Every congressional UFO hearing since 2022, and how to watch the next one

A hearing is a public session in which a congressional committee questions witnesses, usually under oath. What they say goes into the official record, and lying under oath is a crime, so hearing testimony carries more weight than an interview. It is still testimony, not a finding. Most are followed by a closed, classified briefing.

It isn't entirely new. On April 5, 1966, the House Armed Services Committee held a session on UFOs after a wave of sightings in Michigan, pushed by Rep. Gerald Ford, and the House science committee held a UFO symposium in 1968. Then Congress left the subject alone for half a century.

On May 17, 2022, a House Intelligence subcommittee chaired by André Carson held the first public congressional hearing on UFOs since the 1960s. Two officials testified: Ronald Moultrie, the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, and Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence.

Bray said the number of reports had grown to more than 400 and that nothing found so far suggested a non-terrestrial origin. He played two clips: flashing triangles later explained as light passing through night-vision goggles, and a bright, rounded object zipping past a fighter jet that remains unexplained. Moultrie told the panel: "We want to know what's out there as much as you want to know what's out there."

On April 19, 2023, AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick testified to the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats, chaired by Kirsten Gillibrand. He said his office was handling 650 reports and had found "no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics." He showed an unresolved 2022 video of a small metallic orb over the Middle East.

The most famous hearing came on July 26, 2023, before the House Oversight subcommittee on national security. Former intelligence officer David Grusch testified that in the course of his official duties he had been told of a multi-decade program to retrieve and reverse-engineer crashed craft, one he was denied access to. Asked whether the US has such craft, he answered "Absolutely, based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over 4 years," and said that "biologics came with some of these recoveries." He had not seen them himself and showed no evidence in public.

Two pilots testified alongside him: David Fravor, who called the 2004 "Tic Tac" "far superior to anything that we had," and Ryan Graves, who described an object off Virginia Beach in 2014 that looked like "a dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere." The Pentagon denied Grusch's claims. In January 2024 committee members got a closed briefing from the intelligence community's inspector general and came out divided, and in March 2024 AARO reported it had found no evidence of such a program.

On November 13, 2024, two House Oversight subcommittees chaired by Nancy Mace and Glenn Grothman held "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth." Former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo testified that advanced technologies not made by any government "are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe" and that "the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries."

Journalist Michael Shellenberger submitted a whistleblower document describing a program called Immaculate Constellation, which he said documents UAP; a Pentagon spokesperson said the department had no record, present or historical, of any such program, and in January 2026 the Department of War answered a records request by saying the subject "does not exist." Retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet said an email carrying a UFO video he received in 2015 vanished from every recipient's inbox the next day. Former NASA official Michael Gold urged Congress to fight the stigma and give NASA a bigger role.

Six days later, on November 19, 2024, new AARO director Jon Kosloski testified in the Senate. He walked through solved cases such as the Go Fast video, but also said: "We do have some very anomalous objects." AARO's annual report, released that week, said it had found no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology.

On September 9, 2025, the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Anna Paulina Luna, held "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection." Witnesses were journalist George Knapp; Navy Senior Chief Alexandro Wiggins, who described a glowing object rising from the ocean near the USS Jackson in 2023; and Air Force veterans Jeffrey Nuccetelli, who described huge objects near launches at Vandenberg, and Dylan Borland, who said his career was obstructed after he reported a sighting.

The moment people remember came from Rep. Eric Burlison. He played a video he said an MQ-9 drone recorded off Yemen on October 30, 2024, in which a Hellfire missile strikes a glowing orb that keeps going. Burlison didn't say how he obtained it and said he wouldn't speculate about what it was. As far as we can find, the Pentagon has not published an analysis of the clip.

So far in 2026 there has been no public UFO hearing. The action moved to the Pentagon: since President Trump ordered the UFO files released in February, seven batches have appeared on war.gov/UFO, all collected on our official files page. On April 1, 2026, Luna asked the Department of War for UAP videos she says AARO holds, writing that AARO's answers to the task force had been "less than adequate."

A hearing planned for September 2026 was dropped. Oversight chairman James Comer said in a mid-September interview that he wants to try again in November, after the elections, and admitted no topic or witnesses had been agreed. Meanwhile the UAP Disclosure Act is being negotiated as part of the defense bill, which is usually signed in December.

The hearings put pilots' and service members' accounts on the record, pressed the Pentagon on secrecy and fed legislation such as the National Archives' UAP records collection, created by the defense bill signed in December 2023. What they did not produce is proof. None of the evidence claimed to exist, whether craft, bodies or secret programs, has been shown in public, and AARO and NASA say they have found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology. The full picture is in our status tracker.

Hearings are usually announced a few days ahead on the committee's website, and most start in the morning, Washington time.