It’s been over a month since I got through to someone with the National Archives regarding the status of the UAP record transfers. I followed up this week and was told that they are still checking into my questions.

For reference, the questions NARA is checking into are below.

• Are there records available in person that have not been uploaded to the site?

• Is there an estimate on when the remaining publicly releasable records will be uploaded?

• Would it be possible to get copies of the public metadata spreadsheets provided by each agency?

If I’d hazard a guess, there may be things out of NARA’s control that make the status of the record transfers hard to address.

For one thing, agencies had been in deliberations with NARA on the extent of records to release. Though, this shouldn’t stall the start of each agency’s release, only stretch it out. Each agency should have had two lists of records, one ready for public release and one to be withheld. The Air Force had provided, via FOIA, a list of publicly releasable records which have yet to be published.

It’s also possible that the administration’s move to release UAP/UFO records to war.gov has impacted the release at NARA. The files recently released seem to mainly be AARO records and records derived from or intended for NARA. A lot of the file names and metadata for the non-AARO records reference NARA record groups or use the file name format requested by NARA for transferred UAP records. It is unclear why these records haven’t also been released to NARA’s UAP collection.