US News 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.

What's in the new files?

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.

US government declassifies dozens of additional UFO files, including strange military videos

The Department of Defense has declassified another batch of images and recordings related to UFO/UAP sightings, bringing the total to roughly 220 newly released files.

On Friday (May 22) the Department of Defense released a second tranche of UFO files, adding another 60 documents to its ongoing database. These include new videos from the military, and documents dating back to the 1970s. This article, originally published May 8, has been updated as Live Science reviews the files for possible items of interest.

UFOs have come to Washington again — this time, in a newly released tranche of more than 150 previously classified documents that cover nearly 80 years of alleged sightings.

Available to read today (May 8) on the Department of Defense website, the 162 newly declassified documents, photos, and videos cover reports of UFOs and UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena, the government's preferred name for such sightings today) dating back as far as 1947.

The reports come from agencies across the government, including the Department of Defense (DOD), the FBI and NASA. The NASA offerings include images, audio files and transcripts of Apollo-era astronauts reporting anomalous sightings in space. However, most of these materials have been available for decades and never resulted in any compelling answers.

FAST MOVERS’ AND TRANSMEDIUM VEHICLES – THE PENTAGON’S UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL PHENOMENA TASK FORCE

In an exclusive feature for The Debrief, U.S. military and intelligence officials, as well as Pentagon emails, offer an unprecedented glimpse behind the scenes of what’s currently going on with The Pentagon’s investigation into UFOs, or as they term them, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP).

For the last two years, the Department of Defense’s newly revamped “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force” (or UAPTF) has been busy briefing lawmakers, Intelligence Community stakeholders, and the highest levels of the U.S. military on encounters with what they say are mysterious airborne objects that defy conventional explanations.

Along with classified briefings, multiple senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter say two classified intelligence reports on UAP have been widely distributed to the U.S. intelligence community. Numerous sources from various government agencies told The Debrief that these reports include clear photographic evidence of UAP. The reports also explicitly state that the task force is considering the possibility that these unidentified objects could, as stated by one source from the U.S. intelligence community, be operated by “intelligences of unknown origin.”

Significantly, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and head of RAND corporation’s Space Enterprise Initiative has — for the first time — gone on record to discuss some of the most likely explanations for UAP. His responses were surprising.