NASA’s UAP report revealed a critical structural gap in how UAP is tracked in US airspace. NASA administers the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) for the FAA — a 47-year-old confidential, voluntary, non-punitive system that receives reports from pilots, air traffic controllers, dispatchers, cabin crew, and maintenance technicians. It has accumulated 1,940,000 reports and receives approximately 100,000 new reports per year. The report’s finding: “Although not initially designed for UAP collection, leveraging this system for commercial pilot UAP reporting would provide a critical database that would be valuable for the whole-of-government effort to understand UAP.” Currently, the ASRS is not used for UAP. Then the more damning finding: “At present, there is no standardized Federal system for making civilian UAP reports. While AARO is establishing a systematic mechanism for military and intelligence community UAP reports, current FAA guidelines instruct citizens wanting to report UAP to contact local law enforcement or one or more non-governmental organizations.” The consequence: “data is sparse, unsystematic, and lacks any curation or vetting protocols.” NASA explicitly documented that stigma around reporting UAP “almost certainly leads to data attrition at present” — meaning the actual frequency of UAP is being significantly underestimated because trained professionals refuse to report what they see to protect their careers. The report’s proposed fix: NASA-developed crowdsourcing apps and better use of the ASRS system. Neither has been fully implemented as of 2026.