Pentagon Releases a Sixth Batch of Files on Unexplained Aerial Objects

The Pentagon on Friday released a sixth batch of government records on unidentified aerial phenomena, the official term for what the public calls UFOs, adding more than 70 files to a public archive that has grown since May. CBS News counted 71 files, made up of 55 documents, 15 videos and one audio recording, with dates running from 1952 to 2025. EarthSky counted 72. As with the earlier releases, the material does not demonstrate that anything extraterrestrial has visited Earth, EarthSky reported.

The files are published through a program called PURSUE, short for the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, which began releasing records on May 8, EarthSky and NewsNation reported. Earlier batches followed on May 22, June 12, July 10 and Aug. 7. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the department “will release additional files on a rolling basis,” EarthSky reported. CBS News said 64 of the 71 files contain redactions.

The most notable documents, CBS News said, concern the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, a Defense Intelligence Agency effort created in 2008 to study aerospace threats through 2050 that ended in 2012. The batch includes 37 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents produced under it, on subjects such as warp drives, wormholes, antigravity and invisibility cloaking. All had already been public, but the new versions restore details that had been withheld, such as the offices that produced them. The Pentagon said the papers are “best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research,” CBS News reported, and should not be read as validating the concepts.

One 38-page technical study from 2010 describes three people, identified as antenna engineers, who reported symptoms after an unexplained aerospace-related event, CBS News reported. Its author concluded that some advanced systems may already be deployed without being fully understood, and the source of the exposure was not identified.

The video files include a 2025 infrared clip recorded over a U.S. military platform in the Middle East that shows six small spherical objects. EarthSky reported that U.S. Central Command estimated they were moving at about 480 mph and often changing direction; CBS News said the objects remain unexplained. CBS News also described four cellphone videos shot in Colorado in October 2023 that show silent objects with flashing lights, provided by local law enforcement, and a 2022 clip of an object moving at 80 to 180 mph.

The historical material centers on Air Force Capt. Edward Ruppelt, who later led Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s UFO study that ran from 1952 to 1969. In an audio recording from 1952, he said about 20% of roughly 800 reported sightings stayed unexplained after technical analysis, according to CBS News and EarthSky. NewsNation reported that the release also includes a 1950 report of an unidentified object off Okinawa and a 1953 document, previously public, describing abrupt changes of direction and accelerations as high as 965 times gravity.

The Pentagon announced on Monday, Sept. 14, a legal waiver allowing current and former Defense Department employees and contractors who are bound by nondisclosure agreements to share UAP-related information with the program, CBS News and EarthSky reported. EarthSky said it does not cover members of the intelligence community.

Officials have not drawn a conclusion about the origin of the objects. NewsNation noted that the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has said it found no verifiable evidence that any case it investigated involved extraterrestrial technology, and that many cases remain unresolved for lack of data.