Washington– One was a rotating disk that sent out beams of light. The other was a bright red ball of a color the observer had never seen before. Then there were what looked like potatoes, also beans, but with a layer of shimmering, fish-like scales.
Those were some of the unidentified flying objects described in documents released by the Pentagon on Friday, the third release since President Donald Trump. Directs its administration To give the audience full disclosure about what they know about alien and mysterious life Things in the sky.
The 72 files released Friday do not include the kind of blockbuster revelations sparked by Trump. There is no conclusive evidence of the existence of alien life or government Cover up. But the files reveal new details about some of them Recent viewsalong with government efforts to explain what many find inexplicable.
Take, for example, potatoes.
It happened in 2022, on a brisk February morning in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Five U.S. Army personnel at Fort Carson emerged from an office building and saw something strange hovering over Cheyenne Mountain, a few miles to the west.
“The object was shaped like a ‘potato’ with distinct edges and appeared to be painted a bright cream/white color,” an FBI document states. It was composed of “asymmetric, non-overlapping, and irregularly shaped jointed fish scales or plates.”
She remained motionless, writhing, for about two minutes, the men told the FBI. Then she disappeared in the blink of an eye. None of the men had phones. There is no video or pictures.
The authorities in charge of investigating the incident said that they could not easily explain it. Their report found – with “low confidence” – that it was probably “backscattering of sunlight”. She added that the faint light from the sunrise may have reflected on the mountain’s snow and illuminated the low clouds above it.
The men insisted that the day was clear and cloudless. There are no aircraft or balloons believed to be in the area. The four-page report, which was heavily redacted and attributed only to an “intelligence community partner,” said this did not appear to be technology from a foreign adversary. The FBI display looks as one might imagine, like a pale, flaky potato on a low mountain.
The case remains unsolved.
A similarly comprehensive report examined a series of sightings in October 2023, this time by six federal law enforcement agents. Agents said several times they saw a bright orange orb appear above the ridgeline and produce two to four smaller red orbs.
Most of the time the orbs disappeared quickly, but in one case, agents said the orb had been hovering motionless in the sky for several hours. The report said that there is no video or photo evidence of these scenes.
An analysis dated this month examines a series of possible explanations. Military aircraft conducted maneuvers in the area, and some of them fired flares. There could have been another test of US development technology nearby, the report said. These explanations are listed as “plausible” but not conclusive.
However, he did not rule out the possibility that it was an “unrecognized technology.” With relatively little evidence to work from, she called for further investigation into the case.
The analysis was conducted by the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which is overseen by Congress creature in 2022 to investigate reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UAP. Previous reports of the agency say that it has found no evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Among the most recent files is an FBI report issued in February detailing a sighting in an undisclosed part of the northeastern United States. One person whose name was redacted reported that he came home and saw an intense light swirling under the trees in his backyard. It has been described as a “brilliant and beautiful” red ball that a person has never seen before.
“Inside the red sphere, in the center, there appears to be what (redacted) described as a ‘white plasma sun’ roughly the size of a basketball,” according to the FBI file.
A second ball appeared, and they both flew silently out of sight, the file says. Mobile phone footage shows two glowing red orbs floating in the sky. The White House shared the video on social media on Friday without any message beyond the file name: “North Orb Viewing, 2025.”
So far, the Trump administration’s transparency drive has led to the release of about 300 files dating back to the 1940s, some completely new to the public and some adding details on previously known cases.
The latest batch includes a 2008 CIA report from Zimbabwe that has been labeled “never-before-released.” One day in July over the country’s main airport, observers reportedly saw something straight out of a Hollywood movie: It was “disc-like in shape with a hollow center, and had a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe.”
“At some point during the observation, rays were observed emanating from the object,” the CIA report said.
The report says that the lights changed colors, and the plane rose higher and out of sight. There has been controversy over its provenance, according to the report, with some suggesting a foreign government and others postulating “extraterrestrial origins.”