets. That explains the hole; it explains the object seen beforehand less well. The case was never investigated: nobody checked the radar record of one of the world's most closely monitored airports.

“Eleven witnesses fired on small non-human figures for four hours.”

What is documented is that eleven people were frightened enough to fire repeatedly through the night and drive to a police station, and that officers found gunfire damage. What they were firing at is not documented at all. Great horned owls fit the description closely and require the fewest new assumptions.

“The lavender at Valensole failed to grow normally for years afterwards.”

Ground marks were documented by the gendarmerie the same day and are solid. The multi-year growth anomaly was observed and reported but never studied under controls, with sampling and comparison plots. That gap is precisely what GEPAN closed sixteen years later at Trans-en-Provence.

“A Peruvian Su-22 fired cannon at a UAP without effect.”

One of very few documented instances anywhere of a military aircraft firing on a UAP, which is significant as state behaviour. But nothing instrumental was published — no radar record, no gun camera footage, no unit documentation. A large high-altitude balloon accounts for the shape, the station-keeping, the ineffective fire at long range and the eventual climb beyond the aircraft's performance.

“Soviet academy laboratories found anomalous residue at Dalnegorsk.”

Sampling and analysis did take place under a state programme, which puts the case structurally close to Trans-en-Provence. The critical difference is publication: the analytical reports have never been comprehensively released in a form outside researchers can examine. Dalnegorsk also sits in one of Russia's most intensively mined regions, which weakens the prior on unusual metallic residue considerably.

“The 2.8 GHz signal proves the object emitted its own radar.”

The signal was recorded and its bearing changed relative to the aircraft in a way inconsistent with a fixed ground emitter. The competing explanation is reception of a ground-based S-band radar under anomalous propagation. The available material cannot separate the two.

“UAP cause electromagnetic interference in onboard systems.”

One of the few motifs that recurs independently in Tehran 1976, in accounts from Nimitz, and in several 1950s cases. None of them, however, supplies a machine record documenting the effect. We have observed system behaviour and operator interpretation, not a causal recording.

“UAP stop vehicle engines.”

The reports are numerous, independent and consistent in sequence. Yet not a single vehicle was ever examined. This is a case where the shortage of investigation, not the shortage of phenomenon, is why we have nothing.

“UAP cluster around nuclear installations.”

The pattern is real in the reporting data. Its interpretation is not settled: nuclear installations are simultaneously the places with the densest observer coverage, the best sensors and the lowest threshold for reporting an anomaly. The effect may be a property of the phenomenon or a property of the observation system.

“The activity around USS Omaha was a drone swarm launched from a surface vessel.”

The most probable explanation, and a more serious one than the extraterrestrial hypothesis: it would mean effective, undetected reconnaissance conducted against US Navy warships in their own exercise waters. Hours-long, multi-night activity in formation fits it very well.

“The rise in reports followed the radar upgrade to AESA.”

The correlation is real and has two equally good readings. A better sensor began detecting something that had always been there — or a better sensor began generating new artefacts and detecting prosaic objects previously below the detection threshold. Both predict exactly the same rise in reports.

“The McMinnville photographs are authentic and show a large, distant object.”

Photometric analysis is consistent with a large distant object — and does not exclude a model suspended on a line. The same frame fits an object 30 cm across at 5 metres and a 20-metre object at a kilometre. Photometry narrows the range; it does not close it.

“The Hessdalen lights are a plasma phenomenon with a geological basis.”

The best hypothesis currently available, supported by the valley’s geology — metal-rich deposits and possible piezoelectric activity. There is, however, no complete confirmed physical model accounting for the duration and behaviour of the phenomenon.

“Thousands of consistent witness descriptions indicate a real object.”

In 1896 thousands of people consistently described a cigar-shaped airship with a searchlight and propellers — a machine that did not exist; powered flight was seven years away. Consistency within a wave tracks the technology the culture is currently anticipating. It is weak evidence for an object and strong evidence for a shared expectation.

“The Trindade photographs were authenticated by the Brazilian Navy.”

The Navy examined the negatives and stated it had no reason to doubt them — a meaningfully stronger position than “unidentified”, and a head of state backed the release. But the photographer had a background in trick photography, and the fundamental limit applies: without a known range, the image fits a small nearby object and a large distant one equally.

“Soil at the Falcon Lake site was radioactive.”

Anomalous radioactivity in site samples was confirmed by government analysis and never traced to a source. Investigators searched for a prior industrial or natural origin and found none. The Ubatuba caveat applies in reverse here: contamination confirms something radioactive was present, not what put it there — but unlike Ubatuba, the chain of custody is intact.

“Valentich disappeared while describing an object above his aircraft.”

The transcript is a primary document and immune to memory drift — we know exactly what he said. The aircraft was never found and the investigation closed with cause unknown. The leading hypothesis is spatial disorientation with the pilot inverted, seeing his own lights reflected in the sea; it fits parts of the transcript well and others poorly.

“The sheer volume of abduction reports is itself evidence.”

Volume is evidence only if the reports are independent and the method of producing them is sound. Most abduction accounts rest on hypnotic recall, a technique that manufactures accounts. A method that generates narratives cannot accumulate into evidence, however many narratives it generates. This is not a claim that nothing happened to anyone — it is why this database holds one abduction entry and eleven radar cases.

“The Delphos ring soil repelled water for years.”

Confirmed as a measurement: the soil was strongly hydrophobic and the effect persisted for years, documented by more than one laboratory. The cause is disputed. Hydrophobic fungal mycelium forms rings and is the leading explanation; the reported sharpness of the boundary, the depth of the effect and the luminosity at the time fit it less well. The trace outlived the witness's account and could be measured by strangers — the property that matters.

“Large drones flew nightly grid patterns over Colorado and nobody identified the operator.”

The task force found most reports were misidentified aircraft, planets and stars, amplified by media coverage — well supported, and matching the Ladakh pattern. It did not identify what produced the initial cluster of credible law-enforcement reports before the media wave began. Strip out the exotic vocabulary and this is the shape of the modern problem: unattributed aircraft, a lot of noise, a small unresolved core, and no agency with both the authority and the sensors to settle it.

“The F-4’s weapons systems failed as the pilot attempted to fire on the object.”

Confirmed as the *content of an operational report* written within days of the event and distributed at the highest level. That is the strongest class of source in this corpus. Note the limit: the report confirms what participants reported — it is not an independent measurement of what caused the failures.

“Physical landing traces remained at Socorro.”

The traces were documented, photographed and described within hours by three independent institutions. That much is established. What is established is the existence of the traces — not their origin.

“Graded biochemical changes were found in plants at Trans-en-Provence.”

Confirmed by the laboratory record. The gradient is the crucial part: changes were strongest at the centre of the trace and weakened with distance. That distribution is very hard to fake and very hard to produce by accident. It confirms that a physical agent acted — not what the agent was.

“Independent researchers obtained the state’s raw radar data and ran their own analysis.”

Confirmed, and important as a precedent. The result was mixed and valuable precisely for that reason: the data overturned the base’s first official position, while also explaining a substantial share of the sightings as F-16 flights and flares. This is the working model the whole field should aim at.

“The air base initially denied its own aircraft were flying.”

Confirmed. The base denied it, then corrected its position once the FAA data was presented. Relevant to how much weight first official denials deserve in other cases — but equally proof that correction follows when someone produces data.

“Brazil scrambled fighters against multiple unidentified targets in one night.”

Confirmed publicly at ministerial level within days of the event — internationally almost unprecedented. Paradoxically this made the case far less famous than Rendlesham, about which the government said nothing.

“The Hessdalen phenomenon is repeatable and measurable with instruments.”

Confirmed. It is the only place in the world where a researcher can set up an instrument and wait — which turns UAP from a historical problem into an experimental one. The expedition report itself candidly lists its own limits: noise, monitoring gaps, instrument failures.

“Around 100 aerial objects and two surface systems were observed off Virginia.”

Confirmed as the content of an official report. The case remains under analysis. The surface-system category deserves separate attention — until 2024 practically all UAP discussion concerned aerial objects, and for that category neither procedures nor a historical corpus yet exist.

“Thirty-eight witnesses signed a contemporaneous account of the Boianai sighting.”

Confirmed, and procedurally exceptional: the account was written within hours and countersigned by every witness, eliminating the narrative drift that damages Roswell, Rendlesham and Westall. What is confirmed is the testimony, not its object — there is no instrument, photograph or trace.

“A B-52's own radar painted a return correlated with a visual sighting from the same aircraft.”

Recorded in one of the largest single case files Blue Book produced, alongside independent ground sightings by missile security teams and a ground radar track. Blue Book's own conclusion — plasma and stars — does not account for the airborne radar return. This is a case where the file is stronger than the verdict attached to it.

“The Falcon Lake witness bore a burn in a regular grid pattern.”

Confirmed by medical documentation and photographs taken over weeks. The burn had a geometry consistent with the witness's account of hot gas through a vented panel — a mark with a shape, not a symptom someone describes. What caused it remains unestablished.

“Thousands of witnesses reported a single huge craft that was actually a formation of light aircraft.”

The pilots admitted flying light aircraft in close formation with modified lighting on those nights. Thousands of people, police officers included, reported a single enormous silent craft occulting the stars. This is the closest thing the field has to a calibration measurement for mass sightings, and it shows the intuition “so many people cannot all be wrong about a solid craft” is simply false.

“A major Chinese airport suspended operations over an unidentified object.”

The operational disruption is confirmed: flights were diverted and delayed. Everything about the object is not. Authorities appeared to indicate a military explanation without providing one — the Petrozavodsk pattern, where a state's own classified activity generates an unexplained phenomenon and the explanation is withheld for unrelated reasons.

“Several hundred military sightings in Ladakh were Jupiter and Venus.”

Confirmed, with an elegant check: the sightings stopped when the planets moved out of that part of the sky. Two military organisations on alert along a contested nuclear frontier logged several hundred sightings over six months and suspected adversary drones. The Blue Book explanation everyone sneers at is sometimes simply correct.

“The three objects shot down in 2023 became visible because radar filters were loosened.”

Confirmed and, for this field, decisive. Air defence radar had long been tuned to discard exactly the signature most UAP reports describe: slow, small, high, non-manoeuvring. When the filters came off the sky immediately filled with objects nobody had been seeing. The same fact supports a deflationary reading of the modern UAP surge and the claim that the sky was never properly monitored — anyone citing it should say which they mean.