Most UAP coverage collapses three fundamentally different verdicts into one. Resolved means the investigation found a credible prosaic explanation. Insufficient data means the case cannot be ruled in or out — there’s not enough evidence to reach a conclusion. Unresolved high-interest means the case has survived scrutiny and remains genuinely anomalous.
The distinction matters. AARO has resolved hundreds of cases as drones, balloons, satellites, optical artifacts, or sensor errors. Those are not “the government covering up UFOs” — they are the system working as designed. The cases worth attention are the ones that survive that filter.
Why this gets confused
Mainstream coverage and most podcast culture treat any case AARO hasn’t formally resolved as evidence of suppression. That’s a category error. Insufficient data is not the same as unresolved. Insufficient data is a failure of the witness/sensor environment to produce evidence — not a failure of investigation.
The 2014 Chile CEFAA Navy helicopter case is the model: multi-sensor, multi-observer, systematic elimination of prosaic explanations, and an official conclusion of “unresolved.” That is what good aviation UAP data looks like. Most cases never reach that bar.
How UAP Oracle uses these labels
Every case we cover gets one of three tags: resolved (with the explanation), insufficient data (with what was missing), or unresolved high-interest (with what survived scrutiny). We don’t blur these. The reader needs to know which bucket a case falls in.