Buzz Aldrin observing a “fairly bright light source” while aboard the Apollo 11. A mysterious object making “multiple 90-degree turns” at a speedy clip. A blaringly bright object doing corkscrew twists over the skies in Kazakhstan.
“Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’ Have Fun and Enjoy!” Trump wrote Friday in a Truth Social post.
Trump’s Republican administration says the public can draw its own conclusions with the information in the files, which includes old State Department cables, FBI documents and transcripts from NASA of crewed flights into space. A new Pentagon website housing the documents on UAPs has a decidedly retro feel, with black-and-white military imagery of flying objects displayed prominently on the page, with statements displayed in typewriter-like font.
The files reflect cases that the government deems unresolved, meaning that for a variety of reasons they couldn’t be explained with certainty. The Pentagon described the files as new and “never-before-seen,” though some had been made public years ago.
Experts urge caution around the release of the new files, warning that UAP videos are often misinterpreted and mischaracterized by those unfamiliar with military technology. A 2024 Pentagon report rebutted claims that the U.S. government has recovered alien technology or confirmed evidence of alien life.
For instance, a State Department cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan in 1994 details how one Tajik pilot and three Americans saw a brightly lit UAP while flying a jet over Kazakhstan. The object, according to the cable, was “making 90 degree turns, doing corkscrews and maneuvering in circles at great rates of speed.”
One interview with a U.S. intelligence official details an incident last year in which the official, doing a search on a helicopter, encountered a “super-hot” orb hovering over the ground, traveling about 20 miles (32 kilometers) at a speedy clip, then spotted four or five more orbs that flared up and down.
In a 1969 debriefing of Apollo 11 crew members, the astronaut Aldrin recalled spotting several unusual sights, such as a “sizeable” object close to the moon and a “fairly bright light source” that the crew felt could be a laser.
One document details an FBI interview with someone identified as a drone pilot who, in September 2023, reported seeing a “linear object” with a light bright enough to “see bands within the light” in the sky.
“The object was visible for five to ten seconds and then the light went out and the object vanished,” according to the FBI interview.
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 in the distance to a football-shaped object spotted over the East China Sea in 2022. The most recent video is from Jan. 1 of this year and appears to show two circular lights flying against an inky black backdrop in North America.
Several files include military videos from the past several years that showed small ambiguous dots moving above the landscapes of Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. The white objects sometimes streaked across the screen in less than a second, while others slowly glided through the air or were followed by the camera.
Other files include written reports from U.S. military service members who were surveilling locations in the Middle East. One report described an object that was “shaped as a bouncy ball” and traveling 483 mph (777 km/h) consistently for at least seven minutes over Syria in 2023.
The object was later determined to be benign.
Among the files are hundreds of pages detailing reported sightings dating to the 1940s. A 1948 report from U.S. airmen in the Netherlands raised concerns about recurring flying saucer sightings. Swedish counterparts saw them, too, and believed they did not come from “any presently known culture on earth,” the report said.
One military video that quickly caught attention on Friday appears to show an aircraft shaped like an eight-pointed star weaving through the air. The video, from 2013 in the Middle East, is probably nothing more than a hot jet engine producing a diffraction pattern in the camera, said Sean Kirkpatrick, a former director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which investigates UAP.
Kirkpatrick said there’s nothing unexpected in the release and warned that without analysis it will “only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and arm-chair pseudoscience.”
A small group of Republicans in Congress has pressed for further transparency, accusing the Pentagon of holding documents back. A March letter from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., demanded 46 UAP videos identified by whistleblowers. Luna said Friday those videos will be released later by the Pentagon.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., thanked Trump for “keeping his word” on transparency and disclosure.
“I would like to remind people that transparency won’t all happen at once, it will take some time,” Burchett said in a statement.
Others used Friday’s release to urge further transparency into what the government knows about UAPs. The Sol Foundation, a research group focused on UAPs, pushed for passage of legislation that would force a “thorough” review of classified UAP records “with the aim of providing Americans with the full truth about longstanding government knowledge and programs concerning technologies and vehicles not of human origin.”
“While today’s new step toward a full disclosure of government knowledge concerning UAP is welcome, many more need to be taken to bring an end to the decades of secrecy by which the American people were kept in the dark,” said Peter Skafish, the foundation’s executive director, and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, a former acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.
