NEWSWEEK
The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) this week, featuring testimony from three witnesses who claim to have had repeated inexplicable encounters.
The hearing will be held in front of the House Oversight subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs and is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. EST Wednesday. The public is welcomed to watch through a livestream link.
The term UAP encompasses not only unidentified flying objects (UFOs) but also refers to any phenomena that is seen in space or under the water that witnesses cannot explain. Lawmakers have identified the three witnesses to testify this week as David Fravor, an ex-Navy commander, David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence officer, and Ryan Graves, a former fighter pilot for the Navy. All three men have previously shared their experiences of encountering UAP while on the job.
Questions surrounding UAP have served as a point of compromise in a heavily divided Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans have expressed support for the Department of Defense (DoD) to be more transparent on encounters with unexplained phenomena. According to Representative Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee who has been co-leading the House’s current investigation on UAP, lawmakers have been repeatedly met with “pushback” while trying to uncover more information.
“There are a lot of people who don’t want this to come to light,” Burchett added during a press conference last week.
Other lawmakers on the panel investigating UAP knowledge include Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican who is co-leading with Burchett, and California Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz.
“Taxpayers are paying for programs that are keeping this information secret,” Moskowitz said during the briefing last week. “They have a right to know where their dollars are going.”
The DoD has taken recent steps to establish the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which is tasked with reviewing cases of reported UAP. But according to Graves, who spoke with Newsweek over email last week, military and commercial air crew members are often met with “a sense of stigma” for coming forward about such cases.
“Congress needs to hear that military aircrew and civilian pilots are routinely observing mysterious objects making inexplicable maneuvers in our sky,” Graves told Newsweek. “I hope they gain a sense of the stigma I experienced coming forward and the frustration that commercial pilots experience that there is no way to report UAP to the government.”
The Pentagon has yet to speak publicly about Wednesday’s hearing. Newsweek has reached out to the DoD via email for comment.
