State of the Evidence

What this page does and does not claim

DECUR applies two independent scores to each case. The Evidence Quality Index (EQI) measures documentary strength - how well corroborated a case is across sensor data, witness credentials, official documentation, physical evidence, and investigation quality - on a 0 to 100 scale. The Behavioral Anomalousness Index (BAI) measures how anomalous the reported behavior is relative to known physics, scored independently of how well documented it is. High EQI means the evidence is strong. High BAI means the reported behavior, if accurate, would be difficult to explain with known technology. Neither score makes any claim about what the phenomenon is or where it comes from.

What follows is a synthesis of what the aggregate record demonstrates - patterns that hold across multiple independent cases, consistent features in official responses, and the documented trajectory of institutional acknowledgment. These are observations about the evidence, not conclusions about causes.

The highest-confidence documented cases

The four cases with the highest EQI scores share a common feature: multi-platform sensor confirmation combined with congressional testimony under oath. In each case, the evidence was captured by military hardware, reported through official channels, and later acknowledged in classified or declassified government proceedings.

Below these four, seventeen additional Tier 1 cases and twenty-two Tier 2 cases carry substantial documentation. The full ranked list is available on the Best Evidence page.

Confirmed behavioral signatures

The AATIP Five Observables define behavioral signatures associated with technology beyond current human capability. DECUR scores each observable per case as confirmed, possible, not observed, or unknown based on available documentation. Across the 72 catalogued cases, three observables have confirmed-status entries in the public record.

Two additional observables - hypersonic velocity with no thermal signature and active low observability - have possible-status entries across multiple cases but no confirmed entries in the current public record. This reflects the limits of available sensor documentation, not a determination that the behaviors did not occur.

Cases with documented physical effects

A subset of catalogued cases includes documented physical effects on witnesses, equipment, or the environment. These are among the most difficult to explain through conventional misidentification because the effects were recorded by independent investigators - often government agencies - after the event.

Nuclear facility and missile correlations

A pattern identified across multiple independent investigations - from Hector Quintanilla at Project Blue Book through Robert Hastings' declassification research - is the recurring appearance of unidentified objects near nuclear weapons storage, delivery systems, and test sites. Malmstrom (1967), Minot AFB (1968), and Rendlesham Forest (1980, adjacent to Bentwaters NATO nuclear storage) are the three highest-EQI cases in this cluster. In each, an unidentified object was observed near or over nuclear infrastructure and the event was documented through official channels.

The correlation does not establish causation or intent. It is an observable feature of the documented record that unidentified objects have appeared near nuclear assets at a rate inconsistent with random coincidence, in the judgment of multiple independent researchers who have reviewed the declassified files.

The official acknowledgment trajectory (2017-2024)

Prior to 2017, no official US government statement acknowledged that UAP constituted a genuine unexplained phenomenon warranting formal investigation. The subsequent seven years produced a sequential series of official acknowledgments that are themselves a documented part of the record, independent of the underlying cases they reference.

Each step in this sequence represents a publicly documented, verifiable event with an official attribution. The trajectory from denial to formal congressional testimony under oath over a seven-year period is itself an evidentiary data point, independent of whether the underlying claims are accurate.

The insider disclosure pattern

DECUR profiles more than 60 individuals who have made public disclosures about UAP research or related classified programs. This group is not uniformly credentialed or uniformly credible - profiles include congressional testimony under oath, peer-reviewed scientific publications, investigative journalism, and anonymous source claims, each weighted differently in the credibility assessments.

What the aggregate pattern shows is that disclosure claims have emerged independently from multiple institutional contexts: Air Force, Navy, DIA, CIA, congressional staffers, academic scientists, and private aerospace contractors. When independent sources from different institutional backgrounds make consistent claims without apparent coordination, that consistency is itself an evidentiary observation - not proof, but a pattern the record documents.

The three most credentialed public disclosures as of 2026 - measured by documentation quality, institutional position, and verifiable track record - are David Grusch (congressional testimony under oath, Inspector General complaint), Luis Elizondo (former AATIP director, DoD credentials), and Ryan Graves (active-duty F/A-18 pilot during encounters, congressional testimony).

What the evidence does not resolve

The documented record establishes, with high confidence, that: unidentified objects with anomalous flight characteristics have been observed and tracked by military sensor systems; these observations have been investigated by multiple government agencies across multiple countries; the observations cannot be attributed to known aircraft or natural phenomena in the strongest cases; and official institutional acknowledgment of the phenomenon has increased substantially since 2017.

The documented record does not establish: the origin of observed phenomena; whether multiple cases share a common cause; whether any retrieved materials exist; whether any government holds information beyond what has been publicly acknowledged; or the nature, intent, or intelligence of whatever is responsible for the observations.

These are not questions DECUR avoids by policy - they are questions the available evidence does not answer. Claims that go beyond the documented record are noted as such in individual case and figure assessments.