The Congressional UAP Hearings: The Subject Goes Back Under Oath.
For roughly fifty years after Project Blue Book closed, the U.S. Congress did not hold a public hearing dedicated to unidentified flying objects. Then, in May 2022, Pentagon officials sat before a House subcommittee and discussed military encounters with unidentified anomalous phenomena on camera. A year later, a decorated Navy pilot and a former intelligence officer testified under oath that the government was hiding far more than it admitted. The hearings did not settle what UAPs are. What they did was move the question out of the tabloids and into the Congressional Record — and bind it, for the first time in a generation, to law.
AnomalyDesk is reader-supported. Articles may contain affiliate links to books and primary-document collections. Read our full funding disclosure.
What the congressional UAP hearings are, in a paragraph.
The congressional UAP hearings are a series of public U.S. House of Representatives hearings, beginning in 2022, that brought unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, the official successor term to UFO) back before Congress for the first sustained scrutiny since the Project Blue Book era. The first, on May 17, 2022, was held by the House Intelligence Committee's Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation subcommittee — the first open congressional UFO/UAP hearing in over half a century — at which two senior Defense officials, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray, testified about the military's renewed efforts to track and analyze UAP, showed declassified footage, and acknowledged a growing database of unexplained incidents while emphasizing flight-safety and foreign-adversary concerns over extraterrestrial speculation. The most consequential hearing came on July 26, 2023, before the House Oversight Committee's National Security subcommittee, featuring three witnesses under oath: former Navy pilot Ryan Graves and retired Commander David Fravor (of the 2004 Nimitz “Tic-Tac” encounter), who described credible, repeated military sightings of objects with no visible means of propulsion; and former intelligence officer David Grusch, who testified that he had been told of, and had referred to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, a covert program involving the recovery of “non-human” craft and biologics — claims he conveyed largely secondhand and could not document in open session (covered in detail in this archive's Grusch Testimony file). A further House Oversight hearing on November 13, 2024 heard additional witnesses, including former officials and a retired Navy contractor, pressing for transparency and continued investigation. Running alongside the hearings was a legislative track: Congress repeatedly used the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to mandate UAP reporting and to create and fund an analytic office — the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) — and, in the FY2024 NDAA, enacted a UAP records-collection and review provision (a scaled-back version of Senator Schumer's proposed UAP Disclosure Act, whose more aggressive eminent-domain and disclosure-board mechanisms were stripped out). The hearings' significance is institutional rather than evidentiary: they normalized UAP as a serious topic of oversight, secured sworn testimony and a documentary trail, and produced reforms in reporting and analysis — while pointedly not producing, in any public forum, physical evidence of non-human technology. AARO's own work (including its 2024 Historical Report) has stated it found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial craft, leaving the hearings as a landmark in transparency whose most dramatic claims remain, from open sources, unverified.
The documented record.
The 2022 hearing
The subject returned to Congress. Verified On May 17, 2022, the House Intelligence subcommittee held the first open congressional UAP hearing in decades; Pentagon officials Ronald Moultrie and Scott Bray testified, showed declassified footage, and described a growing database of incidents framed around safety and security [1][2].
The 2023 hearing
Sworn testimony from pilots and a whistleblower. Verified On July 26, 2023, the House Oversight subcommittee heard Ryan Graves, David Fravor, and David Grusch under oath; Graves and Fravor described credible military encounters, and Grusch made secondhand claims of a recovery program he had reported to the ICIG [1][3].
The 2024 hearing and legislation
The oversight continued and shaped law. Verified A further House Oversight hearing on November 13, 2024, heard additional witnesses; across these years Congress used the NDAA to mandate UAP reporting, fund AARO, and (FY2024) enact a UAP records-collection provision — a reduced form of the proposed UAP Disclosure Act [2][4].
No public physical proof
The extraordinary claims were not substantiated in public. Verified No hearing produced verifiable physical evidence of non-human craft; AARO has publicly stated it found no evidence of recovered extraterrestrial technology [3][4].
The competing positions.
Advocates of disclosure argue the hearings vindicate decades of claims: credentialed military witnesses describe real, anomalous craft, a whistleblower alleges a hidden recovery program, and the government's resistance to full transparency is itself evidence that something significant is being withheld. Claimed On this view the hearings are the leading edge of an unfolding disclosure [3].
The skeptical and official position is that the hearings established a legitimate flight-safety and counterintelligence concern and a need for rigorous analysis, but that the most sensational claims — especially Grusch's — are secondhand and undocumented in open session, and that AARO's investigations have found no evidence of extraterrestrial craft. Disputed This archive treats the hearings as a genuine and important institutional development — sworn testimony, a documentary trail, and real legislation — while distinguishing sharply between what was demonstrated (anomalous, often unresolved sightings; a transparency push) and what was merely asserted (recovered non-human craft). The hearings changed the politics of the subject without resolving its substance [2][4].
The unanswered questions.
The underlying evidence
The proof behind the biggest claims is absent. Unverified Grusch's allegations of recovered craft and biologics have not been substantiated with documents or material in any public forum, and remain unverifiable from open sources [3].
What the unresolved cases are
Many incidents stay unexplained. Disputed The hearings confirmed a population of genuinely unresolved military UAP encounters, but their nature — advanced adversary tech, sensor artifacts, or something else — is not established [1][2].
How far disclosure will go
The legislative endgame is open. Claimed Whether the records provisions and ongoing oversight will yield further releases — or whether the stripped-down disclosure law marks the ceiling — remains to be seen [4].
Primary material.
The accessible record on the congressional UAP hearings is held principally in these sources:
- The official hearing video and transcripts (House Intelligence, May 2022; House Oversight, July 2023 and November 2024).
- The sworn statements of Moultrie, Bray, Graves, Fravor, and Grusch.
- The NDAA UAP provisions (FY2022–FY2024), including the records-collection language.
- AARO reports and statements, including the 2024 Historical Report.
- The Congressional Record entries related to UAP.
Critical individual sources include: the hearing transcripts; the NDAA text; and the AARO findings.
The sequence.
- May 17, 2022 First open congressional UAP hearing in decades (House Intelligence subcommittee); Moultrie and Bray testify.
- July 26, 2023 House Oversight hearing; Graves, Fravor, and Grusch testify under oath.
- Dec 2023 The FY2024 NDAA enacts a UAP records-collection and review provision (a reduced UAP Disclosure Act).
- Nov 13, 2024 Further House Oversight UAP hearing with additional witnesses.
- 2024–2026 AARO continues analysis and document releases; oversight and the disclosure debate continue.
Cases on this archive that connect.
The Grusch Testimony (File 053) — the whistleblower at the center of the 2023 hearing, examined in full.
The UAP Task Force → AARO — the analytic office the hearings and NDAA created.
The Nimitz Tic-Tac (2004) — David Fravor's encounter, central to his testimony.
The Wilson-Davis Memo (File 255) — a disputed document entered into the Congressional Record amid this era.
More related files coming as the archive grows. Planned: the FY2024 NDAA UAP provisions and the disclosure-legislation fight.
Full bibliography.
- Official House Intelligence (May 2022) and House Oversight (July 2023, November 2024) UAP hearing video and transcripts.
- Sworn testimony of Ronald Moultrie, Scott Bray, Ryan Graves, David Fravor, and David Grusch.
- National Defense Authorization Act UAP provisions (FY2022–FY2024) and related Congressional Record entries.
- AARO reports and public statements, including the 2024 Historical Report (Volume I).