In a long-awaited transparency move decades in the making, the U.S. Pentagon has opened the vault on more than 160 previously classified documents detailing public and official sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP, the Defense Department’s official term for what are commonly known as UFOs), spanning more than 75 years of reported encounters. The publication of the files, announced Friday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, fulfills a transparency directive issued by President Donald Trump earlier this year.
Hegseth emphasized in an official statement that decades of secrecy around these records had sparked widespread, well-founded public curiosity, and that the administration was committed to giving the American public direct access to the unredacted original files. The records, hosted on the Defense Department’s public website, include entries stretching all the way back to the late 1940s – the era when modern UFO lore first entered mainstream American culture. Among the earliest documents is a 1947 compilation of multiple “flying disc” sightings, followed a year later by a top-secret Air Force intelligence memo detailing reports of “unidentified aircraft” and “flying saucers.” More contemporary entries include a 2023 incident in which three separate teams of federal law enforcement special agents independently submitted reports of glowing orange orbs in the sky that launched smaller red objects.
The declassification push traces back to February 2024, when President Trump ordered all federal agencies to begin the process of sorting through and releasing all government-held records related to UFOs and potential extraterrestrial activity, citing overwhelming public demand for greater government openness around the topic. Alongside issuing the order, the Republican president drew controversy by accusing his Democratic predecessor, former President Barack Obama, of improperly disclosing classified information during a viral podcast interview. In that conversation with host Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama addressed persistent speculation surrounding Area 51 – the highly classified Nevada military base that has been the center of UFO conspiracy theories for decades – noting, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in… Area 51.” When pressed by reporters, Trump argued Obama had broken classification protocols with his comments, while adding that he personally remained undecided on the question of extraterrestrial life: “I don’t know if they are real or not.”
To date, no formal evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life has been presented by the U.S. government. Public and official interest in UAP has surged in recent years, however, driven by a steady stream of declassified military footage of unexplained aerial encounters and growing national security concerns that some unidentified objects could be advanced surveillance or weapons technology developed by U.S. geopolitical adversaries. In a major update published just months ago in March 2024, the Pentagon confirmed that it has yet to find any conclusive evidence linking reported UAP sightings to extraterrestrial technology. The vast majority of unexplained encounters, officials found, can be traced back to ordinary human activity, including weather balloons, commercial and military aircraft, reconnaissance drones, orbital satellites, and atmospheric anomalies.