Since 1989, individuals have alleged the U.S. government has recovered UAP materials and is attempting to reverse engineer them. The claims remain unverified.
On July 26, 2023, former intelligence officer David Grusch testified under oath before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability that he had been informed of “a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program” to which he was denied access. Grusch, who served as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s representative to the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force from 2019 to 2021, alleged that the U.S. government has recovered technology and “non-human biologics” from crash sites and is attempting to reverse engineer them. His claims, delivered alongside two Navy veterans who described their own encounters with UAP, drew bipartisan attention and led to new legislative provisions.
David Grusch’s opening statement at the July 26, 2023 House hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, where he alleged a multi-decade crash retrieval and reverse engineering program.
TL;DR: Multiple individuals, dating back to 1989, have alleged that the U.S. government has recovered materials from unidentified aerial phenomena and is attempting reverse engineering on them. In 2023, a former intelligence officer named David Grusch testified under oath before Congress that he was informed of a multi-decade crash retrieval program. In March 2024, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office concluded in its Historical Record Report that it found no evidence of such programs and attributed the claims to “circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case.” The allegations remain disputed, with no publicly available physical evidence supporting either position. Sources linked below.
Timeline
November 1989: Bob Lazar appears on Las Vegas television station KLAS, claiming he worked at a facility called S-4 near Area 51, where he says the U.S. government was attempting reverse engineering on nine alien spacecraft.
April 2002: Astrophysicist Eric Davis meets with Rear Admiral Thomas Wilson, then Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Davis later writes notes describing Wilson’s claim that he was denied access to a UAP reverse engineering program managed by a private aerospace contractor.
April 2019: The Wilson-Davis memo is leaked online. The document, whose authenticity has not been officially confirmed, describes Wilson’s alleged 2002 meeting with Davis.
May 2022: David Grusch files a complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General, alleging that classified information about UAP retrieval and reverse-engineering programs has been illegally withheld from Congress.
May 17, 2022: Representative Mike Gallagher enters the Wilson-Davis memo into the Congressional Record during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on UAP.
July 26, 2023: Grusch testifies under oath before the House Oversight Committee that he was informed of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program and that “non-human biologics” had been recovered. He tells the committee he knows the “exact locations” of stored materials and provided those locations to the intelligence community inspector general.
March 8, 2024: AARO releases its Historical Record Report Volume 1, concluding it found no evidence that any U.S. government investigation had confirmed claims of reverse-engineering programs and assessing the claims as “circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case.”
December 2024: The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 includes the UAP Disclosure Act as a stripped-down amendment, requiring agencies to identify and preserve UAP records but omitting the Review Board and eminent domain provisions from the original Senate version.
September 9, 2025: The House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets holds its first UAP hearing. Active-duty Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins testifies publicly about a 2023 UAP encounter on the USS Jackson. Representative Burlison shows previously unreleased MQ-9 drone footage of a Hellfire missile striking an orb off the coast of Yemen on October 30, 2024, with no visible effect.
The UAP Reverse Engineering Claims: Grusch’s Testimony
David Grusch served in the U.S. Air Force and later as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s representative to the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force from 2019 to 2021. In that role, he said, he was briefed on the existence of a UAP reverse engineering program by officials with direct knowledge. According to his testimony, reported by CBS News, Grusch said the U.S. is in possession of vehicles of non-human origin and that the government has been recovering such craft “for decades.”
Grusch told the committee under oath: “I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program, to which I was denied access.” When asked by Representative Jared Moskowitz whether he had met people with direct knowledge of non-human-origin craft, Grusch said yes. He also alleged that “non-human biologics” had been recovered from crash sites, a claim he attributed to individuals with direct knowledge of the program, as NPR reported.
Grusch provided classified details about specific programs, locations, and individuals to the intelligence community inspector general and to congressional intelligence committees. The classified nature of these disclosures means the public cannot independently verify the specific claims. Grusch has stated that he has not personally seen recovered craft or materials but was told about them by current and former government officials he described as credible.
The Bob Lazar Story (1989)
The earliest public claim about reverse engineering comes from Bob Lazar, who appeared on Las Vegas television station KLAS in November 1989. Lazar claimed he had been hired to work at a facility called S-4, located near Papoose Lake south of Area 51 in Nevada. He said his job was to assist with reverse engineering the propulsion system of one of nine alien spacecraft stored in underground hangars.
Lazar described the craft as saucer-shaped, manufactured from a metallic substance, and powered by an antimatter reactor using a stable isotope of element 115, which he called “moscovium.” Element 115 was not synthesized in a laboratory until 2003, when Russian and American scientists created a few atoms of moscovium, an unstable element with a half-life of less than a second. Whether this coincidence is significant remains disputed.
Lazar’s claims have been extensively investigated. Skeptics, including journalist HowStuffWorks, have noted that Lazar’s educational background does not match his claims. He has said he holds degrees from MIT and Caltech, but neither institution has confirmed his attendance. Lazar has countered that his records were erased by the government. No physical evidence from S-4 has been produced. Lazar remains a polarizing figure: supporters point to details in his account that match later government disclosures, while critics point to the unverifiable nature of his core claims.
The Wilson-Davis Memo
In April 2002, Rear Admiral Thomas Wilson, then Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, met with physicist Eric Davis to discuss allegations of a UAP reverse-engineering program. According to notes allegedly typed by Davis after the meeting, Wilson told Davis that he had found a program managed by a private aerospace contractor that was attempting reverse engineering on recovered UAP materials. Wilson said he was denied access to the program by a “watch committee” that controlled oversight of the classified effort.
The notes, known as the Wilson-Davis memo, were leaked online in April 2019. Their authenticity has not been officially confirmed. Wilson has publicly denied the events described in the memo. Davis has not directly confirmed or denied writing the notes but has made statements that some observers interpret as confirmation. In May 2022, Representative Mike Gallagher entered the memo into the Congressional Record during a House Intelligence Subcommittee hearing, making it an official government document.
The memo is significant because, if authentic, it would be the first documented account of a senior intelligence official being denied access to a reverse engineering program related to recovered UAP materials. However, it remains a secondhand account with no independent corroboration.
AARO’s Official Response
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office released its Historical Record Report Volume 1 on March 8, 2024. The report reviewed over 7,000 files from Project Blue Book and other historical investigations. On the specific question of reverse-engineering programs, AARO stated: “AARO assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part, the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.”
The report concluded that no U.S. government investigation had confirmed the existence of UAP reverse engineering programs. It reviewed programs alleged to involve UAP reverse engineering or exploitation and found that none of the individuals interviewed had first-hand knowledge of such programs. The full report is available from the Department of Defense.
Critics of the AARO report, including members of Congress who have supported Grusch’s claims, have argued that AARO did not have access to the most sensitive compartmented programs and therefore could not fully investigate. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand questioned AARO Director Jon Kosloski during a November 2024 Senate hearing about whether the office had accessed all relevant programs.
Legislative Response
The claims made by Grusch and others have had direct legislative consequences. Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds co-authored the UAP Disclosure Act, modeled on the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act, which would have established a review board with eminent domain authority over UAP-related records. The Senate passed the full version as part of the FY2024 NDAA, but the House stripped the review board and eminent domain provisions before the final bill was signed on December 22, 2023.
A revised version of the UAP Disclosure Act, designed in part to address reverse engineering secrecy concerns, was introduced by Representative Eric Burlison in 2025, with $20 million in FY2026 funding. The FY2025 NDAA included additional UAP-related reporting requirements, reflecting continued bipartisan interest in the issue. These legislative efforts are driven in part by the reverse-engineering allegations: if the government is conducting reverse engineering on recovered materials, proponents argue, Congress has a right to know.
What Technology Could Be Involved in Reverse Engineering
Claims about reverse-engineered technology typically center on propulsion systems. Witnesses and whistleblowers have described objects that appear to move without visible propulsion, accelerate instantaneously, and transition between air and water without observable effects on the surrounding medium. Commander David Fravor, who encountered the Tic Tac object in 2004, described a vehicle with no wings, no exhaust, and no visible means of propulsion that outperformed his F/A-18 fighter jet.
Proponents argue that understanding such technology would require fundamental breakthroughs in physics. Skeptics note that no publicly available evidence demonstrates that any recovered materials exhibit characteristics beyond known technology. A 2025 paper published on arXiv argued that reverse-engineering UAP technology would be computationally intractable under classical paradigms, given the limited observational data available.
The Official Record
The reverse engineering claims have been reviewed by multiple government investigations. The record shows a split between the Pentagon’s published assessment and congressional concerns about the completeness of that assessment.
AARO’s Investigation and Findings
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office released its Historical Record Report Volume 1 on March 8, 2024, after reviewing over 7,000 files from Project Blue Book and other historical investigations. The full report is available from the Department of Defense.
On the specific question of reverse engineering programs, AARO stated: “AARO assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part, the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.” The Pentagon’s official press release titled the findings as “DOD Report Discounts Sightings of Extraterrestrial Technology.”
The report concluded that no U.S. government investigation had confirmed the existence of UAP reverse engineering programs. It reviewed programs alleged to involve UAP exploitation and found that none of the individuals interviewed had first-hand knowledge of such programs. Former AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick, writing in Scientific American in January 2024 after retiring from the office, stated that he had found no evidence of aliens as director and that the allegations of a reverse engineering coverup “derive from inadvertent or unauthorized disclosures of legitimate U.S. programs” that are being misinterpreted. Kirkpatrick also said, in a July 2023 LinkedIn post, that Grusch “has refused to speak with AARO” and that some details given to Congress had not been provided to his office.
Several specific objections have been raised against the reverse engineering claims. First, Grusch’s testimony is based on second-hand accounts: he has stated he has not personally seen recovered craft or materials. Second, the Wilson-Davis memo has never been officially authenticated, and Admiral Wilson has denied its contents. Third, Bob Lazar’s educational credentials have not been verified by the institutions he claims to have attended. Fourth, no physical evidence has been presented publicly for independent analysis.
Mick West, a skeptical researcher who runs Metabunk, has argued that the pattern of reverse engineering claims follows a familiar structure: a small group of individuals cite each other’s accounts as evidence, creating a self-reinforcing narrative without independent verification. West has noted that the extraordinary nature of the claims requires extraordinary evidence, and no such evidence has been produced.
What Has Been Raised in Response
Congressional members, whistleblowers, and independent researchers have raised specific concerns about AARO’s investigation and the broader official record. These concerns are documented in official testimony, FOIA releases, and congressional proceedings.
AARO’s scope. FOIA emails obtained by The Black Vault in August 2025 confirmed that AARO never interviewed David Grusch or Luis Elizondo for the Historical Record Report. During a March 2024 press briefing, reporters asked AARO Director Timothy Phillips directly whether the whistleblowers had been interviewed; he did not confirm that they had. Former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo has stated that AARO lacks the authority to compel testimony from individuals working in compartmented programs, rendering its public reports “incomplete at best.”
The ICIG assessment. The Intelligence Community Inspector General assessed Grusch’s complaint as “credible and urgent” in 2022, a procedural determination that the complaint merited forwarding to Congress. In January 2024, ICIG Thomas Monheim conducted a closed-door session with House members focused on UAP reporting transparency. Grusch’s full opening statement from the July 2023 hearing is available from the House Oversight Committee, and the complete hearing transcript is on Congress.gov.
Continued congressional hearings. On September 9, 2025, the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held its first UAP hearing on whistleblower protection and transparency (official page). Active-duty Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins testified publicly for the first time about an incident aboard the USS Jackson in 2023, describing a self-luminous Tic Tac-shaped object emerging from the ocean and accelerating at near-instantaneous speed, detected on multiple sensors (written statement). Air Force veteran Jeffrey Nuccetelli testified about UAP encounters near Vandenberg Air Force Base between 2003 and 2005 (written testimony). Air Force veteran Dylan Borland alleged that his career was deliberately obstructed after he reported knowledge of legacy UAP programs (written testimony).
During that same hearing, Representative Eric Burlison (R-MO) showed previously unreleased video of an MQ-9 Reaper drone firing a Hellfire missile at a high-speed orb off the coast of Yemen on October 30, 2024. The missile appeared to have no visible effect on the object, which continued moving. The footage was reported by NBC News, ABC News, and Fox News.
Government secrecy patterns. The Black Vault documented that multiple agencies, including the DoD, ODNI, NSA, and CIA, have issued “Glomar” responses to UAP-related FOIA requests, refusing to confirm or deny whether records exist at all. In September 2025, the Office of the Secretary of Defense issued a Glomar response when asked whether aerospace contractors had provided records about UAP, despite prior public statements that firms had cooperated “on the record.” The NSA issued a similar response when asked about Immaculate Constellation emails in January 2026, stating that Glomar responses were its “standard response to all requests where we reasonably believe that the request seeks intelligence records or records revealing intelligence related activity involving UFOs/UAP.”
The New Paradigm Institute, in a detailed May 2025 analysis, argued that AARO’s 2024 report “failed to engage with credible whistleblower allegations” and did not address the substance of Grusch’s claims.
The ODNI’s 2021 Preliminary Assessment on UAP set the baseline for modern government investigation, identifying 144 reports and resolving only one. Researchers like Garry Nolan at Stanford have analyzed alleged UAP materials and found unusual isotopic ratios, though these findings have not been independently replicated or published in peer-reviewed journals with the specific claim that the materials are of non-human origin.
The scientific community has not produced peer-reviewed research confirming the existence of recovered non-human technology. However, advocates argue that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, particularly when the classification system may prevent relevant evidence from becoming public.
CBS News coverage of David Grusch’s July 2023 congressional testimony, including his claim that the U.S. has recovered non-human biological matter.
David Grusch’s complete opening statement at the July 2023 House Oversight Committee hearing on UAP.
Footage of a Hellfire missile striking an unidentified object off the coast of Yemen, shown by Representative Burlison at the September 9, 2025 House Oversight hearing.
Sources
Official Documents
AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1 (PDF): Pentagon’s official investigation into historical UAP programs. Released March 8, 2024. Concludes no evidence of reverse-engineering programs.
Wilson-Davis Memo (Congressional Record): Entered into the record by Representative Mike Gallagher on May 17, 2022. Authenticity not officially confirmed.
Source Links
CBS News: UFO Hearing Key Takeaways: Coverage of the July 26, 2023 congressional hearing.
NPR: Whistleblower Testifies About Non-Human Biologics: Coverage of Grusch’s testimony.
The Guardian: US Conducted Multi-Decade Secret UFO Program: International coverage of the hearing.
The Hill: Pentagon UAP Report Key Takeaways: Analysis of AARO’s Historical Record Report.
House Oversight Committee: Grusch Opening Statement (PDF): David Grusch’s written opening statement before the July 26, 2023 hearing.
Congress.gov: Full Hearing Transcript (PDF): Complete transcript of the July 2023 House Oversight hearing on UAP.
C-SPAN: Full Hearing Video: Complete video of the July 2023 House Oversight hearing.
Department of Defense: AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1 (PDF): The Pentagon’s official review of UAP-related programs from 1945 to 2023.
Department of Defense: Press Release on AARO Report: Pentagon statement on the Historical Record Report findings.
Scientific American: Here’s What I Learned as the U.S. Government’s UFO Hunter: Sean Kirkpatrick’s January 2024 op-ed after retiring as AARO director.
ODNI: Preliminary Assessment on UAP (PDF): June 2021 baseline intelligence assessment, 144 reports examined.
ODNI: 2024 Annual Report on UAP: Consolidated report covering May 2023 through June 2024.
House Oversight Committee: September 2025 UAP Hearing: Official page for the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets hearing.
House Oversight Committee: Nuccetelli Written Testimony (PDF): Air Force veteran’s testimony about UAP encounters near Vandenberg AFB.
House Oversight Committee: Borland Written Testimony (PDF): Air Force veteran’s testimony about alleged retaliation.
House Oversight Committee: Wiggins Written Statement (PDF): Active-duty Navy Senior Chief’s statement about a 2023 USS Jackson encounter.
DocumentCloud: Wilson-Davis Memo: Notes allegedly describing a 2002 meeting between Eric Davis and Admiral Thomas Wilson.
The Black Vault: FOIA Emails Reveal Pentagon’s Tight Control Over AARO Report: Confirms AARO never interviewed Grusch or Elizondo for the Historical Record Report.
The Black Vault: DoD Glomar Response on Aerospace UAP Records: Pentagon refused to confirm or deny contractor UAP records in September 2025.
DefenseScoop: Military Whistleblowers Share New UAP Evidence: Coverage of the September 2025 House Oversight hearing.
NBC News: Video Shows Missile Fired at Object Near Yemen: Burlison’s release of MQ-9 Hellfire video at September 2025 hearing.
New Paradigm Institute: AARO and the 2024 UAP Report Analysis: Detailed criticism of AARO’s failure to engage with whistleblower allegations.
Metabunk: Skeptical analysis of UAP claims by Mick West.
Wikipedia: David Grusch UFO Whistleblower Claims: Comprehensive overview of Grusch’s allegations and responses.
HowStuffWorks: Bob Lazar, UFO Hoaxster: Skeptical analysis of Lazar’s claims.
CBS News: UFO Hearing Takeaways: Coverage of Grusch’s July 2023 testimony.
NPR: Grusch’s Non-Human Biologics Claim: Coverage of the House Oversight hearing.
Related Reading
Congressional UAP Hearing 2024: What witnesses told Congress in the November 2024 hearing.
AARO and the Pentagon UAP Office: The office responsible for investigating UAP claims.