Disclosure eventSchumer–Rounds UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 (NDAA FY2024 amendment)

What's documented

On 13 July 2023, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), with co-sponsors Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Todd Young (R-IN), filed Senate Amendment 797 to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (S.2226). The amendment, modeled in significant part on the 1992 President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, was titled the “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2023.” It is the first UAP- specific disclosure legislation ever sponsored by a sitting Senate Majority Leader.

The original language contained four core provisions. First, the establishment of a nine-member UAP Records Review Board, appointed by the President with Senate advice and consent, with statutory authority to compel U.S. government and contractor disclosure of UAP-related records. Second, a presumption of public disclosure for all records postponed only by specific statutory exemption. Third — the provision that drew most attention — federal eminent-domain authority over “recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence” held by private parties, with just compensation. Fourth, statutory definitions in U.S. Code of “non-human intelligence,” “technologies of unknown origin,” and “unidentified anomalous phenomena” — the first occurrence of these terms in U.S. statutory definitional language.

The amendment passed the Senate by voice vote in July 2023 and entered the conference committee for reconciliation with the House NDAA version, which did not contain comparable language. In conference, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and ranking member Adam Smith (D-WA) substantially weakened the language: the Review Board was retained but its compulsion authority over private contractors was removed; the eminent-domain provision was struck in its entirety; the disclosure presumption was retained for U.S. government records but not for contractor records. Schumer issued a public statement on 6 December 2023 expressing his “deep disappointment” with the conference outcome and naming Rogers and Smith specifically.

The final FY2024 NDAA, signed by President Biden on 22 December 2023, includes the weakened provisions: a Review Board, a UAP records collection at the National Archives, the statutory definitions, and a controlled-disclosure-review process for U.S. government UAP records. Schumer and Rounds re-introduced the stronger original language in the FY2025 NDAA cycle as the “Schumer–Rounds UAP Disclosure Act of 2024,” which did not advance out of the Armed Services committees. As of June 2026, the definitions in the FY2024 NDAA remain the operative U.S. statutory definitions of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” and “non-human intelligence.”