UFO files spanning decades are released by Defense Department

An image recorded on the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission in 1969 shows the shadows of astronauts, along with a highlighted area above the horizon showing "unidentified phenomena," according to the Defense Department. NASA/via Defense Department

NASA/via Defense Department

Cold War reports of mysterious rotating saucers; recent sightings of metallic elliptical objects floating in mid-air. Those and other reports of unidentifiable anomalous phenomena or UAPs — the military's term for UFOs — are described in a trove of documents released by the Department of Defense on Friday.

In all, the Pentagon released more than 160 records, citing President Trump's call for unprecedented transparency in giving the public access to federal and military records related to unexplained encounters with strange phenomena.

President Trump said via Truth Social that with the documents and other records available to the public, "the people can decide for themselves, 'WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?' Have Fun and Enjoy!"

The records are posted to a specialized web portal, war.gov/info, which will house additional files as they're released on a rolling basis.

"These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation — and it's time the American people see it for themselves," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Defense Department posting on Facebook as it made the files public.

Friday's action "is the first in what will be an ongoing joint declassification and release effort," Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said.

One document cites unusual phenomena arising during the debriefing of the Apollo 11 technical crew in July of 1969, attributing three observations to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, from that lunar mission: "one, an object on the way out to the Moon; two, flashes of light inside the cabin; and three, a sighting on the return trip of a bright light tentatively assumed by the crew to be a laser."

One of the oldest files dates from November 1948. The report from the U.S. Air Force Directorate of Intelligence is marked Top Secret, and it notes recurring instances of unidentified objects spotted in the skies over Europe.

"They have been reported by so many sources and from such a variety of places that we are convinced that they cannot be disregarded," the report states, "and must be explained on some basis which is perhaps slightly beyond the scope of our present intelligence thinking."

The report goes on to say that U.S. officers consulted their peers in Sweden's intelligence service about the objects, and they were told, "these phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth."

That document is seemingly free of redactions. But many details in a more recent entry are obscured, as it relays the account of a woman with deep experience with U.S. military aircraft and drones who reported an inexplicable sighting in September of 2023, in an area where airspace had been closed for testing purposes.

Materials related to that incident include a composite sketch of an ovaloid metallic object floating above a treeline, with a bright light at one end of the object.

"They watched the object for five to ten seconds and then the object just disappeared," the report states.

Several people in at least two cars corroborated the sighting, according to the report. It states that the unidentified woman who spoke to the FBI " would not have reported the object if she had seen it by herself."

And hinting at the stigma that is seen as a prevalent challenge to collecting and discussing such eyewitness accounts, the report states, "Several of her co-workers subsequently made fun of her due to her report."

Some records include venerable witnesses — such as a well-known case in 1955, when a group led by then-Sen. Richard Russell, who chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time, reported that they saw two strange objects from the window of a train in the former Soviet Union. The group, which included U.S. Army Lt. Col. E. U. Hathaway, reported seeing what looked to be "flying disc aircraft."

The U.S. Air Attache who prepared the report describes the witnesses as "excellent sources."

That 1955 sighting was described in records previously released by the CIA. But that report, based on a cable received from the U.S. Air Force, seems to have been partially redacted.

The report of the unidentified object isn't the only bit of intelligence that the American visitors brought back: the folder also includes descriptions and a diagram of a jet bomber, and accounts of a railroad switching system designed to resolve the differing widths of Russian and Czech train tracks.