The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office plans to obtain commercial subscription access to a large privately assembled collection of UFO records, DefenseScoop reported on September 2. The cited procurement notice identifies the National UFO Historical Records Center as the intended sole source and focuses on material created before 1990.
The purchase would support AARO's statutory review of United States government involvement with unidentified anomalous phenomena dating from 1945. The notice calls for digital access to records, metadata and analytical material that are not otherwise available through a single public repository.
The New Mexico center is led by researcher David Marler and says its holdings include material from the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization and files associated with astronomer J. Allen Hynek. The government's sole-source justification is a procurement claim about the collection's scope and organization; it is not an official finding that claims inside the archive are accurate.
The contemplated agreement has a one-year base period and four possible one-year extensions, while the estimated value was not disclosed. A Defense Department official told DefenseScoop that the arrangement is for data access rather than advisory labor. Any historical conclusions will still depend on provenance checks, comparison with government records and the quality of the underlying evidence.