House committee plans to hold hearing on UFOs
WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee will soon hold a hearing on UFOs, a Republican member of the panel told NBC News on Friday.
Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said the GOP-led committee is not ready to publicly announce a hearing date, but added that he expected it to take place “towards the end of the month.”
The lawmaker’s comments came hours after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would create a review board charged with declassifying UFO-related records.
While UFOs are often synonymous with aliens in popular culture, an initial Pentagon report issued in 2021 found no evidence linking the unidentified objects to extraterrestrial life. The Defense Department has received at least 366 new reports of UFOs since March 2021, and about half of them appear to be balloons or drones, according to a 2022 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
About half of the new cases could not be explained and “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis,” the initial Pentagon assessment found.
A classified version of the report was submitted to lawmakers, as mandated by a defense spending bill passed by the last Congress.
Debates over potential sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, often called UAPs or UFOs, have garnered increased attention in recent years, particularly on Capitol Hill.
Burchett said he has spoken with Navy pilots “who have had their careers threatened” after reporting UFO sightings, and said the committee’s hearing will aim to create the conditions for transparency.
“I just want transparency. I just want the truth,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Pentagon declined to comment.
A NASA panel tasked with studying reports of UFOs said at a hearing in May that the stigma associated with reporting UFO sightings — as well as the harassment of people who work to investigate them — may be hindering efforts to determine their origins.
The panel, which was formed last year, presented preliminary findings in May and is expected to publish a final report this summer. Panel members highlighted the need for more high-quality data to properly investigate unusual sightings.
Daniel Evans, the assistant deputy associate administrator for research in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said there has been no convincing evidence that reports of UFOs have anything to do with aliens. While extraterrestrial origins are not being ruled out, the independent group was convened to address broader national security concerns, he said in a May news briefing.
“There could potentially be very serious risks to U.S. airspace as a result of us not necessarily knowing what is in our skies at a given time,” Evans said.
Denise Chow, Dan De Luce and Frank Thorp V contributed.
