Pentagon releases more UFO files: "Speechless after these observations"

Washington — The Pentagon on Friday released a new batch of 64 files related to UFOs, or UAPs, unveiling a second tranche of records that includes a 2025 first-hand account from an intelligence officer about an experience that left him "virtually speechless."

The files, which President Trump ordered to be made public in an executive order earlier this year, can be viewed on the Pentagon's UFO website. Friday's tranche includes six PDF files, seven audio files and 51 video files. The videos show footage of UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena, from military aircraft, with each clip accompanied by a detailed description.

The release comes two weeks after the Pentagon uploaded the first group of documents, photos and videos to the new site. Those files included declassified pages from the FBI's UFO case files, reports of strange encounters by military pilots, diplomatic cables about incidents around the world and photos from NASA missions.

The 51 videos included in the second release include the type of grainy infrared footage captured by military cameras and sensors that has become familiar over the past several years.

In the description accompanying the videos, the Pentagon noted that the footage was requested by House lawmakers in March. The videos were found by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, the military office responsible for investigating UAP encounters. The Pentagon noted that "[m]any of these materials lack a substantiated chain-of-custody," and the descriptions note when and where they were likely taken.

One notable video appears to show the moment a fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Lake Huron in 2023, a high-profile incident that came after a Chinese spy balloon traversed the U.S., leading to heightened fears of UAPs. Later reports indicated that the object might have been a balloon operated by a hobbyist group.

Many of the videos capture encounters that happened in U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility between 2018 and 2023, including over the Persian Gulf.

A video from 2022, which does not have a location listed, shows multiple spherical objects going in and out of the water near a submarine.

The documents include historical accounts of UFO sightings, a report on Soviet intelligence activities and Department of Energy files about UFO reports, including one from PANTEX, a key nuclear weapons facility.

The most striking document is an account by a currently serving "senior intelligence officer" who detailed his experience investigating UFO sightings in late 2025 onboard a military helicopter. The officer wrote that he and the crew had "a series of close UAP encounters lasting over an hour" as they investigated previous sightings.

"In the distance, we saw countless orange orbs swarming in all directions against the backdrop of the mountain. The display lasted several minutes before fading," the officer wrote. "[T]he pilots and I (using the naked eye) observed two large orbs flare up side by side, close to the helicopter — stationary and just above the rotor disk to our right. They were oval-shaped, orange with a white or yellow center, and emitted light in all directions."

The officer said that he and the crew "were virtually speechless after these observations."

The audio files include recordings from NASA astronauts during the Apollo and Mercury missions about observations they made while in space, including objects described as "fireflies" and "snowflakes." The Pentagon notes that NASA "later determined that the 'fireflies' are attributable to frozen condensation separating from the spacecraft body. The white, green-hued appearance of this phenomenon results from sunlight reflecting off frozen condensation."