Pentagon releases first batch of previously secret files documenting reports of UFOs

Among the releases is a 1969 debrief of Buzz Aldrin stating he saw a ‘sizeable’ object close to the lunar surface

The Pentagon on May 8 released an initial group of previously secret files documenting reports of UFOs – a move sought for decades by some.

“These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fuelled justified speculation – and it’s time the American people see it for themselves,” Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said in a statement posted on X.

Among the highlights is Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, telling a 1969 debrief of seeing a “sizeable” object close to the lunar surface, and a “fairly bright light source” the crew felt could be a laser.

Alongside numerous written reports is a collection of video files from military cameras around the globe. Objects filmed include a football-shaped object spotted over the East China Sea in 2022; and there is footage recorded in the last few years of dots moving erratically, and at different speeds, over Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates.

The release follows a directive from Donald Trump in February for federal agencies to begin identifying, declassifying and releasing government files related to unidentified flying objects, now known as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

The move, the US president said at the time, was “based on the tremendous interest shown” by the public, and reflected renewed appetite for information about the government’s knowledge of, and perceived involvement in, programs tracking and even housing extraterrestrials and their spacecraft.

Last month Jared Isaacman, the new NASA administrator, gave the drive for greater transparency at the agency more credence by stating the space agency planned missions to space at least in part because of the possible existence of extraterrestrial lifeforms.

“The odds that we will find something at some point to suggest that we are not alone are pretty high,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press.

Even so, the first batch of 162 files released on May 8, incorporating hundreds of pages on a monochrome new defence department website, offered little new or conclusive evidence.

The public, the Pentagon statement said, “can ultimately make up their own ideas about the information contained in these files”.

They include old state department cables, FBI documents and transcripts from NASA’s crewed flights into space. Other pages, stretching back decades, feature ambiguous eyewitness accounts of encounters with, or alleged sightings of, UFOs.

For example, one previously confidential 1947 report from Air Defense Command headquarters in New York features an account by the pilot and navigator of a Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) Constellation aircraft who said they momentarily sighted a mystery “bright orange object” in the sky.

The object was visible for only seconds, then disappeared quickly behind a cloud and was not seen again, the crew members said.

A more recent 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 10 seconds and then the light went out and the object vanished,” according to the FBI interview.

Aldrin, meanwhile, was not the only astronaut to report an unexpected occurrence. A NASA photograph from the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 shows three dots in a triangular formation. The Pentagon, in an accompanying caption, said “there is no consensus about the nature of the anomaly” but that a new, preliminary analysis indicated that it could be a “physical object”.

Numerous other pages recount similar accounts of sudden, brief or unexpected phenomena witnessed in the sky.

The Pentagon called the publication of the documents an “initial release”, in partnership with multiple federal entities including the White House, the office of the director of national intelligence, the energy department, the FBI and NASA.

“Additional files will be released by the Department of War on a rolling basis,” the Pentagon said, using the unofficial name for the defence department.

“While all of the files have been reviewed for security purposes, many of the materials have not yet been analysed for resolution of any anomalies,” it conceded.

Despite the hyped release, the policy of the defence department “drip feeding” information to the public is not new.

In 2024, a Pentagon report concluded there was no evidence of extraterrestrial activity, and that most sightings were weather-related or misidentified balloons, birds or satellites.

Earlier the same year, a separate report published by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office said the government was not, and never had been, secretly hiding technology or extraterrestrial beings from the public, and that a rumoured facility in the New Mexico desert purportedly housing ET beings and spacecraft was a hoax.

It followed a claim by former US intelligence official and whistleblower David Grusch that the US government conducted a “multi-decade” secret UFO program that found “non-human” beings.

As the evidence of the reality of extraterrestrial life and even the presence of ET being on Earth is mounting, the public now awaits for the next batch of now still classified UFO files.

 

yogaesoteric
May 16, 2026