Project Recover

For over 30 years, Project Recover has been the nation’s leading citizen-led, non-profit organization to search, locate, document, recover, and repatriate the over 81,500 American service members missing in action and to bring recognition and closure to the estimated 5,000,000 MIA Gold Star family members. Project Recover is the only non-governmental organization (NGO) with full vertical capabilities in the POW/MIA recovery space, which includes operational missions in both underwater and land environments. 

In 2012, Project Recover partnered with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Delaware’s School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. These collaborations, along with Project Recover’s partnership with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and Legion Underseas Services, have enabled Project Recover to document dozens of war sites associated with hundreds of MIAs.

Project Recover has completed over 100 missions in 24 countries, discovered and documented more than 75 aircraft associated with MIAs, developed a growing database of more than 700 cases associated with more than 3,000 MIAs, accounted for over 80 missing-in-action service members, repatriated 17 American heroes, and anticipate the identification of 26 MIAs by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) by the end of 2025.