Pentagon releases classified UFO files amid transparency push

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the files had been “hidden behind classifications” and that “it’s time the American people see it for themselves.” The release fit into a broader federal transparency push around unidentified anomalous phenomena, the Pentagon’s term for what the public still calls UFOs, and reflected how far the government has moved from dismissal toward managed disclosure.

The National Archives and Records Administration released new UAP records on April 24, 2025, after receiving them from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The archives created Record Group 615, the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection, under the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, and said it would keep adding records on a rolling basis as agencies turn them over. The result is a growing public paper trail, but one that remains shaped by classification rules and uneven agency reporting.

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, created in 2022 as the department’s focal point for UAP activity, says it approaches the issue with a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven method. In official materials, AARO defines UAP as airborne, transmedium or submerged objects or devices that are not immediately identifiable. That definition captures both the extraordinary and the mundane, and it underscores how many sightings turn out to be misread sensor data, birds or other ordinary objects rather than confirmed anomalies.

AARO’s fiscal year 2024 annual report said the office received 757 UAP reports during the period. Of those, 485 were incidents that occurred during the reporting period, while 272 came from earlier periods that had not previously been included. The report said AARO had no data indicating the capture or exploitation of UAP and no reported health or physiological impacts from UAP incidents. On its imagery page, the office continued to post and assess specific cases, including unresolved reports from Europe, while also closing some sightings as birds.

The release marks another step in a long fight over what the government knows, what it withholds and how much public trust is lost when unexplained incidents are buried in classification systems. The records now moving through the National Archives may not settle the UFO question, but they do show a federal apparatus still trying to separate unknowns from misidentifications, and secrecy from accountability.