Pentagon Drops Decades of Declassified UFO Files, Sparking Fresh Debate Over Military Sightings and What Washington Has Kept Hidden
The Pentagon on Friday released a trove of declassified files on UFOs, some stretching back to the late 1940s, from across multiple federal agencies.
The documents — which the Pentagon described as containing “never-before-seen” material on what the government now officially calls unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — are being posted on a new public website. For the first time, anyone can pull up the raw videos, photos, and original reports without a security clearance.
“The American people can now access the federal government's declassified UAP files instantly. The latest UAP videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entire United States government are all in one place — no clearance required,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
More files will be added “on a rolling basis,” officials said.
A clear pattern runs through the records: the vast majority of sightings cluster near active military operations. A big chunk of the reports date to the 1950s and 1960s, especially around Cold War flashpoints in Germany and the Soviet Union. More recent cases concentrate in the Middle East — around the Strait of Hormuz, Iraq, and Syria — places where the U.S. military keeps its most advanced sensors and flies frequent missions.
That concentration, the files suggest, is less about aliens than about where the Pentagon points its best equipment and its pilots. Most reports come from military aviators. In every case on record, the mysterious objects showed no hostility; they usually just darted off and vanished.
Some incidents stand out. In 2023, over two days in the western United States, federal law enforcement officers separately described seeing glowing orbs — one of them reporting “orbs launching other orbs.” The Pentagon calls it “among the most compelling” cases it has.
In 2024, during an airstrike in Iraq, a U.S. crew watched an unidentified craft streak across their targeting pod at high speed while they were focused on an unrelated target.
A 2025 account relayed to the FBI by a senior intelligence officer described government personnel hunting for orbs in a known hotspot. “After searching the area with a helicopter, they found a ‘super-hot’ orb hovering over the ground. The orb is reported to have travelled for 20 miles at a speed too fast for the helicopter in pursuit,” the government summary states.
Even older material made the cut. NASA transcripts from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission include this observation from Buzz Aldrin: “I observed what appeared to be a fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser.”
One striking image released is an FBI composite sketch of “an apparent ellipsoid bronze metallic object materializing out of a bright light in the sky, 130-195 feet in length, and disappearing instantaneously.”
Some pages are heavily redacted — entire sections blacked out. Still, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the release “unprecedented transparency.”
Not everyone is impressed. Sean Kirkpatrick, who until recently ran the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, warned that the dump of raw files without context could backfire. “There’s nothing unexpected in the release, and without any analysis or context, will only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and arm-chair pseudoscience, particularly from the playhouse politics theater company,” he told ABC News.
The move fulfills a promise President Donald Trump made earlier this year to declassify government records on UFOs, UAPs, and “extraterrestrial life.” It marks the first time complete case files — not just summaries — have been made public.
Trump celebrated the release on social media, claiming credit for the push. “In an effort for Complete and Maximum Transparency, it was my Honor to direct my Administration to identify and provide Government files related to Alien and Extraterrestrial Life, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and Unidentified Flying Objects,” he wrote.
He added that Americans could now “decide for themselves” what the sightings mean.
For weeks Trump had teased the coming document drop. Last month, while welcoming the Artemis II astronauts to the Oval Office, he said, “Well, I think we're going to be releasing as much as we can in the near future. For some reason, and I guess it's just a reason, it's been in the minds of people for a long time.”
