House Oversight Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Witnesses Urge Federal Government to Address Stigma Around UFO Reporting

On Wednesday, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a hearing to discuss the issue of unidentified aerial phenomena, often referred to as UAPs or UFOs. Three witnesses, including former U.S. intelligence official David Grusch, former Navy Commander David Fravor, and former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, testified before the committee.

The witnesses and lawmakers at the hearing decried the stigma surrounding UFO reporting, and repeatedly underscored the need for more information from the federal government. Grusch said he had not personally seen UAPs, but claimed he was informed of a “multi-decade” government UAP retrieval program. The Pentagon has not confirmed that it has such a program.

Fravor and Graves both reported their own experiences with UAPs. Fravor described an incident in 2004 when he and his squadron encountered an unidentified flying object off the coast of California. Graves reported that he had seen UAPs on multiple occasions while flying off the East Coast.

The hearing comes after the Pentagon released a report in April 2020 that revealed it had received “several hundreds” of new reports of unidentified aerial phenomena. A former Air Force intelligence officer told Congress that the U.S. government has a long-standing program that retrieves unidentified flying objects, and said that “non-human” “biologics” were found at crash sites where the objects were recovered.

Lawmakers at the hearing pushed the federal government to reveal more information on UAPs, and to address the stigma surrounding UFO reporting. It remains to be seen what action the government will take in response to the hearing.