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The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) maintains the official, government-run archive for declassified UAP records: the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection, formally designated Record Group 615, created under the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. If you want to research primary-source UAP material yourself rather than relying on secondary summaries — including the ones on this site — this is where to start.
What RG 615 Actually Is
RG 615 is a dedicated records collection at archives.gov/uap, established specifically to receive and make public UAP-related records from multiple federal agencies: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, among others as records continue to be identified and transferred. This is a genuinely different kind of resource than a news archive or a researcher’s personal document collection — it’s the government’s own designated, permanent repository for this specific record type, with the same institutional standards NARA applies to any other federal records collection.
How the Collection Is Organized and Updated
Records are added to RG 615 on a rolling basis through the National Archives Catalog — NARA’s standard searchable database for all of its holdings, not a UAP-specific tool — rather than in periodic batch releases with individual press announcements. That means the practical way to stay current is to check the collection directly rather than waiting for news coverage, since additions don’t necessarily generate their own headlines. The National Archives Catalog allows searching by keyword, date range, and originating agency, which is useful once you have a specific case or document type in mind.
A Practical Approach to Searching It Yourself
- Start at archives.gov/uap rather than the general catalog search — the dedicated landing page provides context and collection-specific navigation that a blind catalog search won’t.
- Use the originating-agency filter if you’re researching a specific type of record — DoD records, FAA radar/air-traffic data, and NRC nuclear-facility reports are cataloged separately and behave differently in terms of what’s typically included.
- Cross-reference specific case names against AARO’s public reporting (see our AARO classifications guide) to understand a document’s official status before drawing conclusions from the raw record alone.
- Note the accession date, not just the document’s original creation date — when a record was added to RG 615 tells you how recently it was declassified and released, which is often the more relevant date for tracking what’s newly available.
A Practical Note on Researching Online
If you’re doing this kind of research regularly — searching government databases, cross-referencing declassified material, following threads across public records — basic privacy hygiene is a reasonable practice, independent of any specific concern about this particular topic. A VPN is a standard, low-friction way to keep your general browsing activity private from your ISP while you work, the same way you might use one for any other research or work-from-home browsing. Surfshark is one option worth considering if you don’t already use one.
Why This Matters More Than Secondary Sources
Every case explainer on this site links back to primary sources rather than asking you to take our summary on faith — that’s a deliberate choice, and RG 615 is the reason it’s possible. Secondary commentary, however well-intentioned, inevitably adds interpretation; the original government record doesn’t. If a claim about a UAP case matters to you, the original record in RG 615 (or the agency’s own release, where RG 615 hasn’t yet catalogued it) is the version worth trusting over any summary, including ours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is RG 615 a complete record of everything the government has on UAP?
No — it contains what has been formally declassified and transferred to NARA, which is necessarily a subset of any classified holdings that may still exist. It’s the authoritative record of what’s been made public, not a claim about the totality of what exists.
Can I request records that aren’t yet in RG 615?
Yes — the standard Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process remains available for records not yet proactively released, though FOIA requests typically take significantly longer than checking an already-published collection.
Is the collection free to access?
Yes — the National Archives Catalog and RG 615 specifically are freely accessible to the public with no cost or account requirement for basic searching and viewing.