U.S. Department of the Army (DoW) Published Its first declassified documents on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), commonly known as UFOs, are part of a new program called the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The announcement was made via a post on X on Friday, May 8.
These documents are now publicly available at war.gov/UFO and will be released on a rolling basis. For the first time, citizens can view photos, videos and related documents without any security clearance.
So what’s inside the UFO file?
The first batch of released files is called “Release 01” and contains 162 newly decrypted files. According to the Pentagon, these are “open” cases, meaning the government cannot determine exactly what the objects observed were.
The full version contains approximately 120 PDF documents, 28 videos and approximately 14 images
The documents come from multiple government agencies, including the FBI, Department of Defense, NASA and the State Department. They cover eyewitness accounts, photographs and reports of unexplained sightings from around the world going back decades.
Of the 162 files, 108 contain some revisions. The Pentagon clarified that the information was withheld only to protect the identities of witnesses, the location of government facilities or sensitive information about military locations not related to UAP. The Pentagon also said: “Any documents released at the direction of President Trump regarding the nature or existence of any encounters reported as UFOs or related phenomena have not been redacted.”
Several infrared photos of unidentified objects taken over the western United States in September and December 2025.
One of the strangest incidents in the FBI’s declassified UFO files involves a Virginia man named James C Collins, who reported seeing a “large rectangular object” land in front of him in the Chesapeake on January 17, 1967. Collins claimed that he was taken into a transparent craft “made of a glass-like substance” and saw a “smaller-sized creature” about “4 feet tall” wearing “regular pants and a T-shirt.” However, the FBI memo noted that Collins “spoke in a coherent manner” but appeared to be “emotionally stressed.”
Six photos taken by NASA astronauts during the Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions, showing unexplained lights and objects above the lunar surface.
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Video from Syria shows two translucent, irregularly shaped orange areas that appear for only two seconds each.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command reported sightings of a football-shaped object near Japan in 2024.
Video taken near Greece in October 2023. According to the accompanying report, the object made multiple “90-degree turns” at approximately 80 miles per hour.
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One of the most notable is the FBI’s historical case file number 62-HQ-83894, which covers reports of unidentified objects and “flying disks” from 1947 to 1968. This spans 18 separate documents, including high-profile event records, photographic evidence from sites such as Oak Ridge, Tennessee, technical proposals for potential propulsion systems, conference plans, researcher accounts and extensive media coverage of the period, CBS News reported.
The Pentagon noted that while portions of the document had been released previously, Friday’s version included fewer redactions and “several newly declassified pages.”
