Last year’s gargantuan $2.3 trillion appropriations bill did a couple of very obvious things: it provided millions of Americans badly needed coronavirus relief aid and it averted an impending government shutdown.

It also dealt with … UFOs.

The legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law, was a bureaucratic nesting doll that ran over 5,500 pages and contained the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which itself carried an unusual provision in its “committee comment” section, beneath the understated heading “Advanced Aerial Threats.”

The stipulation mandates that the director of national intelligence work with the secretary of defense on a report detailing everything the government knows about unidentified flying objects – known in agency lingo as “unidentified aerial phenomena” or “anomalous aerial vehicles.”

It must be made public, and when it is, it will be big, former intelligence director John Ratcliffe said in a recent interview.

“Frankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public,” Ratcliffe told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Friday.

The report must include “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” gathered by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI, the provision reads.

It also calls for “a detailed description of an interagency process” that will ensure that data can be gathered and analyzed across the federal government. The report could document sightings from “all over the world,” Ratcliffe said.

“There are instances where we don’t have good explanations for some of the things that we’ve seen,” he added. “And when that information becomes declassified, I’ll be able to talk a little bit more about that.”

That time could be coming soon.

When Trump approved the spending package on Dec. 27, a 180-day countdown began, giving intelligence officials until June to deliver lawmakers their write-up.

However, two factors might delay the report’s release: agencies have missed similar congressional reporting deadlines in the past; and the provision is not technically binding, as the language was included in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the bill, not the bill itself.

“In other words, it isn’t statute, but the agencies/departments generally treat report language as bill language,” said one senior Senate aide familiar with the legislation.

The office of Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to comment on the UFO report. A spokesperson for the intelligence director’s office said “we have nothing to offer.”

Ratcliffe’s pronouncement comes months after the Pentagon released three grainy videos of UFOs recorded by U.S. Navy pilots using infrared cameras. The footage shows the objects moving rapidly across the screen. “My gosh,” one pilot remarks. The videos had been circulating for years but the Defense Department move gave them further official imprimatur.

Former senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., a longtime backer of UFO research, said then that the footage “only scratches the surface of research and materials available.”

“The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications,” he said. “The American people deserve to be informed.”