UAP Task Force (UAPTF)
| UAP Task Force (UAPTF) | |
|
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agency seal, illustrative placeholder | |
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Parent department | U.S. Navy, on behalf of DoD |
| Established | August 2020 |
| Dissolved | 2022, superseded by AARO |
| Status | Superseded |
The UAP Task Force was established by the Deputy Secretary of Defense in August 2020 to standardize how the military collected, reported, and analyzed UAP encounters, following renewed public attention after the 2017 New York Times report on the Pentagon’s earlier AATIP program.
Mandate
The task force’s mandate was narrower than its successor’s: it focused primarily on airspace-safety and threat-assessment aspects of military UAP encounters rather than the broader, all-domain historical review AARO later undertook. Its work fed into the 2021 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment, the first public government accounting of the scale of unexplained military reports in decades.
Legacy
Congress judged the task force’s authority and scope insufficient and created AARO by statute in the FY2022 NDAA, formally absorbing the task force’s functions the following year.
[1]See also
References
- ^ National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, provisions on UAP Task Force establishment.
- ^ U.S. Department of Defense press statements, August 2020.