Navy's 2019 UAP Reporting Overhaul: Inside the Gradisher FOI

Navy's 2019 UAP Reporting Overhaul: Inside the Gradisher FOIA 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,' while stating that security considerations preclude disclosure of its new reporting guidelines.

Published

September 10, 2026

Declassified

Date not listed

Source agency

The Black Vault (FOIA archive)

navyuapfoia2019reportingoverhaulinsidegradisher

Navy FOIA Release Exposes 2019 UAP Reporting Overhaul

The paper Operations responded to a Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act request filed by researcher John R. Greenewald, assigning it case number DON-NAVY-2019-006272 and serial DNS-36DB/19U102763. " To process it, the Navy's FOIA office contacted OPNAV N2/N6, which searched its local files and identified two responsive records totaling 63 pages.

Those 63 pages are the spine of this article. They capture a working mailbox during a narrow window in 2019 when the Navy was publicly signaling that it would update and formalize the process by which reports of unauthorized or unidentified aircraft entering military-controlled ranges and designated airspace could be made to cognizant authorities. The correspondence shows how that effort was explained, defended, and bounded in real time.

Not all of it survived review. C. § 552(b)(5).

Other passages contained personally identifiable information — names and email addresses — withheld under § 552(b)(6) as a clearly unwarranted invasion…

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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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