Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act

The Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act (UAPDA) was submitted on July 13, 2023 by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senators Mike Rounds, Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Todd Young and Martin Heinrich as Senate Amendment 797 to the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (S. 2226), concerning records on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). It proposed a records collection at the National Archives and Records Administration, a presidentially appointed Review Board modeled on the board of the 1992 President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, and federal eminent domain over recovered technology and "biological evidence of non-human intelligence" held by private parties. The Senate passed the defense bill with the text on July 27, 2023 by 86 votes to 11. The version enacted on December 22, 2023 as Public Law 118-31 kept a National Archives collection and dropped the Review Board and the eminent domain section.¹²³⁴

Senate Amendment 797 as submitted

As printed in the Congressional Record of July 13, 2023, the amendment added a title establishing an "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection." It required that each record be disclosed in full not later than 25 years after its creation unless the President certified grounds for postponement. The Review Board would have nine members appointed by the President with Senate consent, to serve until not later than September 30, 2030, with power to hold hearings, administer oaths, subpoena witnesses and documents, and, through the Attorney General, subpoena private persons. Nominees were barred if they had "any previous or current involvement with any legacy program or controlling authority," defined as government, commercial, academic and private sector endeavors to collect, exploit or reverse engineer technologies of unknown origin or examine biological evidence of non-human intelligence. The Board was to create a "Controlled Disclosure Campaign Plan" for material whose release was postponed and to brief the AARO. A $20,000,000 authorization for fiscal year 2024 was attached.¹

The Board's nominations were to follow recommendations from the Senate and House leaders, the Secretary of Defense, the National Academy of Sciences, "The UAP Disclosure Foundation," and the American Historical Association. A search of the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer database found no organization named "UAP Disclosure Foundation." It listed the UAP Disclosure Fund of San Francisco (EIN 99-2834592), a 501(c)(4) with an Internal Revenue Service ruling date of July 2025, and the Sol Foundation Inc. of Carmel, Indiana (EIN 99-3863647), a 501(c)(3) with a ruling date of August 2024. The text of S. 2226 as passed by the Senate on July 27, 2023 lists in the same position "Established nonprofit research organizations relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena." At the House Oversight hearing of November 13, 2024, retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet told Representative Robert Garcia that he was "a member of the UAP Discloser [sic] Fund as an advisor and the Sol Foundation as a senior strategic advisor, which is advocating the same."¹²⁵⁶⁷

The Senate-passed text

The Senate-passed text, Division G of S. 2226, defines "unidentified anomalous phenomena" as any object operating or judged capable of operating in outer space, the atmosphere, ocean surfaces or undersea "lacking prosaic attribution due to performance characteristics and properties not previously known to be achievable," differentiated by observables including "instantaneous acceleration absent apparent inertia," "transmedium" travel and "multispectral signature control," and defines "technologies of unknown origin" and "non-human intelligence" ("any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform regardless of nature or ultimate origin"). The records covered include those held by the Executive Office of the President, the military departments, the Department of Energy "and its progenitors, the Manhattan Project," the Central Intelligence Agency "and its progenitor, the Office of Strategic Services," the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, NASA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and "any private sector person or entity formerly or currently under contract or some other agreement with the Federal Government." Section 9011 allowed the Review Board to ask the Attorney General to petition courts to release information relevant to UAP held under seal or under a grand jury's injunction of secrecy. Section 9010(a) read: "The Federal Government shall exercise eminent domain over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities in the interests of the public good."²

Senate passage and the House

Douglas Dean Johnson, who reported on the measure throughout 2023 and supported it, wrote that it was unveiled on July 14, 2023, and "after some modifications" was added to the defense bill as part of a list of agreed amendments "without floor debate or a separate vote." The Senate passed S. 2226 on July 27, 2023 on a roll call of 86 to 11, and then inserted the same text into H.R. 2670, the House-passed defense bill. Johnson's summary also lists a separate provision associated with Gillibrand that would bar funds in fiscal 2024 for any classified program on UAP not briefed to the appropriate committees, congressional leadership and the AARO director, and would require any person under federal contract holding material relating to UAP to make it available to the AARO director and to provide "a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material," and an addition of 27 million dollars to the AARO budget request by the Senate Armed Services Committee. He wrote that H.R. 2670 as passed by the House contained one UAP provision, an amendment by Representative Tim Burchett, and that a second amendment, by Representative Mike Gallagher, was "not made in order by the House Rules Committee, apparently due to some manner of objection informally lodged by leadership of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence."²⁸⁹

On December 1, 2023 The Hill reported that members of the House UAP Caucus (Anna Paulina Luna, Burchett, Matt Gaetz, Jared Moskowitz and Eric Burlison) held a press conference after "it was reported top leaders in both chambers were attempting to kill legislation related to the effort," and wrote that "there were reports that House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), and House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) were looking to quash the act," who "appeared to have the support of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and new House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)." Schumer said on the Senate floor on December 4, 2023: "House Republicans are also attempting to kill another commonsense, bipartisan measure passed by the Senate."¹⁰¹¹

The Pentagon redline and the conference

On July 24, 2024 Johnson published a 33-page document headed "Informal views on S. 2226 Division G: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure," marked as reviewed by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (OUSD(I&S)), which states: "After conferring with NARA/ISOO the Department strongly urges consideration of the following revisions identified below." Johnson wrote that file data indicated it was transmitted to negotiators in late November 2023. The text of Section 9010 in the document reads, with struck and inserted words running together in the text layer, "The It is the sense of Congress that the Federal Government shall should exercise eminent domain appropriately over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin," adds "in the territory of the United States," and in the heading of subsection (b) substitutes the AARO for the Review Board as the recipient of such material. Under 50 U.S.C. 3373 the AARO director is appointed by the Secretary of Defense in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security on administrative matters, and reports to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence on operational and security matters.¹²¹³¹⁴

Johnson wrote that Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO's director until December 1, 2023, told Marik von Rennenkampff on July 17, 2024: "We convinced Congress last year not to go down that road." In the same interview, as quoted by Johnson, Kirkpatrick said AARO objected that the proposal duplicated the historical report Congress had assigned in 2022 and that "I talked to all of the commercial industry, and they're scratching their heads and they don't know what they're talking about." By email on July 23, 2024 Kirkpatrick told Johnson he could not confirm the authenticity of the OUSD(I&S) document but that it "does represent many of the objections I tried to articulate." He said that no one at the White House, the National Security Council or in Congress asked him to soften his position, and that the eminent domain compromise was proposed because "the conspiracy frenzy was pushing this narrative of some prime contractor having this material" and "since we know nothing exists, we didn't feel it made our job harder."¹²

The conference report on H.R. 2670 passed the Senate on December 13, 2023 by 87 votes to 13. On the floor that day Schumer and Rounds held a colloquy. Schumer said: "We have also been notified by multiple credible sources that information on UAPs has also been withheld from Congress, which if true is a violation of laws requiring full notification to the legislative branch." Rounds listed as the most significant shortcomings of the conference agreement "the rejection, first of all, of a government-wide review board composed of expert citizens, presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed," and "a requirement as a transparency measure for the government to obtain any recovered UAP material or biological remains that may have been provided to private entities in the past and thereby hidden from Congress and the American people." Schumer said: "It is really an outrage the House didn't work with us on adopting our proposal for a review board," and: "Now it means that declassification of UAP records will be largely up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades." He acknowledged the late Harry Reid as "a mentor, who cared about this issue a great deal."¹⁵¹⁶

The enacted law

The enacted law is Public Law 118-31, signed on December 22, 2023, in Title XVIII, Subtitle C, Sections 1841 to 1843. It directs the Archivist to begin the "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection" within 60 days, requires each head of a government office to review and organize records within 300 days, requires records transmitted for disclosure to be open for inspection within 30 days and online within 180 days after that, and provides that no record "created by a person or entity outside the Federal Government" may be "withheld, redacted, postponed for public disclosure, or reclassified" except for names or identities. It contains no review board and no eminent domain provision.³

Section 1687 of the same law, "Limitation on Use of Funds for Certain Unreported Programs," provides that none of the funds authorized by the Act "may be obligated or expended in support of any activities involving unidentified anomalous phenomena protected under any form of special access or restricted access limitations unless the Secretary of Defense has provided the details of the activity to the appropriate congressional committees and congressional leadership, including for any activities described in a report released by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office in fiscal year 2024." Its subsection (b) provides that, consistent with Defense Department Instruction 3204.01 on oversight of independent research and development, independent research and development funding relating to UAP "shall not be allowable as indirect expenses for purposes of contracts covered by such instruction, unless such material and information is made available the appropriate congressional committees and congressional leadership." Section 7343, in the intelligence authorization division, contains a parallel funding limitation keyed to the Director of National Intelligence and a parallel independent research and development clause, and Section 7341 amends the reporting requirement of the AARO so that its director, rather than the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense jointly, submits it.¹⁷

Contractors, lobbying filings and campaign receipts

Johnson wrote that he had "repeatedly stated that the gutting of the bill was due not to any lobbying campaign by powerful defense contractors, as some imagined, but to opposition from the Pentagon/AARO, the objections of which were largely adopted by several of the very senior Republican lawmakers who were among the small group of lawmakers who resolved the final contentious issues on NDAA."¹² At the 2024 hearing Representative Nancy Mace asked Luis Elizondo which contractors receive material of unknown origin and what Lockheed Martin's expertise is; he answered "Aerospace, ma'am."¹⁸

Searches of the Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database on October 1 and 2, 2026 for the terms "UAP," "UFO," "unidentified aerial," "unidentified anomalous," "AARO," "anomaly resolution," "non-human," "extraterrestrial" and "disclosure act" in the specific lobbying issues text returned filings by four groups connected with the subject. Declassify UAP LLC of Baltimore, whose registration was posted by Nicholas Gold with an effective date of July 26, 2023 (the date of the House Oversight hearing at which David Grusch testified), describes its business as "Grassroots and direct lobbying for government UAP declassification," listed the House, the Senate, NASA and the White House Office as targets, reported expenses of 30,000 dollars for the third quarter of 2023, and filed reports through the first quarter of 2026. A10 Associates LLC reported 20,000 dollars per quarter from the client MUFON for "guidance and counsel on NDAA" from the first quarter of 2022, 30,000 dollars per quarter for "NDAA, UAP" from the second quarter of 2023 through the third quarter of 2024 (the fourth quarter of 2023 report refers to "S. 2226, National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024 NDAA, and UAP issues"), and 10,000 dollars for the fourth quarter of 2024; its lobbyists included Jessica Tocco, who disclosed a prior position as confidential assistant to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, and Danny McNamara. Solve Advocacy LLC (lobbyist Kevin Wright) reported 10,000 dollars per quarter from Advena Research, formerly the Non-Human Intelligence Research Institute, from the third quarter of 2024 through the second quarter of 2026 for a "UAP Interparliamentary Alliance" (described from the fourth quarter of 2025 as an "Emerging Technologies Interparliamentary Caucus"). A lobbying firm for ExoAnalytic Solutions mentioned "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" in its fourth quarter 2024 report. The searches returned no filing by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Battelle, Science Applications International Corporation, Leidos or any other defense contractor with those terms in the issue text; the issue text does not always name the subject of the lobbying.¹⁹

Federal Election Commission records show that in the 2024 election cycle (2023 and 2024) the campaign committee of Representative Mike Turner, Citizens for Turner, received 10,000 dollars from the Lockheed Martin Employees Political Action Committee, 10,000 from the Boeing PAC, 8,500 from the Northrop Grumman PAC, 10,000 from Raytheon and RTX committees combined, 10,000 from General Dynamics, 10,000 from L3Harris, 10,000 from BAE Systems, 10,000 from Leidos, 3,500 from the Science Applications International Corporation PAC and 7,000 from Huntington Ingalls, a total of 89,000 dollars. Mike Rogers for Congress, the committee of Representative Mike Rogers, received 10,000 dollars each from the political action committees of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, L3Harris, BAE Systems, Leidos and Huntington Ingalls, a total of 90,000 dollars. Of those receipts, entries dated between the Senate vote of July 27 and the signing of December 22, 2023 total 19,000 dollars for Turner and 9,000 dollars for Rogers; those dated December 12 to 15, 2023 are a 2,000 dollar entry from the Boeing PAC to Rogers (December 12), 1,000 dollars from the Boeing PAC to Turner (December 13) and 1,000 dollars from the BAE Systems PAC to Turner (December 15). The two committees reported receipts of the same companies' PACs in the 2020 and 2022 cycles.²⁰

Reintroduction

On July 11, 2024 Rounds, "for himself and Mr. Schumer," submitted Senate Amendment 2610 to the fiscal 2025 defense bill (S. 4638) as Division I, the "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2024." It retained the nine-member Review Board, the September 30, 2030 termination date and the eminent domain section, authorized 20,000,000 dollars for fiscal year 2025, and in Section 1115 repealed Subtitle C of Title XVIII of Public Law 118-31. Johnson reported that the House-passed defense bill (H.R. 8070) contained no UAP provisions.¹²²¹ At the 2024 hearing Garcia said that "earlier this year," as part of the House defense authorization bill, he had filed an amendment to include the UAP Disclosure Act, "which would create a UAP Records Review Board with exercise of eminent domain over UAP-related material," that "the amendment was blocked," and that the Senate had included the Rounds-Schumer amendment.⁷

On July 29, 2025 Schumer, "for himself, Mr. Rounds, and Mrs. Gillibrand," submitted Senate Amendment 3111 to the fiscal 2026 defense bill (S. 2296) as the "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2025." On October 9, 2025 the Senate adopted by voice vote a manager's package of 48 listed amendments that did not include Amendment 3111, and passed S. 2296 by 77 votes to 20.²²²³

On July 22, 2026 Burlison announced that the House had adopted his UAP Disclosure Act as an amendment to the fiscal 2027 defense bill. His release states that it would create a permanent records collection at the National Archives, "establish an independent UAP Records Review Board," and "extend disclosure requirements to covered government contractors," and that it "would support President Trump's Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE)."²⁴