On July 26, 2023, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held what would become the most-watched UAP hearing in history. Under the title "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency," three witnesses delivered testimony that fundamentally shifted the UAP debate from fringe curiosity to mainstream national security concern.
The Witnesses
David Grusch
David Charles Grusch, a former Air Force Major and GS-15 intelligence officer who served as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's co-lead on UAP analysis, was the star witness. In his opening statement, Grusch testified under oath that the United States government is in possession of "vehicles of non-human origin" and has been operating a multi-decade crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program that Congress has been kept in the dark about.
"My testimony is based on information I have been given by individuals with a longstanding track record of legitimacy and service to this country — many of whom also shared compelling evidence in the form of photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony," Grusch told the committee. "I have taken every step I can to corroborate this evidence over a period of four years."
Grusch's 14-year intelligence career included service as the National Reconnaissance Office's representative to the UAP Task Force, giving him access to deeply classified channels. He filed a PPD-19 urgent concern complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General — the same process used by other IC whistleblowers — after what he described as "concerning reports from multiple esteemed and credentialed current and former military and Intelligence Community individuals."
Commander David Fravor (Ret.)
Retired Navy Commander David Fravor provided the hearing's most vivid firsthand account: the 2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter. Fravor, then commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41, described a day of training that turned into "real-world tasking" when the USS Princeton began tracking objects descending from above 80,000 feet — what he noted is "space."
"We arrived at the location at approximately 20,000 feet," Fravor testified. "We looked down and saw a white Tic Tac object with a longitudinal axis pointing north-south and moving very abruptly over the water like a ping pong ball. There were no rotors, no rotor wash, or any sign of visible control surfaces like wings."
Fravor described how the object immediately sensed his aircraft's presence: "The object suddenly shifted its longitudinal axis, aligned it with my aircraft, and began to climb. As we pulled nose onto the object within about half a mile of it, it rapidly accelerated in front of us and disappeared." The whitewater below, which had marked the object's position, vanished at the same instant.
Ryan Graves
Lieutenant Ryan Graves, a former Navy F-18 pilot and executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, represented the broader pilot community. He testified that UAP encounters were "an open secret" among military aviators and that "more will share their experiences once it is safe to do so." Graves emphasized the flight safety implications, noting that UAPs were being observed "in our airspace and oceans" with alarming frequency.
Congressional Dynamics
The hearing drew an unusual bipartisan turnout. While Chairman Glenn Grothman presided, the room was packed with members including Representatives Anna Paulina Luna, Eric Burlison, Matt Gaetz, Tim Burchett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — all waived onto the subcommittee specifically to participate. Bipartisan interest in the topic was on full display.
Burchett submitted a statement for the record from investigative journalist George Knapp, who would later testify in person at the 2025 hearing. Jeremy Corbell's "The UAP Puzzle" report was also entered into the record alongside a Defense Intelligence Reference Document on advanced space propulsion.
Significance and Legacy
The July 2023 hearing broke the stigma in a way no previous congressional discussion had. Grusch's testimony, given under oath, that the U.S. government possesses "non-human" technology was unprecedented. While the Pentagon's AARO would later release a report in 2024 finding "no verifiable evidence" of such programs, Grusch's allegations — combined with Fravor's eyewitness account and Graves' pilot safety concerns — created a political momentum that could not be rolled back.
This hearing directly led to the creation of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets under Rep. Luna, the establishment of the UAP Disclosure Act, and subsequent hearings in 2024 and 2025. It was the moment Congress stopped asking whether UAPs are real and started asking what the government knows.