Pentagon releases hundreds of UFO files, including videos, photos and reports

The Pentagon began releasing hundreds of UFO files, opening a new public window into decades of unexplained reports without claiming to settle what any of them mean. The first batch includes 162 files from the FBI, Department of Defense, NASA and State Department, plus 120 PDFs, 28 videos and 14 image files, with material ranging from the late 1940s to more recent military encounters.

The release is being posted on a new Pentagon UFO website and will continue "on a rolling basis." Officials described the archive as unresolved cases, meaning the government is not making a definitive determination about the phenomena. The point, the Pentagon said, is to let the public "make up their own minds," while investigators and outside experts continue to warn that UAP footage can be misread, especially when viewers do not know the military hardware, sensor limits or mission context behind a clip.

Some of the material stands out because it comes from places where trained observers were looking for something else entirely. Many of the reports came from military pilots, and some were clustered near active military operations. The files also reach deep into history, including sightings from the Cold War era in Germany and the Soviet Union, along with more recent reports from the Middle East, including the Strait of Hormuz, Iraq and Syria. That mix matters because investigators often treat corroborated military reports differently from anonymous anecdotes, even when the underlying mystery remains.

Among the most striking items are six Apollo-era photos from NASA astronauts during Apollo 12 and Apollo 17. One Apollo 17 image from December 1972 was described as showing three dots in a triangular formation. The Pentagon said the photo had been released before, but a preliminary review suggested the anomaly may be a physical object in the scene. That does not confirm anything extraordinary, but it does explain why some images keep resurfacing in UAP debates: they are concrete, dated and tied to a specific place in the record.

The release also reflects a broader push for disclosure that spans the Pentagon, White House, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Energy Department, NASA and FBI. Congress ordered the Pentagon to begin releasing decades of UFO sightings in 2022 and created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office that same year. AARO’s 2024 debut report found hundreds of new UAP incidents but no evidence that the U.S. government had ever confirmed alien technology.

President Donald Trump had teased the release since February, and his administration says more batches will follow in the coming weeks. Rep. Tim Burchett thanked Trump for keeping his word on transparency and disclosure, while Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said in a March letter that 46 UAP videos identified by whistleblowers should be released in a later tranche. For now, the Pentagon’s message is narrower than the mythology around UFOs: these files are real, many are unexplained, and unexplained is not the same as proved.