Navy Releases 1,300+ Pages of Scott Bray UAP Emails Via FOIA; 302 Pages Withheld in Full

The Department of the Navy responded on September 23, 2026 to a Freedom of Information Act request — case number DON-NAVY-2022-008648 — submitted by John Greenewald of The Black Vault on May 24, 2022. The request sought emails sent to, from, copied to, or blind-copied to Scott W. Bray containing search terms including "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena," "UAP," "UAPTF," "UFO," "AATIP," "AAWSAP," and several related phrases. After more than four years, the Navy identified 1,321 pages of responsive records, releasing 1,019 pages with redactions and withholding 302 pages in their entirety.

Scott Bray served as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence and Director of the Naval Intelligence Activity during much of the period covered by the records. An email within the release explicitly describes his role, stating that John "Jay" Stratton "leads the UAP Task Force effort for Navy… working directly for Scott Bray, our Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence." Bray became a prominent public face of the government's UAP effort and appeared before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation on May 17, 2022, alongside Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, in the first public congressional UAP hearing held in decades.

The released correspondence spans multiple years and involves numerous named senior officials. A March 2020 exchange shows Neill Tipton — identified in his signature block as Director of Defense Intelligence, Collection and Special Programs in OUSD(I&S) — informing Bray that he had a document "relevant to our discussion the other day" that he preferred to deliver in hard copy. Other records reference a planned briefing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, involving Bray, Stratton, Tipton, and Rear Admiral Kelly Aeschbach. Communications surrounding the April 2020 public release of the Navy UAP videos also include Vice Admiral Matthew Kohler, Rear Admiral Charles Brown, and Rear Admiral Paula Dunn.

Additional subjects documented in the collection include the development of the UAP Task Force, the 2021 ODNI UAP assessment, public-affairs strategy and proposed language reviewed by Bray before release, congressional briefings, media inquiries, FOIA releases, and classification questions. Extensive attachments include forwarded news coverage and discussions of publicly made UAP claims; their presence in Bray's records documents what officials were receiving and addressing, and does not reflect Navy or Bray endorsements of those claims.

The release represents an unusually large set of contemporaneous internal government correspondence covering a pivotal period in the modern UAP issue. However, it is not a complete record: the FOIA request was built around specific search terms, 302 pages remain fully withheld, and redactions appear throughout the released material. The Black Vault has made the full 1,324-page release package (approximately 47 MB) publicly available for independent review. Given the breadth of subjects and officials named, individual email chains may warrant further separate examination.