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Pentagon Releases Initial Declassified UAP Documents on New Website
The Defense Department on May 8, 2026, made public roughly 160 documents including newly declassified videos and historical records dating to the 1940s. President Donald Trump ordered the release for maximum transparency. The files detail UAP sightings worldwide but contain no evidence of extraterrestrial life.
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The Pentagon released an initial trove of declassified UFO/UAP files on or around May 8, 2026. The release consists of roughly 160 documents rolled out on a new website and includes newly declassified documents never before seen by the public. The files contain video footage and images of UAP sightings captured around the world.
Two of the released videos were taken near Japan in 2024, one showing an object resembling a football-shaped body. U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command near Japan using an infrared sensor.
Highlights include sightings of orbs launching orbs by federal employees in the western US in 2023. The files also document a misshapen and uneven ball of white light reported by the US military in Syria in 2024, an amoeba-like shape captured by the US Indo-Pacific Command in 2024 and a bright round shape filmed by the US Central Command in 2024.
The files contain accounts of UAP from Apollo crews, including a light flash on the lunar surface during Apollo 17.
They include unidentified lights in a picture taken by the Apollo 17 crew from the surface of the Moon. Scanned historical material about government UAP and UFO programs dating back to the 1940s forms another element of the release. A compendium of UAP reports from the public during the late 1940s appears in handwritten or typewritten form.
The FBI records document eyewitness testimonies and public reports concerning Unidentified Flying Objects and flying discs between June 1947 and July 1968. The release includes an FBI memo from 1958 reporting a UFO sighting by a Detroit man. Some versions of known documents in the new files contain more pages or fewer redactions than previously released versions.
The files include a 1996 Air Force report titled Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations. The initial files released are murky images that show what could be anything, according to The New York Times. President Donald Trump teased the release in a Truth Social post in February 2026.
