NRO Sentient system
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | 27 February 2023 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Government programs (topic) |
| People | John Greenewald |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 214 |
| Year | 2023 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2023 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 3 |
Records released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2022–2023 show that the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) had a UAP-detection capability in its classified artificial-intelligence system Sentient, and that an NRO system flagged a small unidentified object, likened to the "Tic Tac" seen by Navy pilots, on 6 May 2021.[1][2]
Sentient
Sentient is an NRO program, first publicly described in 2019, that automatically fuses satellite and other data to detect, track and predict the activity of objects of interest. A 29 June 2021 email released to researchers said the NRO's Sentient research and development included a "UAP model" to look for UAP in imagery, but that an external customer needed to ask for it to be turned on; it is not known whether it was.[2][3]
The 2021 detection
Redacted NRO slides, pieced together by researcher John Greenewald of The Black Vault, show that the system flagged a small object it could not match to a known aircraft, which also appeared in a second over-water image of the same area about 15 seconds later — suggesting it was not a sensor artefact. One slide noted a rough similarity to objects previously reported by the Navy; a vessel detected nearby may have been unrelated. At least 24 pages of PowerPoint material were withheld in full.[2]
The UAP Task Force
Other released NRO records show that the agency contributed four paragraphs to the classified June 2021 UAP report to Congress and had to sign off on it, with an NRO point of contact for the UAP Task Force; ten pages were withheld.[1]
Significance
The releases contradicted the NRO's earlier position, in a 2015 reply to Greenewald, that it had no UFO records and that the subject was outside its responsibilities. The NRO has not released details of what the 2021 object was or whether it was explained.[1][2]
People and topics
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- National Reconnaissance Office — The U.S. agency that builds and operates spy satellites.
- Freedom of Information Act — The 1966 U.S. law that lets the public request government records.
- John Greenewald — Founder of The Black Vault FOIA archive.
- The Black Vault — John Greenewald's online archive of government documents.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- UAP Task Force — The Navy-led Pentagon task force on UAP set up in 2020.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
On the Timeline
- Eric Weinstein and Renaissance Technologies (22 February 2023) — Eric Weinstein speculates a hedge fund may hold math advances relevant to gravity.
- Alfred O'Donnell's Area 51 saucer story (28 February 2023) — George Knapp says a former Area 51 contractor manager told him of a recovered saucer.
See every 2023 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "Newly released NRO documents reveal extent of UAP involvement and contributions to UAP Task Force report", The Black Vault (Apr 2022) · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- "Highly classified NRO system captures possible 'Tic-Tac' object in 2021", The Black Vault (Feb 2023) · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- Sentient (intelligence analysis system) — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
Further reading
- USS Nimitz UFO incident — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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