The unidentified anomalous phenomena provision of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, signed on 23 December 2022. It created a protected channel through which individuals with knowledge of UAP programmes could bring information to AARO and to Congress, with statutory protection against retaliation and against non-disclosure agreements used to block reporting, and it set a reporting baseline of 1 January 1945.
Why the baseline matters
By reaching back to 1945 the statute contemplates programmes that predate every agency now responsible for them, which is a legislative acknowledgement that the historical record is in scope rather than an assertion that anything is in it. The same distinction runs through the UAP Disclosure Act 2023: the statutes contemplate non-human intelligence; they do not state that any exists.
What it produced
It is the legal route David Grusch and subsequent whistleblowers used, and the reason their accounts arrived through a process rather than a leak. In Plain Sight and Imminent both track its drafting, and Christopher Mellon’s legislative work sits behind much of the language.
Connections
AARO · David Grusch · UAP Disclosure Act 2023 · Christopher Mellon · In Plain Sight · Imminent · ICIG Determination 2022 · Senate Report 116-233