E.T., is that you? The existence of UFOs -- now referred to as UAPs, meaning unidentified anomalous phenomena -- has entered serious public and governmental discourse. The Department of War has just released a batch of new, previously unseen files related to the topic. The file collection is now available on war.gov/ufo, and the department plans to release additional files on a rolling basis.
The release currently includes 120 PDFs, 28 videos and 14 image files, according to CBS News.
"I applaud President Trump's whole-of-government effort to bring greater transparency to the American people on unidentified anomalous phenomena," said Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, in a statement. "At NASA, our job is to bring the brightest minds and most advanced scientific instruments to bear, follow the data, and share what we learn. We will remain candid about what we know to be true, what we have yet to understand, and all that remains to be discovered.
I took a look at some of the files to see how much evidence there is for aliens. The answer is not very much right now, but I found quite a few interesting and unusual files in there.
Archival imagery from the Apollo 17 mission to the moon. The yellow box highlights an enlarged section of the original photo showing three lights above the lunar terrain.
NASA-UAP-VM6, Apollo 17, 1972/US Department of WarOne notable release, reported on by CBS News, includes a set of six photos taken on the moon by NASA astronauts during the Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions, with boxes indicating "areas of interest." The area appears to show three dots in the sky in a triangular formation.
Another file, according to Fox News, contains a 1965 transcript of a conversation between astronauts James Lovell and Frank Borman and the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center) in Houston.
In the transcript, Borman reported seeing something he couldn't identify. "It looks like hundreds of particles going by to the left out about three or four miles," Borman said. He also confirmed that the sighting was not the booster debris at the control center.
The files aren't limited to just early sightings. According to AP, there are many recent files, including a 2023 military report that sighted a UAP flying above the ocean surface and making multiple 90-degree turns at high speed.
Another from September 2023 includes an FBI interview with a drone pilot who reported seeing a linear object that was so bright that they could see bands within the light in the sky.
The documents also include 20 video files depicting objects captured by military sensors at locations from around the world, including Syria, Japan and North America. The objects include fast-moving specks and even a football-shaped object spotted over the East China Sea.
So is this proof of aliens? There are certainly numerous eyewitness reports, interviews and other official documents that detail unusual UAPs. Still, at the moment, nothing explicitly jumps out and says "alien" but rather indicates natural phenomena, technology from geopolitical rivals and other possibilities.
Representatives for the White House and NASA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
