Navy Emails Reveal 2019 Push to Formalize UAP Reporting

In an April 2019 statement released through these emails, the Navy acknowledged 'a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years' and said it was 'updating and formalizing the process' for reporting such incursions.

Published

September 10, 2026

Declassified

Date not listed

Source agency

The Black Vault (FOIA archive)

navyuapfoiaemails2019pushformalizereporting

Navy FOIA Release Exposes 2019 UAP Reporting Pressure

The document Politico reporter Bryan Bender. The Navy's DON FOIA/PA office identified 9 responsive records totaling 15 pages. C.

§ 552(b)(6), with the remainder released. The response letter is dated August 20, 2019 and signed by R. Strong, Deputy Director, DON FOIA/PA Program.

That partial denial matters to how the record should be read. Because the withheld material is redacted for privacy rather than for classification, the surviving email chain is an incomplete but still revealing window into the months when the Navy was deciding how to handle reports it had previously lacked a dedicated channel to receive. The correspondence spans February 19, 2019 to April 23, 2019, and it captures a service branch being asked, in real time, whether a formal reporting mechanism existed — and answering that one was being drafted.

The central question this article examines is how that formalization came about, and what the Navy was…

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Based on the official release at https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/navy-ufo-guidelines-and-congressional-ufo-briefings-the-emails/

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