Since February 2026, the United States Department of War (DOW), under the direction of President Donald Trump, has released an unprecedented number of documents, videos, and firsthand witness accounts detailing the United States’ extensive history of encounters with unidentified anomalous phenomena, or “UAP.”
Despite the questions that remain, this initiative under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) has been nothing short of historic. For more than 75 years, Americans pleading for the truth on the issue have been routinely ridiculed and even misled by their own government. It’s difficult to imagine the nation’s posture being anything other than one of obfuscation, secrecy, and resistance to transparency.
Documents, particularly those detailing reports from senior intelligence officials encountering “orbs”, are a stark departure from the U.S. government’s nearly century-long position of secrecy.
Lawmakers, however, have been left with more questions than answers. Who or what flies with such impunity over our sensitive military installations? Who owns this technology? Are they a threat to national security?
Across the Pacific, members of Japan’s National Diet are confronting the same questions. The May 2026 file releases from the U.S. DOW disclosed two unresolved UAP incidents from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Japanese legislators only learned the details of these cases near their own territory after the American file release—not through any internal channels.
Democratic allies, it seems, face a shared challenge. For too long, elected officials in our respective nations have been denied adequate information about the phenomena operating in our common security environment. And in the U.S., whenever we are informed, it’s only through the preferred methods and timing of unelected bureaucrats deeply entrenched in our national security apparatus. In Japan, by contrast, the Ministry of Defense has stated that information may be made public when something arises that it determines should be explained.
But this raises a fundamental question: should the government alone decide what should be explained to the public?
If a grave national security threat truly exists, then elected representatives have been left with little choice but to entrust the security of their nations to the very institutions that have obscured the truth from us and even each other.
It is therefore incumbent upon us—Representatives solely accountable to the citizens of our respective nations—to work together and to seek the truth wherever we may find it; both for the good of our people and to defend against whatever threats we face from strategic competitors.
As mentioned above, among the files released by the U.S. DOW were highly significant firsthand reports from high-ranking officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The documents detail a search operation at a classified missile testing site in the Western United States, explicitly for aerial phenomena:
En route, ground teams reported spotting a UAP on FLIR [Forward Looking Infrared], describing it as “super-hot,” low to the ground, and moving east then south at high speed. The object then split into two and changed direction. Upon arrival, we scanned the area using NVG [Night Vision Goggles], FLIR, and the naked eye. The ground team suddenly radioed that the object had risen from the ground, approached within ten feet of the helicopter, dropped below us, and then sped away.
The documents were accompanied by what the DOW labeled as “related photos.”
Accounts such as these are hardly “proof” of anything, but for elected officials, they do cement the reality of our national security concerns. Missing from this account—or any account we have been allowed to access—is an answer to a fundamental question: What do the various U.S. government agencies believe these objects are? Are they merely civilian drones? Do they represent technology belonging to a foreign actor? And if someone within the government does know, who decides that elected officials shouldn’t?
Members of Japan’s UAP Parliamentary League, led by former Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada, share similar concerns.
DOW data, released through the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in August of 2023, identified specific regions of Japan, particularly in the western and southern parts of the country, as being among the world’s notable hotspots for UAP reports.
One such instance occurred as recently as July of last year. Security guards at the Genkai Nuclear Power Station in Saga Prefecture observed three luminous objects in the sky above the facility. The lights remained visible for nearly two hours; long enough for local police to arrive and observe them. The police stated that what they themselves observed was an airplane, leaving a discrepancy between the two accounts. The incident was also recorded by Kyushu Electric Power’s security cameras, but the footage has not been made available even to members of the National Diet. Police have likewise declined to disclose related information on the grounds that the matter remains under investigation. As a result, elected lawmakers still lack access to the information necessary to independently assess the incident, and to this day, members of Japan’s National Diet have no answers.
Like their American counterparts, Japanese lawmakers have been left without the tools or information for proper oversight despite reports of UAP operating near critical infrastructure within restricted airspace.
It is no longer acceptable for elected representatives to be agnostic on this issue. Events such as these, along with countless videos now made publicly available, are more than mere optical illusions and cannot be dismissed on account of prosaic explanations like parallax effect. For many members of Congress and members of Japan’s UAP Parliamentary League, the evidence presented before us indicates an unknown technology.
Our understanding of what is technologically feasible in propulsion, the manipulation of physical matter, and even space-time itself is being challenged. From what we know, our current defense capabilities appear insufficient. Furthermore, the origin of these phenomena remains unknown—not only to the U.S. and Japan, but seemingly to other nations as well. China, for instance, recently established its own military body dedicated to investigating UAP, even supplementing human resources with artificial intelligence dedicated to tracking what the People’s Liberation Army refers to as “Unidentified Air Conditions.”
We are, by all indications, in a global arms race for technological supremacy, one that is rapidly rendering today’s weapons obsolete through advances in quantum technology, artificial intelligence, and drone warfare. UAP and whatever technology allows them to operate with apparent impunity over sensitive military and nuclear installations could redefine the competition.
If harnessed by democratic allies, breakthroughs could bolster deterrence and stability in the South China Sea. Conversely, failure to establish a coordinated effort among democratic allies could give China an unforeseen technological advantage over a future invasion of Taiwan, making an already difficult fight impossible.
U.S. global leadership, along with the territorial integrity of the Pacific are at stake. For members of Japan’s National Diet, UAP investigations are of great national importance—an issue that demands cross-party attention.
As for their American counterparts, it’s clear representatives can’t reach the truth through traditional pathways that amount to asking the Central Intelligence Agency ‘nicely.’ It stands to reason that close alliances with democratic allies like Japan may be the most viable pathway for disclosure.
Indeed, if our tools are limited in scope, perhaps new revelations made by democratic allies provide a unique leverage point. After all, it was the Trump administration’s disclosure under the PURSUE program that significantly increased pressure on Japan’s Defense Ministry to acknowledge its own previously undisclosed UAP-related activities.
This is why we, as elected representatives of our nations, have engaged the Emerging Technologies Interparliamentary Caucus (ETIC) as a platform for international dialogue regarding emerging technologies and the security threats presented by UAP. Comprised of representatives from across the globe, the ETIC presents a rare opportunity to ensure elected representatives are equipped to assess potential threats, safeguard our nations, and prepare for the realities of emerging technologies in the 21st century.
Whether the phenomena we are encountering originate from an adversary or something else entirely, democratic nations cannot afford to be complacent.
The people of our nations deserve answers, and we intend to find them.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO-07) is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs.
Yasukazu Hamada is a Member of the House of Representatives, Japan, Former Minister of Defense, and Chairman of the UAP Parliamentary League.
Yoshiharu Asakawa is a Former Member of the House of Representatives, Japan, and Assistant to the Chairman of the UAP Parliamentary League.