Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force — U.S. Department of Defense UAP investigation body, 2020–2022

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was a task force of the United States Department of Defense, established in 2020 under the Department of the Navy and the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, with its parent organization being the Office of Naval Intelligence. Its formal mission was to detect, analyze, and catalog unidentified aerial phenomena that could pose a threat to U.S. national security. In its first and only published preliminary assessment, released on June 25, 2021, the task force examined 144 UAP incidents reported mostly by Navy pilots between November 2004 and March 2021, and was able to identify just one of those objects with high confidence.

Key facts

Country: United States
Founded: 2020
Type: organization; task force
Parent organisation: Office of Naval Intelligence

Establishment and mandate

Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist signed the directive formally establishing the UAPTF on August 4, 2020; the public announcement followed on August 14, 2020. The formation was a direct response to guidance from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, making it, in the language of its own charter, a “Congressional mandated, Deputy Secretary of Defense directed” entity.

Before the UAPTF existed, the individual U.S. military services investigated UAP reports separately and without a shared framework. The task force was created specifically to network and standardize those processes across all services, bringing together reporting chains that had previously operated in isolation.

Leadership of the task force was assigned by the Director of Naval Intelligence Activity. Brennan McKernan served as director during the UAPTF’s operation. The charter required reporting lines to include regular updates to both the Under Secretary of the Navy and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, along with support for an Executive Steering Committee responsible for oversight. Both biweekly informal meetings and monthly formal meetings were mandated by the charter.

The classified charter

A classified charter document originating from the Naval Intelligence Activity was signed in September 2020. A heavily redacted version of that document was released through a Freedom of Information Act process on April 22, 2025, nearly five years after the charter was signed. The released version confirmed that the UAPTF was tasked with working across the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and the Interagency, but large sections of the text remained withheld.

The task force’s stated mandate, as laid out in the charter’s unclassified introduction, covered coordination across multiple federal and military institutions. The charter designated that leadership appointments would be made by the Director of Naval Intelligence Activity, and set out the reporting structure described above.

The 2021 preliminary assessment

On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a nine-page unclassified preliminary assessment prepared by the UAPTF. The report examined 144 UAP incidents reported mostly by Navy pilots over a period running from November 2004 to March 2021. It drew on input from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and multiple military branches, and was released to the Congressional Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.

Of the 144 incidents, the UAPTF was able to identify one object with high confidence: it was described in the report as “a large, deflating balloon.” The remaining 143 observations were left unexplained. The task force noted that most of the reported UAPs probably represented physical objects, since a majority of them registered across multiple sensor types, including radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.

Eighteen of the 144 observed UAPs displayed flight characteristics that investigators found unusual, including apparent movement against the wind and abrupt maneuvering without visible propulsion. The report proposed five potential explanatory categories for UAPs as a class: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, U.S. government or industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall “Other” category.

The UAPTF also noted in the report that it regularly received anecdotal accounts of UAP observations that were never captured in formal reporting channels, suggesting that the 144 cases the report examined likely represented only a portion of actual military encounters. The report did not quantify how large that unreported fraction might be.

Successor organizations and dissolution

The UAPTF was not the final federal structure dedicated to UAP investigation.

Classification and access

The UAP Security Classification Guide produced by the Naval Intelligence Activity classified virtually all UAP data held by the task force, including all imagery. The practical consequence was that the task force’s own evidence base was inaccessible to the public through normal FOIA channels. The June 25, 2021 preliminary assessment was one of the few outputs released in unclassified form, and even the charter underpinning the task force’s authority remained unknown to the public for nearly five years after it was signed.

Did you know

The UAPTF’s classified internal charter, signed in September 2020, was unknown to the public for nearly five years. When a FOIA process finally produced a release on April 22, 2025, large sections remained redacted under Executive Order 13526, which covers military plans and intelligence activities. (theblackvault.com)
The UAP Security Classification Guide produced by the Naval Intelligence Activity classified virtually all UAP data, including all imagery. The effect was that the task force’s own evidence base could not be reached through normal FOIA channels by members of the public. (theblackvault.com)
In its 2021 preliminary assessment, the UAPTF noted that it regularly heard anecdotally about UAP observations that were never captured in formal reporting. The task force treated this as an indication that the 144 cases it examined likely represented only a fraction of actual military encounters, though the report offered no estimate of the total. (thedebrief.org)

Data sources

Data updated: 2026-10-28