The United States government has pulled back the curtain on one of its longest-held collections of mysteries. The Pentagon released its first tranche of declassified UFO files on May 8, making videos, photographs, and internal reports spanning nearly eight decades available to anyone with an internet connection — no security clearance required.
The release, carried out under the newly launched Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, known by the acronym PURSUE, marks the most sweeping public disclosure of government UFO material in American history. The files are now hosted on a dedicated portal at war.gov/UFO, and officials say additional materials will be posted on a rolling basis every few weeks as they are reviewed and declassified.
“The American people can now access the federal government’s declassified UAP files instantly,” the Department of Defense announced, using the modern official term — Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena — for what the public has long called UFOs. “The latest UAP videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entire United States government are all in one place.”
The initial batch comprised 162 files in total: 120 PDF documents including field reports, internal memos, and technical analyses; 28 videos; and 14 high-resolution images. They were drawn from the archives of the FBI, the Department of Defense, NASA, and the State Department — a multiagency sweep that officials described as the most comprehensive declassification effort of its kind.
The release was triggered by President Donald Trump, who directed the Pentagon and relevant agencies earlier this year to begin identifying and releasing government records related to extraterrestrial life, UAP, and UFOs. Trump promoted the disclosure on Truth Social, writing that it would allow people to “decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?'” He added: “Have Fun and Enjoy!”
The documents span a remarkable breadth of time and geography. A large FBI file running to hundreds of pages catalogues eyewitness testimonies and public reports of UFO sightings from 1947 through 1968 — the heart of the Cold War era, when sightings were clustered heavily in hotspots such as Germany and Soviet-adjacent regions. Some of those files had been previously released but in more heavily redacted form; the versions published now expose significantly more detail.
More recent materials carry a different kind of weight. Internal military memos describe what operators characterized as “one possible small UAP” observed in Iraqi airspace in 2022, and “multiple glares or light from an unknown origin” spotted over Syria in 2024, during periods when U.S. forces were conducting operations against ISIS. Additional reports came from personnel stationed in the United Arab Emirates and Greece. A 2023 incident in the western United States, spanning two days, saw federal law enforcement officers independently report orb-like objects, including one account of “orbs launching other orbs,” which the Pentagon itself described as among the most compelling reports it holds.
The files also reach back to the space age. Transcripts from the Apollo 12 mission in 1969 include astronaut Alan Bean reporting “flashes of light” to mission control that appeared to be “sailing off in space” and escaping the Moon. Three years later, during Apollo 17, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt exclaimed, “It’s like the Fourth of July out there!” upon observing bright particles of light — phenomena the crew theorized might be ice chunks, though no firm conclusion was reached.
Despite the breadth of the disclosure, officials were careful to manage expectations. The Pentagon’s website includes a disclaimer noting that the language in military memos reflects the “subjective interpretation” of the individual who wrote the report and “should not be interpreted as a conclusive indication” of what actually occurred. According to NBC News, the documents show no evidence of a government cover-up of extraterrestrial contact, and no indication that the U.S. has ever interacted with beings from other planets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the goal was to provide “maximum transparency” on unexplained aerial encounters, while NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman praised the effort, saying the agency would “remain candid about what we know to be true, what we have yet to understand, and all that remains to be discovered.”
A second release is expected in June, approximately 30 days after the first. For now, the files offer the public its most unobstructed view yet into a question that has lingered for generations: what, exactly, has the government been watching in the skies above?
