Washington– Buzz Aldrin observing a “fairly bright light source” while aboard Apollo 11. A UFO makes “multiple 90-degree turns” at a rapid clip. A very bright object spirals over the sky of Kazakhstan.
These are some of the details in a new batch of files on UFOs that the Pentagon began releasing on Friday under President Donald Trump. It exploits the curiosity of the public for a long time About “unidentified anomalous phenomena” in the wider universe. Although the Pentagon has been working to declassify the documents for years, Trump brought attention back to the topic months ago Thrilling dump of key UFO documents.
“While previous administrations have failed to be transparent on this topic, with these new documents and videos, people can decide for themselves: ‘What the hell is going on?’ Enjoy and enjoy!” Trump wrote on Friday in a Social Truth post.
The Republican Trump administration says the public can draw its own conclusions from information in the files, which include old State Department cables, FBI documents and NASA transcripts of manned spaceflights. The new Pentagon website housing documents on the UAPs has a retro feel, with black-and-white military photographs of flying objects prominently displayed on the page, with the data displayed in a typewriter-like font.
The files reflect cases that the government considers unresolved, meaning that for a variety of reasons they cannot be explained with certainty. The Pentagon described the files as new and “unprecedented,” even though some of them were released years ago.
Experts are urging caution about releasing the new files, warning that UAP videos are often misinterpreted and mischaracterized by those who are not familiar with military technology. A 2024 Pentagon report refuted claims that the US government has recovered alien technology or confirmed evidence of alien life.
The initial release is a collection of videos, photos and other testimonials that are sure to spark more speculation among those who We believe we are not alone In the universe.
For example, a State Department cable from the US Embassy in Tajikistan in 1994 describes how a Tajik pilot and three Americans saw a brightly lit drone while flying the plane over Kazakhstan. The goal, according to the cable, was to “make 90-degree turns, make switches and maneuver in circles at high rates of speed.”
This is not the only case of irregularly moving objects mentioned in the document release. A military report from the Aegean Sea in 2023 noted that a drone was flying just above the ocean surface and making “multiple 90-degree turns at an estimated speed of 80 mph” (129 km/h).
An interview with a US intelligence official detailed an incident last year in which the official, while conducting a search on a helicopter, encountered a “very hot” ball hovering above the Earth, traveling about 20 miles (32 kilometers) at a rapid clip, and then spotted four or five other celestial bodies glowing up and down.
In an interrogation of Apollo 11 crew members in 1969, astronaut Aldrin reported that he observed several unusual sightings, such as a “large” near-lunar object and a “fairly bright light source” that the crew felt could be a laser.
One document details an FBI interview with a person identified as a drone pilot, who in September 2023 reported seeing a “linear object” with light bright enough to “see bands within the light” in the sky.
“The object was visible for five to ten seconds, then the light went out and it disappeared,” according to the FBI interview.
Another file is NASA image From the 1972 Apollo 17 mission, three points appear in a triangle. The Pentagon says in an accompanying commentary that “there is no consensus on the nature of the anomaly,” but the new preliminary analysis indicated it could be a “physical object.”
The documents include more than 20 video files showing unidentified objects captured by military sensors in locations from Syria and Japan to North America. The objects range from fast-moving specks captured from a distance to a football-shaped object spotted over the East China Sea in 2022. The most recent video is from January 1 of this year, and appears to show two circular lights flying against a dark black background in North America.
Many of the files include military videos from the past few years that showed small, mysterious dots moving over the landscape of Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Sometimes white objects appear on the screen in less than a second, while other objects slide slowly through the air or are followed by the camera.
Other files include written reports from US military service members who were monitoring sites in the Middle East. One report described an object “shaped like a bouncy ball” traveling at 483 mph (777 km/h) continuously for at least seven minutes over Syria in 2023.
The organism was later determined to be benign.
Among the files are hundreds of pages detailing reported sightings dating back to the 1940s. A 1948 report from American pilots in the Netherlands raised concerns about frequent flying saucer sightings. Their Swedish counterparts also saw them and believed they did not come from “any currently known culture on Earth,” the report said.
One military video that quickly gained attention on Friday appeared to show a plane shaped like an eight-pointed star soaring through the air. The video, dating from 2013 in the Middle East, may be nothing more than a hot jet engine producing a diffraction pattern in the camera, said Sean Kirkpatrick, former director of the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Anomaly Resolution Office, which is investigating the UAP.
Kirkpatrick said there was nothing unexpected in the release and warned that without analysis it “will only fuel more speculation, conspiracy and pseudoscience.”
Trump has previously released records related to the president’s assassinations john f. Kennedy,Sin. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr Which revealed little of what was already known.
The Pentagon has been working to declassify documents related to unidentified flying objects for years, and Congress established an office in 2022 to declassify the materials. that it First report for 2024 It uncovered hundreds of new UAP incidents but found no evidence that the US government had ever confirmed a sighting of alien technology.
A small group of Republicans in Congress pushed for more transparency, accusing the Pentagon of withholding documents. A letter from Florida Republican Rep. Ana Paulina Luna in March requested access to 46 UAP videos identified by whistleblowers. Luna said on Friday that the Pentagon would release those videos at a later date.
Rep. Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, thanked Trump for “keeping his word” on transparency and disclosure.
“I would like to remind people that transparency will not happen all at once, but rather will take time,” Burchett said in a statement.
Others used Friday’s statement to urge more transparency in what the government knows about UAPs. The SOL Foundation, a research group focused on UAPs, has pushed for legislation that would mandate a “comprehensive” review of classified UAP records “with the goal of providing Americans with the full truth about long-standing government knowledge and programs related to technologies and vehicles that are not of human origin.”
“While today’s new step toward full disclosure of government information related to the UAP program is welcome, there are still many steps to be taken to end decades of secrecy that has kept the American people in the dark,” said Peter Skafish, the foundation’s executive director, and retired Admiral Tim Gallaudet, former acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.
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Associated Press writer Ben Finley in Washington contributed to this report.