The UAP hearings are the public sessions the U.S. Congress has held since 2022 on unidentified anomalous phenomena, the official term for what used to be called UFOs. Across four hearings between May 2022 and September 2025, pilots, intelligence veterans and journalists gave sworn testimony, including claims of recovered "non-human" craft, while the government's own documented reviews, through AARO's July 2026 annual report, say they have found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
That gap between what witnesses said under oath and what official investigations have documented is the whole story. Both are real parts of the public record, and headlines and short clips routinely blur them together. This guide walks through the dated timeline from the December 2017 New York Times story to the Pentagon file release of September 18, 2026, labels each item as testimony or finding, and flags what is still unconfirmed as of this writing.
What is a UAP, and why did the name change?
A UAP is any sighting or sensor detection that cannot be immediately identified, whether it later turns out to be a balloon, a drone, a sensor artifact or something that stays unexplained. The first U.S. intelligence report on the subject, in 2021, used the phrase "unidentified aerial phenomena." Official usage later broadened "aerial" to "anomalous" so the category could cover reports in the air, at sea, under water and in space, which is why the Pentagon office that now handles them is called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO.
The newer term is meant to be neutral. It describes a gap in identification, not an explanation, and "unidentified" usually means there was not enough data to identify the object, not that the object was shown to be exotic. Neutral language matters because stigma discourages reporting, a problem NASA's independent study team named directly in 2023. The space domain also pulls in older debates, from the [Black Knight satellite legend](/black-knight-satellite-explained) to the astronomers' argument over [the interstellar object 'Oumuamua](/oumuamua-explained-the-first-interstellar-object-and-the-alien-probe-debate), which is a question of telescope data rather than military sensor reports.
How did UAPs reach Congress?
The road to the hearings began on December 16, 2017, when The New York Times, in a story by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, revealed the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. AATIP had run from 2007 to 2012 on about $22 million, backed by Senator Harry Reid, and the paper published two Navy cockpit videos now known as "Tic Tac" and "Gimbal."
In August 2020 the Navy stood up the UAP Task Force to standardize how military personnel reported sightings. On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its Preliminary Assessment. It covered 144 reports from 2004 to 2021. Only one was identified, as a balloon; 143 remained unexplained, and 18 showed what the report called unusual flight characteristics. ODNI proposed five possible explanatory categories (airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, U.S. government or industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catch-all "other") but did not assign individual cases to them.
That report is the base layer of documented findings: many reports, thin data, and no conclusion about origin.
The UAP hearings, one by one
Four public hearings form the core of the congressional record so far.
May 17, 2022: the first public hearing in over 50 years
A House Intelligence subcommittee held the first public congressional hearing on the subject in more than half a century. Scott Bray, deputy director of Naval Intelligence, and Ronald Moultrie, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, testified that sightings were frequent, showed video to members, and said no evidence of alien origin had been found, while conceding that data collection needed to improve. Two months later, on July 20, 2022, the Defense Department established AARO, which absorbed the task force.
July 26, 2023: the Grusch hearing
The hearing that made headlines worldwide came from the House Oversight Committee's National Security subcommittee. David Grusch, a former intelligence officer, testified that the United States runs a "multi-decade" program to retrieve and reverse-engineer crashed UAP, that "non-human" craft and "biologics" had been recovered, and that funds had been misappropriated to hide the program from Congress.
Two former Navy aviators testified alongside him. Ryan Graves described near-daily sightings in 2014 and 2015 off the U.S. East Coast, including objects he described as a cube inside a sphere, one of which passed within about 50 feet of two F-18s. David Fravor, a retired Navy commander, recounted the 2004 "Tic Tac" encounter: a seamless oval object that, in his account, dropped about 80,000 feet and reappeared about 60 miles away in under a minute. None of these claims was independently verified at the hearing.
November 13, 2024: "Exposing the Truth"
A joint House Oversight hearing led by Representatives Glenn Grothman and Nancy Mace heard from four witnesses: retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet; Luis Elizondo, a former Pentagon official long associated with AATIP; journalist Michael Shellenberger; and Michael Gold, a member of NASA's study team. The witnesses pressed for transparency and whistleblower protections. No new classified evidence entered the public record.
Between hearings, in January 2025, NewsNation's Ross Coulthart aired claims by Jake Barber, a self-described Air Force veteran, that a classified program had retrieved a downed "egg-shaped" craft. The Pentagon and AARO said they were reviewing the claims. No corroborating government document has surfaced as of this writing.
September 9, 2025: the Luna task force hearing
The House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Representative Anna Paulina Luna, held a hearing titled "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection." Witnesses were Air Force veterans Jeffrey Nuccetelli and Dylan Borland, police chief Alexandro Wiggins, journalist George Knapp, and Joe Spielberger of the Project On Government Oversight, called by the minority. Testimony centered on local and base-level encounters and on stronger protections for people who come forward.
Testimony vs findings: the distinction that matters
Testimony is what a witness says, under oath or on camera; a finding is what an agency has documented after review. Sworn testimony is legally serious, but hearing a claim does not verify it. It becomes evidence of the underlying events only when records, material or corroborating witnesses are produced.
On the testimony side sit Bray's and Moultrie's characterizations of individual cases in 2022, the accounts of Grusch, Graves and Fravor in 2023, the witnesses of November 2024 and September 2025, and the Barber claims of January 2025.
On the findings side, the documented record looks like this:
- NASA, September 14, 2023. A 16-member independent study team found no evidence that UAP are extraterrestrial, faulted stigma for poor data quality, and recommended artificial-intelligence and Earth-observation tools. NASA also named a Director of UAP Research.
- AARO, March 8, 2024. Volume I of the Historical Record Report reviewed U.S. government UAP activity from 1945 to the present and found "no verifiable evidence" of extraterrestrial technology, visitation or a hidden reverse-engineering program. It traced crash-retrieval stories, including ones matching Grusch's testimony, to misidentified programs, hoaxes and unsubstantiated claims. The report directly contradicts the 2023 testimony without formally resolving it; the two accounts now sit side by side.
- AARO leadership. Founding director Sean Kirkpatrick left in December 2023, and on August 26, 2024, NSA researcher Dr. Jon Kosloski was named director.
- AARO, July 21, 2026. The FY2025 Consolidated Annual Report, released after its statutory deadline, logged 319 new reports (284 current and 35 historical), down sharply from 757 in FY2024. It resolved 370 cases, all to conventional causes, and left nine open. It counted 50 notifications of drones near nuclear sites, up from 18, none of them UAP, and 262 tips through its secure whistleblower channel, of which 255 were out of scope and seven were flagged for interviews. It reported no evidence of recovered off-world material.
The pattern is familiar from [the secret space program debate](/the-secret-space-program-explained-real-classified-projects-vs-the-conspiracy-claims), where real classified aerospace projects exist alongside much larger claims that no document yet supports. Holding the two columns apart is the only way to read either one fairly.
What the 2026 file releases actually contain
On February 19, 2026, President Trump directed federal agencies to identify and release their files on alien and extraterrestrial life, UAP and UFOs. The Pentagon responded with a dedicated release site branded PURSUE and six batches so far, on May 8, May 22, June 12, July 10, August 7 and September 18, 2026. The sixth batch alone held 72 items: 15 videos, 56 documents and one audio file.
What the batches contain is declassified case material. What they do not contain, according to AARO, is verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial technology in any case. Hundreds of cases remain formally "unresolved," which in AARO's usage means unidentified for lack of data, not confirmed as anomalous. Claims that the files show "non-traditional propulsion signatures" have circulated on secondary UFO blogs but do not appear in AARO's statements or in ABC or CBS coverage of the releases; they are unverified as of this writing. A release is a finding that documents exist, not an endorsement of any interpretation placed on them.
What happens next in UAP disclosure?
The next phase turns on legislation, further releases and whether any witness claim is ever matched to a document. Four threads are worth following.
- Legislation. In 2025 Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds reintroduced their UAP declassification language, modeled on the JFK assassination records law, as a proposed amendment to the defense bill (S.Amdt.3111 to S.2296 in the 119th Congress). As in 2023 and 2024, it was reportedly stripped before the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act passed. The final NDAA, reported on December 10, 2025, instead carried narrower provisions on reporting military UAP intercepts around North America and on AARO's coordination with a new counter-drone task force. A House bill, H.R. 1187, the UAP Transparency Act, was also introduced; its final status is unverified as of this writing.
- More PURSUE batches. Watch whether releases continue and whether they include raw sensor data rather than summaries, since data quality is the bottleneck every official review has named.
- The whistleblower channel. Seven tips from AARO's FY2025 intake were flagged for interviews. Any public outcome from those interviews would be the first direct test of the channel.
- Drones. The rise in drone notifications near nuclear sites suggests much of the official attention is shifting toward conventional security problems, which may shape how future reports are framed.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson treats the hearings as a milestone rather than an endpoint. His position is that disclosure is ongoing: a process unfolding across news stories, hearings, official reports and file releases, not a single announcement from a podium. His platform documents that process directly through the 4BK TV Congressional Hearings channel, which gathers the hearing coverage in one place, and through long-form conversations such as his podcast episode with longtime disclosure advocate Dr. Steven Greer.
The claims made in those conversations belong in the testimony column above, and Carson's view that disclosure is under way is an interpretation of the record rather than a finding within it. For readers who follow his wider work, the modern hearings sit next to his writing on [ancient astronaut theory](/ancient-astronaut-theory-explained-origins-evidence-and-criticism) and the Anunnaki, where he sets out his reading of the Sumerian record as an account of visitors from elsewhere.
Watch, read and go deeper
The [Congressional Hearings channel](/watch/congressional-hearings) is the starting point for the hearings themselves, and [What If We Had Full Disclosure Tomorrow](/watch/what-if-we-had-full-disclosure-tomorrow) explores what a full release would change. For a broader discussion of the subject, the podcast episode 4bidden Rant: UFOs, UAPs and Aliens covers the terminology and the debate. The full catalog of shows is on 4BK TV, and the [Anunnaki topic hub](/topics/anunnaki) connects this subject to Carson's research on ancient contact.
Frequently asked questions
Did the UAP hearings prove that aliens exist?
No. The hearings produced sworn testimony, including David Grusch's claims of recovered "non-human" craft and biologics, but testimony is not proof. The government's documented reviews, from NASA in 2023 to AARO's reports in 2024 and 2026, say they found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
Was David Grusch's testimony verified?
Not publicly. Grusch testified on July 26, 2023, about a multi-decade crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program, but none of it was independently verified at the hearing. AARO's March 2024 Historical Record Report found no verifiable evidence of such a program and traced similar stories to misidentified programs, hoaxes and unsubstantiated claims.
What is AARO?
AARO, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, is the Pentagon office established on July 20, 2022, to investigate UAP reports across air, sea, space and underwater domains. It absorbed the Navy's earlier UAP Task Force and Dr. Jon Kosloski was named its director in August 2024.
What are the Pentagon PURSUE files?
They are declassified UAP records released in batches on a Pentagon website following a February 19, 2026, presidential directive. Six batches appeared between May 8 and September 18, 2026; the sixth held 72 items. AARO says none of the cases contains verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
Did the UAP Disclosure Act become law?
The Schumer-Rounds declassification language was reintroduced in 2025 and, as in earlier years, was reportedly stripped before the FY2026 defense bill passed. That bill carried only narrower UAP-intercept reporting provisions. The House's UAP Transparency Act, H.R. 1187, was introduced in the 119th Congress, and its final status is unverified as of this writing.
Sources and further reading
- Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program," The New York Times, December 16, 2017.
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, June 25, 2021.
- U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, subcommittee hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena, transcript, May 17, 2022.
- U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, National Security subcommittee, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency," July 26, 2023.
- NASA, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team Report, September 14, 2023.
- All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume I, March 8, 2024.
- All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, FY2025 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, July 2026.
- U.S. House Committee on Oversight, Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection," September 9, 2025.
