Buzz Aldrin’s recollection of a “fairly bright light source” during Apollo 11 and accounts of rapidly maneuvering, bright objects are among the materials now being put in front of the public as the Pentagon releases a new batch of records on unidentified anomalous phenomena. The release comes as President Donald Trump renews attention on the topic and urges Americans to interpret what the files show, even as officials and independent experts say many of the underlying cases remain unresolved.
On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that, “Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’ Have Fun and Enjoy!” The White House has framed the release as a step toward transparency, with the Pentagon offering materials intended to be examined by the public rather than accompanied by definitive explanations.
The Pentagon began releasing the documents on a new UAP website that presents the material in a retro-styled format, according to the Associated Press report. The site features black-and-white military imagery of flying objects displayed prominently and uses typewriter-like fonts for accompanying statements.
Pentagon officials say the files reflect cases the government considers unresolved, meaning they could not be explained with certainty for a range of reasons. The Pentagon described the initial batch as new and “never-before-seen,” though the Associated Press reported that some of the material had been made public years earlier. The initial release includes a trove of videos, other imagery and testimony, along with written reports dating back decades.
Among the detailed examples cited in the report is a 1994 State Department cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan that describes a Tajik pilot and three Americans seeing a brightly lit object while flying a jet over Kazakhstan. The cable said the object was “making 90 degree turns, doing corkscrews and maneuvering in circles at great rates of speed,” and it was among several erratically moving cases referenced in the Pentagon’s release.
The Pentagon also included older accounts from U.S. aviation and spaceflight. In a 1969 debriefing of Apollo 11 crew members, astronaut Buzz Aldrin recalled spotting several unusual sights, including a “sizeable” object close to the moon and a “fairly bright light source” that the crew felt could be a laser. Another item described by the report includes a NASA photograph from Apollo 17 in 1972 showing three dots in a triangular formation, with the Pentagon stating in an accompanying caption that “there is no consensus about the nature of the anomaly” while noting that a new, preliminary analysis indicated it could be a “physical object.”
The files also include military sensor videos and other imagery from locations around the world, including Syria, Japan and North America, as described by the Associated Press. The report says there are more than 20 video files showing unidentified objects captured by military sensors, ranging from fast-moving specks to a football-shaped object spotted over the East China Sea in 2022. It also cites a video from Jan. 1 of the current year that appears to show two circular lights moving against a dark background in North America.
Pentagon materials released to date also include written reports by U.S. service members who were surveilling sites in the Middle East, including a description of an object that one report said was “shaped as a bouncy ball” and traveled 483 mph (777 km/h) consistently for at least seven minutes over Syria in 2023—before being later determined to be benign. The report also says some of the Pentagon documents include hundreds of pages detailing reported sightings dating to the 1940s, including a 1948 report from U.S. airmen in the Netherlands that raised concerns about recurring flying saucer sightings and noted that Swedish counterparts believed they did not come from “any presently known culture on earth.”
In addition to the Pentagon’s release, UAP disclosure advocates and lawmakers used Friday’s developments to press for further steps. The Pentagon has been declassifying documents related to UFOs for years, and Congress created an office in 2022 to declassify material. Its 2024 debut report revealed hundreds of new UAP incidents but found no evidence that the U.S. government has confirmed a sighting of alien technology, according to the Associated Press.
A small group of Republicans in Congress has demanded more access, accusing the Pentagon of holding documents back. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., wrote in a March letter seeking the release of 46 UAP videos identified by whistleblowers, and she said Friday those videos would be released later by the Pentagon. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., thanked Trump for “keeping his word” on transparency and disclosure, saying in a statement that transparency “won’t all happen at once” and “it will take some time.”
Not all public reaction was directed solely at lawmakers. The Sol Foundation, a UAP research group, pushed for legislation aimed at requiring a “thorough” review of classified UAP records, with the aim of providing Americans with the “full truth” about long-standing government knowledge and programs concerning technologies and vehicles not of human origin. “While today’s new step toward a full disclosure of government knowledge concerning UAP is welcome, many more need to be taken to bring an end to the decades of secrecy by which the American people were kept in the dark,” said Peter Skafish, the foundation’s executive director, and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, described in the report as a former acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Some researchers and former officials urged caution about how quickly the public might interpret the Pentagon’s videos and imagery. Sean Kirkpatrick, a former director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which investigates UAP, said there was nothing unexpected in the release. Kirkpatrick also warned that without analysis, the videos would “only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and arm-chair pseudoscience,” and he said a frequently shared video from 2013 in the Middle East that appears to show an eight-pointed star-shaped aircraft was likely the result of a hot jet engine producing a diffraction pattern in a camera lens.
Pentagon officials said they plan additional releases, and experts continued to argue that a public-facing archive alone will not settle what the government knows. As the new materials go live, the central question may be less what the files prove and more how viewers, lawmakers and researchers treat the limits of testimony and military sensor data when trying to explain what remains, by the Pentagon’s own account, unresolved.