Pentagon releases 72 more UFO files in rolling disclosure push

The Pentagon widened its UFO archive on Friday with 72 more documents, images and recordings, but the latest upload added scale more than clarity. The batch included 53 documents, 10 images, six videos and three NASA audio recordings, another step in a disclosure push that has expanded quickly while leaving the meaning of many cases unresolved.

The new files were the third release since the government began the campaign in May 2026. The first tranche, posted May 8, contained more than 160 files drawn from across the federal government, including the CIA, FBI, NASA, the State Department and the Pentagon, some of it dating back to the late 1940s. Reuters reported that release came at the order of President Donald Trump, and officials have said more material will continue to appear on a rolling basis.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon unit overseeing the effort, says its mission is to reduce technical and intelligence surprise by improving detection, identification, attribution and mitigation of unidentified anomalous phenomena near national security areas. Its records page says National Archives documents are being digitized and released as the work is completed, a process meant to turn decades of scattered and often classified material into a single public archive.

The scale of the collection is notable. NBC News reported that the broader trove covers more than 400 incidents worldwide, while ABC News said some of the records reach back to the late 1940s. Many of the sightings in the earliest release were clustered near active military operations, with older reports tied to Cold War-era hotspots and newer material focused on places such as the Middle East, including the Strait of Hormuz, Iraq and Syria, as well as the western United States.

That geographic spread is part of what makes the release a transparency test as much as an archive dump. Supporters, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have said the files had long fueled speculation and should be made public, and Trump has promoted the effort as well. Yet the government has offered little analysis of what the documents show, and AARO has already said its reviews have not produced evidence of extraterrestrial technology. Its historical report also said claims about reverse-engineering alien technology were inaccurate, leaving the public with more records, but not a fuller explanation of the cases they describe.