US government UAP disclosures

Three hearings carry the testimony. On 26 July 2023 the House Oversight subcommittee heard Ryan Graves, David Fravor and David Grusch⁠[23]. Grusch, a former National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency officer and UAP Task Force member, testified that he had been told of "a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access", that his information came from people with long service records who provided "photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony", that he had spent about four years trying to corroborate it, and that he had filed an urgent-concern complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General and suffered retaliation⁠[5]. He gave no documents in open session and said he was "testifying to the facts as I have been told them"⁠[5]. Fravor testified that his 2004 encounter was never investigated⁠[24].

On 13 November 2024 the same committee heard Luis Elizondo, Tim Gallaudet, Michael Gold and Michael Shellenberger⁠[6]. Elizondo, a former Defense Department official, asserted that the government holds non-human craft; Shellenberger described a programme he was told is called "Immaculate Constellation"; Gold, a member of NASA's independent study team, spoke to the need for better data⁠[6]. Six days later AARO's director presented the office's case resolutions to a Senate subcommittee and said the office was analysing several cases it did not understand⁠[4]⁠[10]. On 9 September 2025 the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets heard Jeffrey Nuccetelli, Alexandro Wiggins, George Knapp and Dylan Borland, with Joe Spielberger of the Project On Government Oversight as the minority witness⁠[7].

The official side has its own accounts. Kirkpatrick, after leaving AARO, wrote that the office had found the claims of a hidden programme to be a small circle of people repeating each other's stories, none of which survived investigation⁠[25]. The Historical Record Report's authors say some of those who linked real programmes to UAP "had incomplete or unauthorized access to these programs"⁠[3].

The Historical Record Report, Volume 1, cleared on 6 March 2024 and released on 8 March, reviewed classified and unclassified government investigations from 1945 to October 2023 and interviewed about 30 people. Its stated finding is that "AARO has found no verifiable evidence" that the government or private companies have reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology, that most sightings were misidentifications, that one witness's alien craft was an F-117, and that a proposal to the Department of Homeland Security called Kona Blue, to search for off-world technology, was never approved⁠[3]⁠[12]. A second volume covering later interviews was promised; as of February 2026 it had not been published, and AARO was described by former officials as having "gone quiet"⁠[17].

AARO has published a handful of case resolutions. GOFAST (2015 or 2016) was resolved in November 2024 and February 2025 as a slow object made to appear fast by parallax⁠[4]⁠[26]. The Puerto Rico (Aguadilla, 2013) object was resolved as two objects drifting at wind speed, and the Mount Etna (2018) object as a probable balloon⁠[4]. In the FY2025 report, satellite flaring accounted for a large share of aviation reports⁠[2]. No published resolution covers FLIR1, GIMBAL or the 2004 Nimitz encounter.

The PURSUE files are historical records: FBI case files from 1947 to 1968, a Sandia Base dossier of 1948 to 1950, CIA and FBI reports, Apollo-era NASA imagery with "areas of interest" marked and a disclaimer that these are not analytical conclusions, and recent military imagery and incident reports, with some technical data absent⁠[8]⁠[19]. The Pentagon describes them as unresolved cases on which the government "is unable to make a definitive determination", and both it and the President said the files do not confirm extraterrestrial life⁠[9]. Kirkpatrick said there was nothing unexpected in the first release⁠[9].

Three readings of this record are current. The first is that the documents are accurate: the government's UAP problem is a data problem, most reports have ordinary causes, the unresolved residue is unresolved for lack of sensors rather than because of anything exotic, and the testimony about hidden programmes rests on hearsay that investigation did not confirm⁠[3]⁠[25]. Its predictions are that the PURSUE tranches will continue to contain nothing beyond what the annual reports describe, and that the FY2026 intercept briefings will show ordinary objects.

The second is that the documents are accurate as far as they go but AARO was never given access to the programmes in question, so its negative finding is a statement about its access rather than about the world⁠[5]. Its predictions are that the NDA waivers and PURSUE channel of 2026 will produce disclosures AARO could not, and that the Inspector General's handling of Grusch's complaint will eventually be made public.

The third is that the record is incomplete in the ordinary way of national security records: classified programmes, including foreign-collection and US test programmes, account for some reports and cannot be discussed, which explains both the unresolved residue and the insiders' confusion⁠[1]⁠[3]. Its prediction is that the records postponed under the 25-year rule, when released, will name programmes rather than craft.

What the record does not contain is any document, from any agency, that describes recovered non-human material or a reverse-engineering programme. The claims exist only in testimony about what witnesses were told⁠[5]. Nor does the record contain any document that resolves the best-attested unexplained cases; the 2004 Nimitz event remains unresolved in the official record⁠[24].