Washington — The Pentagon on Friday released a new group of documents and videos related to UFOs, or UAPs, the third release since the government began a wave of new disclosures last month.
The latest batch includes 53 documents and 10 images from the CIA, FBI, NASA, the Department of Defense and other unspecified agencies, along with six videos and three NASA audio recordings. The videos show orb-like objects in the sky, while a set of images and clips offer “artistic interpretations” of reported sightings.
Several of the documents detail encounters reported by federal law enforcement officers in 2023, in which five agents reported seeing strange orbs on the horizon. One agent recounted their partner asking, “Are you seeing this?” as a glowing orb lit up the sky.
What’s in the latest files?
The Pentagon uploaded the files to its UFO website. Four of the videos show eyewitness footage of strange encounters, a shift from previous releases, which were dominated by military footage. The new videos, which were collected by the FBI, include details from interviews with the witnesses.
One encounter happened in July 2025. The video, titled “Northeastern Orb Sighting,” shows two bright lights moving through the sky.
“The witnesses described the orbs’ motion as silent and smooth, and as moving in tandem as though they were flying in formation or tethered together,” the video description said, citing the FBI’s interviews.
Another video, called “Orbs Over the Pond,” shows an encounter from October 2024, which occurred within 25 miles of the Northeastern Orb Sighting. The footage shows “a light source below the horizon, hovering above a pond at an estimated distance of 2,700 feet,” the Pentagon’s description said.
“The luminous object resembled a ‘plasma-like sphere’ intermittently changing shape and luminosity. At times, the primary light source appeared to separate into smaller luminous points,” the Pentagon said. “A luminous point below the primary source hovered just above the water and did not appear consistent with a surface reflection. The object remained generally stationary for approximately 45 minutes before disappearing.”
One of the files includes documents from a panel convened by the CIA in 1952 and 1953, dubbed the “Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects.” The panel concluded that flying saucers did not pose a physical threat, but recommended an official policy of “debunking” the issue to “strip the UFO subject of its mystery.” The group warned that a “morbid national psychology” around UFOs could be exploited by adversaries.
Another intriguing disclosure centers around a series of strange events in the Western U.S. that occurred over the course of two days in October 2023. Five “federal law enforcement special agents” provided their accounts to the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and each narrative is included in the files.
One agent said the sightings began with “weird lights moving along in groups miles away.” Another said red lights “accelerated instantly and maneuvered with perfect, smooth coordination into a horizontal formation.” A person identified as Witness 4 described smaller orbs “being hatched from the larger very bright orange light” multiple times, losing count “after five occurrences.” Witness 3 said the discharged orbs were like “grapes being expelled from a basketball,” and recalled their partner saying, “Are you seeing this?”
The FBI produced digital renderings of the agents’ accounts to recreate the sightings. The Pentagon said that the renderings were prepared in 2026:
The files also include a July 2008 CIA report of a UFO sighting above the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe that was transmitted to the White House Situation Room and the intelligence community. Individuals aware of the incident didn’t know if the hovering object, which appeared to emanate “beams,” was a reconnaissance device of a foreign government or extraterrestrial in nature.
According to observers, “the object was disc-like in shape with a hollow center, and had a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe.” Its presence put the area on high alert.
A more recent sighting in 2022 near Colorado Springs, Colorado, describes a “potato”-shaped object that appeared painted in a “creamy/whitish opalescent color” that was “somewhat translucent with a slight shimmer.” The FBI created an artistic interpretation based on the description:
After the object was reported to the Defense Department, an intelligence partner conducted an analysis that assessed with “low confidence” the sighting could have been attributed to “sunlight backscattering,” where sunlight reflecting from snow on Cheyenne Mountain illuminated the underside of low-altitude clouds. Even with that analysis, the case remains unresolved as of this month.
The recent releases of files were prompted by an executive order President Trump signed earlier this year mandating the Pentagon to disclose more documents related to UFOs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the move “demonstrates the Trump Administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency.”
