• DOCUMENTED Both texts are public, complete, and machine-readable. Unlike almost every other topic on this site, nothing here requires trusting anyone's recollection. The Senate version is S. 2226, 118th Congress, as engrossed in the Senate 27 July 2023, Division G — "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure," §§ 9001–9015. The enacted version is Public Law 118-31 (H.R. 2670), National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, signed 22 December 2023, Division A, Title XVIII, Subtitle C — "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena," §§ 1841–1843, 137 Stat. 699–706.
• DOCUMENTED Fifteen sections became three. The Senate division ran §§ 9001–9015. The enacted subtitle runs §§ 1841–1843 and is roughly 25,000 characters of statutory text. The strings "Review Board" and "eminent domain" appear zero times in the enacted subtitle.
• DOCUMENTED The Senate never took a standalone recorded vote on the UAP language. Senate roll call votes on S. 2226 (118th Cong., 1st Sess., votes #188–#212) include no vote on the UAP Disclosure Act as a separate amendment. It rode inside the bill, which passed 86–11 on 27 July 2023 (Roll Call Vote #212). A reader who says "the Senate voted 86–11 for UFO disclosure" is overstating what that number measures — it was a vote on the entire annual defense authorization bill.

S. 2226 (118th), engrossed-in-Senate text, GPO/govinfo package BILLS-118s2226es. Public Law 118-31, govinfo package PLAW-118publ31. U.S. Senate, Roll Call Votes 118th Congress 1st Session, senate.gov. Roll Call Vote #212.

• DOCUMENTED Short title and architecture. § 9001: "This division may be cited as the 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2023' or the 'UAP Disclosure Act of 2023'." The structure — a Collection at the National Archives, mandatory identification aids, enumerated grounds for postponement, and an independent review board empowered to override agency withholding — is lifted directly from the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (Pub. L. 102-526). Both are codified as notes to 44 U.S.C. § 2107.
• DOCUMENTED A findings section that Congress would have enacted as law. § 9002(a) declared, among other things, that "credible evidence and testimony indicates that Federal Government unidentified anomalous phenomena records exist that have not been declassified or subject to mandatory declassification review," attributing this in part to "exemptions under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954" and "an over-broad interpretation of 'transclassified foreign nuclear information'." Read carefully: this is a finding about the existence of withheld records, not a finding that non-human craft exist.
• DOCUMENTED Definitions that would have put startling terms into the US Code. § 9003 defined "non-human intelligence" as "any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform regardless of nature or ultimate origin"; "technologies of unknown origin" as materials, meta-materials, crash debris, "damaged or intact aerospace vehicles" and undersea craft "that lacks prosaic attribution or known means of human manufacture"; and "legacy program" as government, commercial, academic and private-sector efforts "to collect, exploit, or reverse engineer technologies of unknown origin or examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence" predating enactment. Defining a term is not evidence the thing exists — legislatures routinely define contingencies.
• DOCUMENTED A nine-member independent Review Board. § 9007 established the UAP Records Review Board "as an independent agency," with nine members appointed by the President with Senate advice and consent, nominated after considering recommendations from congressional leadership, the Secretary of Defense, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Historical Association, and "established nonprofit research organizations relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena." Required composition included at least one national security official, one foreign service official, one scientist or engineer, one economist, one historian, and one sociologist. Members could be removed only by impeachment or for cause.
• DOCUMENTED Subpoena power and compelled testimony. § 9007(i) gave the Board authority to direct agencies to transmit records, to "hold hearings, administer oaths, and subpoena witnesses and documents," to "require any Government office to account in writing for the destruction of any records," and to request the Attorney General to subpoena private persons. § 9007(j) made the Board an "agency of the United States" for purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 6001 — i.e. it could grant witness immunity.
• DOCUMENTED Eminent domain. § 9010(a), in full: "The Federal Government shall exercise eminent domain over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities in the interests of the public good." § 9010(b) added the conditional "should it exist." § 9010(c) required the Board to decide "whether the material examined constitutes technologies of unknown origin or biological evidence of non-human intelligence beyond a reasonable doubt."
• DOCUMENTED Money and an end date. § 9014 authorized $20,000,000 for fiscal year 2024. § 9013 kept the non-Board provisions in force until the Archivist certified to the President and Congress that all UAP records had been made public.

S. 2226, 118th Cong., engrossed in Senate 27 July 2023, Division G §§ 9001–9015. Full text at govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-118s2226es. Cited within: the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (Pub. L. 102-526, 106 Stat. 3443); 44 U.S.C. § 2107 and its statutory notes; the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. ch. 23); 18 U.S.C. § 6001.

• DOCUMENTED § 1841 — the Collection. Directed the Archivist, within 60 days of enactment, to "commence establishment" of the "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection" at the National Archives, consisting of "record copies of all Government, Government-provided, or Government-funded records relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence." Records transmitted for public disclosure must be available for inspection at NARA within 30 days of transmission and online "within a reasonable amount of time not to exceed 180 days thereafter." Note the statutory note designation: 44 U.S.C. 2107 note — the same slot as the JFK Records Act.
• DOCUMENTED § 1842 — agency review, with a hard deadline and three prohibitions. Each Government office head had 300 days from enactment to review, identify and organize its UAP records. Three flat bans: no UAP record "shall be destroyed, altered, or mutilated in any way"; no record already publicly released may be "withheld, redacted, postponed for public disclosure, or reclassified"; and records created by non-federal persons may not be withheld or reclassified (names excepted).
• DOCUMENTED § 1842(g)(2)(D) — the 25-year clock did survive. "Each unidentified anomalous phenomena record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection, not later than the date that is 25 years after the date of the first creation of the record by the originating body, unless the President certifies" that continued postponement is necessary because of identifiable harm outweighing the public interest. This is the strongest surviving mechanism in the law and it is routinely omitted from summaries on both sides of the debate.
• DOCUMENTED § 1843 — postponement, decided by the withholding agency itself. "In addition to the relevant authorities in Executive Order 13526, disclosure … may be postponed … if the original classification authority makes a determination that there is clear and convincing evidence" of one of four harms (intelligence agent identity; current source or method; other national-security impairment; Privacy Act; unwarranted invasion of privacy; breach of a confidentiality understanding). The Senate version applied the same "clear and convincing evidence" standard — but under § 9006 the Review Board applied it. Same words, opposite institution.
• DOCUMENTED § 1843(b) — an exit hatch added in conference. "Senior Agency Officials designated in accordance with Executive Order 13526 … may withdraw records in the Collection that are determined to be both not related to unidentified anomalous phenomena and properly classified," with notice to congressional leadership 60 days before withdrawal. The Senate bill had no equivalent unilateral withdrawal power.
• DOCUMENTED § 1841(e) and § 1843(c) — the only real enforcement is congressional notification. Six committees hold "continuing legislative oversight jurisdiction"; agencies postponing disclosure must notify leadership and those committees within 15 days with a reason. There is no board, no court remedy created, and no penalty specified for non-compliance.

Public Law 118-31, Division A, Title XVIII, Subtitle C, §§ 1841–1843, 137 Stat. 699–706 (22 Dec. 2023). Postponement grounds layered on Executive Order 13526, Classified National Security Information.

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Comparison performed against the full texts of S. 2226 (engrossed in Senate) and Public Law 118-31. Both are freely downloadable from govinfo.gov.

• DOCUMENTED § 1687 — the unreported-programs funding bar (DoD). "None of the funds … may be obligated or expended in support of any activities involving unidentified anomalous phenomena protected under any form of special access or restricted access limitations unless the Secretary of Defense has provided the details of the activity to the appropriate congressional committees and congressional leadership." Subsection (b) additionally bars UAP-related independent research and development costs from being allowable as indirect expenses on covered contracts unless disclosed to Congress. 137 Stat. 621–622.
• DOCUMENTED § 7343 — the same bar on the intelligence side. Division G (Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2024) imposes the parallel prohibition, with the Director of National Intelligence as the briefing officer. 137 Stat. 1063–1064.
• DOCUMENTED § 7341 — reporting moved to AARO. Amended 50 U.S.C. § 3373(k)(1) to shift the annual UAP report from a joint DNI/SecDef product to one produced by the Director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
• DISPUTED What the funding bars prove. Proponents of the recovered-craft hypothesis read §§ 1687 and 7343 as Congress quietly acknowledging that unreported special-access UAP programs might exist. Skeptics read them as boilerplate oversight language of a kind Congress attaches to many subjects, costing nothing and asserting nothing. The statutory text supports neither reading: it conditions funding on disclosure to Congress without stating that any such program exists. No public finding by any committee has confirmed one.

Public Law 118-31, §§ 1687, 7341, 7343. Statute amended by § 7341: 50 U.S.C. § 3373, Establishment of All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

• DOCUMENTED The Department of Defense circulated a rewrite before conference concluded. The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security produced a redline of the Senate-passed UAP Disclosure Act in late November 2023 and provided it to congressional negotiators. It sought removal of the independent Review Board and softened mandatory language to discretionary — reportedly changing "shall exercise" to "should exercise appropriately" in the eminent domain section.
• TESTIMONY AARO's then-director characterized the Board as duplicative. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office until December 2023, has stated that his office was "allowed to write our thoughts" into the NDAA reclama process, that the proposed Review Board duplicated AARO's existing mission, and that the eminent domain concept was a "just in case" response to claims that contractors held exotic material. These are his characterizations of his own office's position; note that AARO was the institution whose authority an independent board would have overlapped, and that Kirkpatrick has since been a public commentator on the subject.
• UNSUPPORTED Named individual "blockers." Various accounts name specific House committee chairs as having personally killed the provisions. No conference report language, committee statement, or roll call attributes the deletions to any named member. Conference negotiations on the NDAA are not transcribed. Anyone asserting a specific person made a specific cut is going beyond the documentary record — including when the assertion comes from proponents of disclosure.
• DOCUMENTED The sponsors' own position is on the record in the strongest possible form: they refiled it. Senators Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) submitted the UAP Disclosure Act again as Senate Amendment 2610 to S. 4638, the FY2025 NDAA, on 11 July 2024, retaining the Review Board and eminent domain language. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) joined as cosponsors in July and August 2024. The amendment was not adopted.
• UNSUPPORTED A caution about quotes. Numerous specific floor-statement quotations attributed to individual senators about the stripping circulate online. We were unable to verify individual quotations against the Congressional Record during preparation of this section and therefore do not reproduce them. Readers wanting sponsor positions should read § 9002 of S. 2226 — findings the Senate actually adopted — rather than paraphrases.

S.Amdt. 2610 to S. 4638, 118th Cong., filed 11 July 2024 (text as printed in the Congressional Record, 11 July 2024, pp. S4943–S4950). Reporting on the November 2023 OUSD(I&S) redline and Kirkpatrick's statements: Douglas Dean Johnson, "The UAP Disclosure Act: The proposed Pentagon/AARO re-write of November 2023," Mirador, 24 July 2024 — an independent, reader-funded legislative-research site and a secondary source; the underlying redline document is the primary record. On the refiling: Johnson, "Senators Rounds and Schumer submit UAP Disclosure Act as possible amendment to NDAA", July 2024.

• DOCUMENTED FY2025 NDAA: two thin provisions, no records board. Public Law 118-159, Title LXVIII ("Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena") contains exactly two sections. § 6801 requires the Comptroller General to review AARO's implementation of 50 U.S.C. § 3373 and report to the intelligence and defense committees. § 6802 sunsets the audit requirements attached to the UAP Historical Record Report. Nothing about the Collection, the Review Board, or eminent domain.
• DOCUMENTED FY2026 NDAA: the Senate-passed text again contains UAP language, again narrow. S. 2296 as engrossed in the Senate carries § 1555, amending 50 U.S.C. § 3373(l) to require that AARO's periodic briefings include "details on any unidentified anomalous phenomena intercepts conducted by the North American Aerospace Defense Command or United States Northern Command" — with the first such briefing reaching back to 1 January 2004 — and § 1556, requiring AARO to issue a "consolidated security classification guidance matrix" for UAP-related programs within 180 days, explicitly so that personnel "have adequate understanding of the constraints they would be under when reporting or discussing such event." The House-passed companion, H.R. 3838, contains no UAP provisions at all.
• UNSUPPORTED Final FY2026 status. At the time of writing we could not locate a published Public Law text for the FY2026 NDAA in the GPO's PLAW collection, and therefore cannot state which of §§ 1555–1556 survived conference. Treat any claim about the final FY2026 UAP language — in either direction — as unverified until the enrolled text is published. The pattern since 2023 is that Senate UAP provisions shrink or vanish in conference; that is a pattern, not a prediction.
• DOCUMENTED The cumulative record. Across FY2023, FY2024, FY2025 and the FY2026 Senate text, every enacted UAP provision has been one of three types: create or fund a reporting office (AARO), require briefings and reports to Congress, or move records to the Archives. None has created an independent adjudicator, none has compelled production of physical material, and none has been backed by a dedicated appropriation.

Public Law 118-159, Title LXVIII §§ 6801–6802. S. 2296, 119th Cong., engrossed in Senate, §§ 1555–1556; H.R. 3838, 119th Cong., engrossed in House. All via govinfo.gov.

• DOCUMENTED It exists, it is Record Group 615, and it is online. NARA established the collection under §§ 1841–1843 and issued guidance to agencies on 8 May 2024 setting the statutory review deadline at 20 October 2024. Records are accessioned into Record Group 615, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection," and published through the National Archives Catalog "on an ongoing, rolling basis."
• DOCUMENTED First public release: 24 April 2025. NARA press release NR25-07 announced records transferred by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
• DOCUMENTED Current scale, as measured directly from the NARA Catalog. Record Group 615 contains 683 catalog descriptions: 1 record-group description, 7 series, and 675 item-level descriptions, of which 675 are available online (675 PDF objects and 2 MP4 video files). Seven federal bodies have contributed series.
• DOCUMENTED Agencies are invoking § 1843 in the catalog itself. Restricted items carry machine-readable access notes such as "UAP Records Collection Postponement Code 1843(a)(1)(A)," "1843(a)(1)(C)" and "1843(a)(3)" — the statutory grounds for intelligence sources and methods, national-security impairment, and unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Some items appear in the catalog three times over: an unredacted restricted version, a redacted version, and a released version.
• DOCUMENTED The contents are mostly what a FOIA reader would expect. Item titles in the collection include FBI Form FD-302s and Guardian case files, State Department cables from Ashgabat, Port Moresby, Islamabad, Buenos Aires and Tunis dating to 1969–1985, the 1995 USAF fact sheet on Project Blue Book, AARO case-resolution cards for the Pensacola and Puerto Rico incidents, an analysis titled "Effect of Forced Perspective and Parallax View on UAP Observations," and the FY2023 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP.

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• DOCUMENTED Who is missing. As of this writing, no series in Record Group 615 has been contributed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, or NASA. § 1842 applied to "each head of a Government office," not to a list of seven.
• DISPUTED What the thin holdings mean. One reading: agencies are slow-rolling a statute with no enforcement mechanism, no appropriation, and no adjudicator — exactly the failure mode the deleted Review Board was designed to prevent. The competing reading: the collection is small because the underlying body of genuinely UAP-specific federal records is small, and the seven contributing bodies are simply the ones that finished first. Both readings are consistent with 675 items; neither has been established. What is not in dispute is that the statute contains no penalty for an agency that transmits nothing.

National Archives, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Records" (archives.gov/research/topics/uaps); NARA press release NR25-07, 24 April 2025; NARA, "Guidance on UAP Records" (archives.gov/records-mgmt/uap-guidance), 8 May 2024. Holdings figures queried directly from the National Archives Catalog, Record Group 615; see also the RG 615 digitisation status page, the UAP Records Collection FAQ, the UAP bulk-download metadata packages, and NARA memorandum AC 04.2025 setting the 30 September 2025 transfer deadline. Project Blue Book holdings: National Archives, "Project BLUE BOOK — Unidentified Flying Objects".

• DOCUMENTED The law's central scope terms are undefined. § 1841(a)(1)(C) requires the Collection to hold records "relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence." Because the Senate's § 9003 was deleted, only the first of those three terms is defined anywhere in the statute (by cross-reference to 50 U.S.C. § 3373). "Technologies of unknown origin" and "non-human intelligence" appear in the enacted subtitle with no definition at all — leaving each agency to decide for itself what those words cover.
• DOCUMENTED A wrong internal citation. § 1841(a)(1)(A) defines UAP by reference to "section 1673(n)(8) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 (Public Law 117-81; 50 U.S.C. 3373)." The correct section is 1683, not 1673 — as § 1687 and § 7343 of the very same public law both correctly state, and as the U.S. Code source credit for 50 U.S.C. § 3373 confirms ("Pub. L. 117-81, div. A, title XVI, § 1683"). The paragraph reference (n)(8) is right; the section number is a typo in the statute as enacted.
• DOCUMENTED A circular funding reference. § 1841(d)(1) requires the Collection to be preserved, digitised and published "using appropriations authorized, specified, and restricted for use under the terms of this subtitle." The subtitle authorizes no appropriations — the Senate's $20 million (§ 9014) was deleted. NARA received a mandate pointing at a funding source that the same subtitle failed to create.
• DOCUMENTED A stray typographical error. The enacted § 1842(g) contains the paragraph marker ".(2) Requirements" and the heading "desclassification." Trivial in effect, but a useful marker of how the subtitle was assembled — this is conference-committee text, cut down under deadline, not carefully redrafted law.

Public Law 118-31 §§ 1841–1843 as printed at 137 Stat. 699–706; 50 U.S.C. § 3373 source credit, Office of the Law Revision Counsel; the correctly numbered enacting provision, Public Law 117-81 § 1683.

• S. 2226, 118th Congress — Engrossed in Senate (BILLS-118s2226es) GPO/govinfo, 27 July 2023 · full Senate text, Division G §§ 9001–9015
• Public Law 118-31 — National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (full text) GPO/govinfo, 22 Dec. 2023 · the law as actually enacted
• Public Law 118-31 — PDF with Statutes at Large pagination GPO/govinfo · §§ 1841–1843 at 137 Stat. 699–706
• Senate Roll Call Vote #212, 118th Congress 1st Session — On Passage of S. 2226 U.S. Senate, 27 July 2023 · the 86–11 vote, member by member
• Roll Call Votes, 118th Congress 1st Session (complete list) U.S. Senate · check for yourself: no standalone UAP vote
• S.Amdt. 2610 (UAP Disclosure Act of 2024) — Congressional Record, 11 July 2024, pp. S4943–S4950 GPO/govinfo · Rounds–Schumer refiling, full amendment text
• Public Law 118-159 — FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act GPO/govinfo, 23 Dec. 2024 · contains Title LXVIII §§ 6801–6802
• S. 2296, 119th Congress — Engrossed in Senate (FY2026 NDAA) GPO/govinfo · Senate text carrying §§ 1555–1556
• H.R. 3838, 119th Congress — Engrossed in House (FY2026 NDAA) GPO/govinfo · House companion, no UAP provisions
• Public Law 117-81 — FY2022 NDAA, § 1683 (AARO's enabling section) GPO/govinfo, 27 Dec. 2021 · the section P.L. 118-31 miscites as 1673
• 50 U.S.C. § 3373 — Establishment of All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Office of the Law Revision Counsel · statute text plus source credit
• 44 U.S.C. § 2107 and statutory notes (UAP Collection and JFK Collection) Office of the Law Revision Counsel · both collections codified together
• President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (Pub. L. 102-526, 106 Stat. 3443) GPO/govinfo, 26 Oct. 1992 · the template the UAP bill copied
• 18 U.S.C. § 6001 — Definitions (witness immunity chapter) Office of the Law Revision Counsel · the immunity hook in § 9007(j)
• Atomic Energy Act of 1954 — 42 U.S.C. ch. 23 Office of the Law Revision Counsel · exemption cited in § 9002 findings
• Executive Order 13526 — Classified National Security Information NARA/ISOO, 29 Dec. 2009 · the order § 1843 layers upon
• National Archives — Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Records NARA · entry point to the whole collection
• National Archives — Record Group 615, UAP Records Collection NARA · the seven contributing agencies and their series
• Record Group 615 holdings and digitisation status NARA finding aid · live count of scans available online
• UAP Records Collection — Frequently Asked Questions NARA · scope, access rules, redacted/unredacted policy
• National Archives Catalog — UAP bulk downloads NARA · JSON metadata and zipped record packages
• NARA Guidance on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Records NARA, 8 May 2024 · agency instructions, 20 Oct. 2024 deadline
• NARA Memorandum AC 04.2025 — Transfer of Publicly Releasable UAP Records NARA, 10 Oct. 2024 · sets the 30 Sept. 2025 transfer deadline
• NARA Press Release NR25-07 — National Archives Releases UAP Records NARA, 24 April 2025 · announcement of the first public release
• National Archives — Project BLUE BOOK, Unidentified Flying Objects NARA · the pre-existing USAF case files, outside RG 615
• Douglas Dean Johnson, "The UAP Disclosure Act: The proposed Pentagon/AARO re-write of November 2023" Mirador, 24 July 2024 · secondary source documenting the redline
• Douglas Dean Johnson, "Senators Rounds and Schumer submit UAP Disclosure Act as possible amendment to NDAA" Mirador, July 2024 · secondary source on S.Amdt. 2610
• OUSD(I&S) 33-page redline of the Senate-passed UAP Disclosure Act, November 2023 Primary document · described and quoted in the Mirador report — no stable public URL found for the document itself
• FY2026 NDAA — enrolled bill / Public Law text Not yet published in the GPO PLAW collection · no stable public URL found
• U.S. Air Force fact sheet on Project Blue Book, 1995 (item in RG 615) Item-level catalog record · no stable public URL found
• "Effect of Forced Perspective and Parallax View on UAP Observations" (item in RG 615) Item-level catalog record · no stable public URL found
• AARO case-resolution cards for the Pensacola and Puerto Rico incidents (items in RG 615) Item-level catalog records · no stable public URL found
• FY2023 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (item in RG 615) ODNI · no stable public URL confirmed at time of checking

Links verified August 2026. Unlinked items in this section are ones for which no stable public URL could be confirmed.

Images are public domain or freely licensed; each carries its credit and licence, and links to its source record. Served from this site rather than hotlinked.