United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, composed of 435 representatives apportioned by state population and serving two-year terms — the chamber where the most significant recent congressional action on UAP disclosure has occurred: the July 26, 2023 hearing of the House Oversight Committee's National Security Subcommittee, at which David Grusch, David Fravor, and Ryan Graves testified under oath about UAP and non-human intelligence programs, became the first congressional UAP hearing with witnesses testifying under oath since the 1960s.
Structure and UAP jurisdiction
The House exercises UAP oversight primarily through three committees:
- House Oversight Committee (and its National Security Subcommittee) — which convened the July 2023 hearing and has conducted investigative oversight of government transparency on UAP programs
- House Armed Services Committee (HASC) — which oversees DoD programs including AARO (All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office) and all UAP-related defense appropriations
- House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) — which reviews classified UAP programs and has included UAP-specific provisions in annual intelligence authorization acts since 2020
Key UAP actions (2019–2024)
- 2019: House Intelligence Committee includes UAP reporting requirements in NDAA for the first time, directing a classified UAP assessment from the Director of National Intelligence
- 2020: NDAA includes $22 million in funding for the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF)
- 2022: House Intelligence Committee includes UAP provisions in the Intelligence Authorization Act following the Senate lead; HASC holds closed-door UAP briefing for members
- 2023 (July 26): House Oversight Committee hearing with Grusch, Fravor, Graves — Grusch testifies under oath about non-human intelligence crash retrieval programs; first open congressional UAP hearing since the 1960s
- 2023 (December): House-Senate NDAA conference strips key provisions of the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 over objections of Senate authors
Tim Burchett
Tim Burchett, Republican Congressman from Tennessee's 2nd District (elected 2018), is the House member most publicly identified with UAP transparency advocacy. Burchett convened the July 2023 hearing alongside Representative Anna Paulina Luna and Representatives Jared Moskowitz, Matt Gaetz, and others — after Speaker Kevin McCarthy refused to create a select committee on UAP but agreed to a hearing. Burchett described the process: "I went to McCarthy, went to Speaker, we wrote a letter — myself, Luna and Jared Moskowitz out. They're all out of Florida. Gates wrote the letter and it said we wanted a select committee... he said we would not get a select committee but he would give me another hearing."
Burchett has consistently framed UAP transparency as a matter of fundamental governmental accountability rather than a partisan issue: "I just think the government needs to be transparent." He has acknowledged that the Intelligence Community's resistance to transparency — rather than genuine national security concerns — is the primary obstacle to disclosure, and has described being "steered" around the Intelligence Committee's jurisdictional objections when organizing the Oversight Committee hearing.
Anna Paulina Luna
Anna Paulina Luna, Republican Congresswoman from Florida's 13th District (elected 2022), co-led the UAP transparency push alongside Burchett. Luna has publicly described receiving classified briefings on UAP that she cannot fully disclose, stating: "I can tell you without getting into classified conversations that there have been incidents where very credible people have reported that there have been movement outside of time and space."
Luna has described UAP as potentially "inter-dimensional" based on classified information she and her investigators have received, and has called for the information shown to members of Congress to be declassified: "We are going to be asking for this information to be declassified, at least the information that has been shown to us."
House Armed Services Committee
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC), through its subcommittee structure, oversees DoD UAP programs. HASC Chairman Mike Rogers's role in weakening the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 in December 2023 conference negotiations was cited by Senate sponsors Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds as the primary obstacle to stronger disclosure legislation. Rogers stripped the Act's most consequential provision — the creation of a presidentially appointed review board with authority to declassify UAP records over agency objection — leaving a much weakened version in the final NDAA.
The July 2023 hearing
The July 26, 2023 hearing — formally titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency" — was the first open UAP hearing in Congress since the 1960s and the first ever at which witnesses testified under oath. The three witnesses:
- David Grusch: former NGA/NRO officer, UAPTF representative; testified that the US government possesses non-human intelligence crash retrieval materials and that a multi-decade program of reverse-engineering has been concealed from Congressional oversight
- David Fravor: retired US Navy Commander; described the 2004 USS Nimitz UAP incident and the capabilities of the observed Tic Tac object, noting it performed maneuvers beyond any known US or adversary technology
- Ryan Graves: former Navy F/A-18 pilot; testified about sustained UAP encounters by his East Coast-based squadron and the failure of official reporting mechanisms to address them
The hearing generated an audience of tens of millions via live-stream and produced the first under-oath congressional statement that non-human intelligence materials are held by the US government — a threshold that previous UAP advocates had reached only outside Congress.