238 satellite-flare resolutions
AARO credits a newly onboarded three-dimensional modeling capability with resolving 238 reports as satellite flaring. Re-run representative cases and document the geometry needed to reproduce those classifications.
ANALYSIS DOCKET / SOURCE FIRST
WE WANT TO BELIEVE.
WE REQUIRE EVIDENCE.
WE WANT TO UNDERSTAND.
Curiosity without credulity. Skepticism without reflexive dismissal. Follow the anomaly only as far as the evidence survives, then ask what mechanism would have to exist for the surviving claim to be true.
The archive preserves what the government released. The docket asks what the material can actually support. If the ordinary explanation wins, publish it. If ordinary explanations fail, preserve the residual rather than forcing certainty in either direction.
HOUSE STANDARDSource first / provenance visible / alternatives tested / mechanism demanded / uncertainty retained / extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
PRIORITY 00 / AARO FY2025 TRIAGE AUDIT
Before chasing the weirdest clip, audit the resolution machinery.
The July 2026 annual report gives us a measurable baseline for how cases enter, collapse, archive, and escalate.
191 cases wait on better evidence
Characterize why cases remain in the active archive: missing range, poor timing, absent native files, weak corroboration, or genuinely unusual observables. “Unresolved” without failure-mode labels is too coarse.
Nine reports escalated
Track which observables or intelligence value moved these cases beyond ordinary triage, and whether later releases narrow or resolve them.
Do not mix nuclear-site drones into the UAP bucket
The 50 UAS incidents near nuclear infrastructure are an urgent security dataset, but AARO says they were not reported as UAP. Preserve the distinction so the categories remain analytically useful.
THE MECHANISM TEST
If it is real, how would it work?
An existence claim is only the beginning. A serious investigation turns the surviving observation into engineering and physics questions that can be bounded, modeled, compared, and eventually tested.
What produces the observed motion?
If a case implies extreme acceleration, hovering, rapid directional change, transmedium travel, or unusual flight without visible control surfaces, quantify the motion first. Then ask what force, momentum exchange, or field interaction could produce it.
Where does the energy come from?
Estimate the energy and power implied by the claimed behavior. Compare those requirements against chemical, nuclear, electrical, beamed-energy, and genuinely speculative mechanisms instead of treating “advanced technology” as a unit of measurement.
Where does the waste heat go?
Powerful systems usually leave thermal consequences. Ask what infrared signature, exhaust, wake, ablation, ionization, radiation, or cooling burden should accompany the proposed mechanism.
What survives the loads?
If the observed kinematics are accurate, estimate structural loads, thermal stress, pressure changes, and material requirements. Separate what a vehicle could survive from what a human occupant could survive.
How is the system stabilized and steered?
Any controlled vehicle needs sensing, feedback, timing, computation, and actuation. Extreme maneuverability raises questions about control bandwidth, latency, navigation, and whether the apparent motion is vehicle motion at all.
What else should we be able to detect?
A proposed mechanism should predict secondary evidence: radar behavior, RF emissions, optical spectra, acoustic effects, atmospheric disturbances, magnetic fields, radiation, wake structure, or other measurable signatures.
Do not stop at “what is it?” Ask “what system would make this observation possible, and what else should that system leave behind?”
PRIORITY 01
DOW-UAP-D077 / “Orbs Launching Orbs”
AARO states that six federal law-enforcement special agents reported the event near a sensitive national-security site over two days in October 2023 and that the case remained unresolved as of June 2026.
Independent observations or shared narrative?
Determine whether statements were taken independently, whether witnesses discussed the event before formal interviews, and whether descriptions converged before or after cross-contact.
What existed besides eyewitness testimony?
Identify released or releasable imagery, video, radar, RF, telemetry, weather data, air-traffic records, astronomical conditions, and site-security sensor logs.
Attack the extraordinary reading first.
Test balloons, drones, aircraft lighting, satellites, atmospheric optics, parallax, camera artifacts, adversary systems, deliberate deception, and misperception before leaving a residual unknown.
PRIORITY 02
DOW-UAP-D101 + PR117–PR122 / Gulf of Oman, 2021
A multi-file case is more useful than a famous isolated clip because sequence, timing, platform position, sensor state, and environmental context may be reconstructed across records.
Synchronize the files.
Establish whether the videos share a common platform, clock, sensor mode, or mission timeline. Preserve original container metadata before frame extraction.
Reconstruct line of sight.
Estimate platform movement, field of view, horizon, apparent angular rate, range constraints, and whether apparent motion survives parallax correction.
The Gulf is not empty sky.
Compare shipping, aviation, military activity, known drones, balloons, sensor artifacts, atmospheric conditions, and adversary-system possibilities before assigning novelty.
PRIORITY 03
DOW-UAP-D098 / Film Analysis of Unidentified Objects, 1953
The record concerns film from the 1950 Montana and 1952 Utah events. It is valuable both as historical evidence and as a test of how old analytical assumptions survive modern re-examination.
Find the original film lineage.
Identify camera type, lens, frame rate, film stock, duplication history, scan generation, cropping, and whether the released file is a reproduction of a reproduction.
Re-run the geometry.
Separate what can be estimated from angular motion and frame timing from what cannot be known without reliable range and camera calibration.
Audit the 1953 analysis itself.
Compare its assumptions, available instrumentation, statistical methods, and known alternatives with modern image-analysis practice.
PRIORITY 04
Project Sign + Los Alamos, 1948–1949
Early Cold War intelligence, nuclear-site security, aviation technology, and public fascination with “flying discs” all overlap here.
Read the bureaucracy, not just the sightings.
Track who collected reports, what threat models shaped them, what technologies were secret at the time, and how reporting doctrine changed across agencies.
Why did these reports survive?
Preserved files are not a random sample. Examine institutional incentives, security relevance, document retention, and archival survivorship.
Correlation is not causation.
Map proximity to atomic facilities and weapons infrastructure, then test whether the clustering survives comparison against reporting density and military activity.
MULTI-LENS REVIEW
Different minds should attack different failure modes.
What are the actual bytes?
Hashes, metadata, transcodes, timestamps, edits, frame history, compression, and chain of custody.
What motion is physically implied?
Geometry, scale, acceleration, angular rate, optics, atmosphere, and uncertainty bounds before exotic mechanisms.
Who benefits from ambiguity?
Adversary technology, deception, compartmentalization, classification, collection bias, and the incentives of institutions releasing or withholding context.
How does perception fail?
Expectation, memory, social contamination, expertise, fatigue, stress, and the difference between sincere testimony and accurate reconstruction.
What did observers know at the time?
Judge historical reports against contemporary technology, doctrine, terminology, and secrecy rather than retrofitting modern assumptions.
What remains after the attack?
The interesting result is not “alien” or “debunked.” It is the smallest set of claims that still survive serious alternative explanations.