The Pentagon on Friday released an initial batch of previously secret files documenting reports of unidentified flying objects, opening a new public window on decades of government records that had long been sealed away. The first release included 162 files and hundreds of pages posted on a monochrome new Defense Department website.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the records had “long fueled justified speculation” and that “it’s time the American people see it for themselves.” The release followed a directive from Donald Trump in February ordering federal agencies to begin identifying, declassifying and releasing government files related to unidentified flying objects. Trump said the move was “based on the tremendous interest shown.”
The batch spans a remarkable range of material, from old State Department cables and FBI documents to transcripts from NASA’s crewed flights into space. It includes a 1969 debrief of Buzz Aldrin, who said he saw a “sizeable” object close to the lunar surface and described a “fairly bright light source” that the crew felt could have been a laser. It also contains a 1947 Air Defense Command report from New York describing a Pan American World Airways Constellation crew that briefly saw a bright orange object in the sky.
More recent files point to the same pattern of uncertainty. The release includes a football-shaped object spotted over the East China Sea in 2022 and footage recorded in the last few years showing dots moving erratically and at different speeds over Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. An FBI interview with a drone pilot in September 2023 reported a linear object with a light bright enough to see bands within it; the pilot said it stayed visible for five to 10 seconds before the light went out and the object vanished.
The Pentagon framed the release as part of a broader transparency effort sought for decades, and the material reflects a renewed appetite for information about what the government knew, and whether it ever had a role in programs tracking or even housing supposed aliens and their spacecraft. But for all the mystery, the first installment appears to add more fuel than answers. The files mostly contain ambiguous eyewitness accounts and do not offer conclusive evidence that unidentified flying object sightings are anything more than unexplained fragments of history.
That tension is what keeps the subject alive. Last month, Jared Isaacman said the space agency planned missions to space in part because of the possible existence of extraterrestrial alien lifeforms, saying, “The odds that we will find something at some point to suggest that we are not alone are pretty high.” For now, the government has started opening the door, but the documents it has chosen to show still leave the biggest questions hanging just out of reach.
