Ufo, Pentagon publishes second tranche of files

The US Department of Defence has released 64 more documents on UAPs, the unidentified anomalous phenomena known to the general public as UFOs, updating the dedicated military portal with six pdfs, seven audio files and no less than fifty-one videos. The new release comes two weeks after the first release of declassified materials, which had already included FBI files, accounts of sightings by military pilots and some images collected during NASA missions. Both releases follow the executive order signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year, in which the administration pledged to make all government material relating to anomalous phenomena and the possibility of extraterrestrial life accessible to the American public. A subject that Trump had described as being of 'great interest', although he declared that he personally did not know whether aliens really existed.

Among the most significant contents of the second instalment is the direct testimony of an intelligence officer about an incident in 2025, which has remained classified to this day, and which allegedly left him and other staff members 'virtually speechless'. Also attracting particular attention was footage of the February 2023 shooting down of an unidentified object over Lake Huron by a US fighter jet, one of the most talked-about episodes of the sightings season that had held the international media headlines for weeks. In the videos from the Middle East - one from 2019 over the Persian Gulf, recorded 'probably by an infrared sensor on board a US military platform operating in the area of responsibility of Central Command', according to the Pentagon's description, and one from 2022 off the coast of Iran - formations of three and four objects in coordinated flight appear respectively. A third clip, filmed in Syria in 2021, shows an object moving away with such acceleration that it is compared in the acts themselves to the 'warp' of science fiction. In contrast, a clip from October 2022, from an undisclosed location, depicts a cigar-shaped entity flying low over what appears to be a residential area.

The images, mostly taken by infrared sensors on military platforms, have the grain and resolution limitations typical of that type of instrumentation and are not accompanied by any official explanation. Few of the filmed objects resemble classic flying saucers or the shapes traditionally associated with UFO imagery: the documented reality appears, if possible, even more elusive than the established iconography. The Pentagon's Office of Multi-Domain Anomaly Resolution (AARO) has reiterated that it has no evidence pointing to an extraterrestrial origin for any of the objects observed in videos or described in written accounts. "The public can ultimately form its own opinion about the information contained in these files," the 8 May statement read, with a not insignificant clarification on the methodological level: "Many of these materials do not have a verified chain of custody."

The information was gathered from a heterogeneous set of sources - various branches of the armed forces, the FBI, the State Department and NASA - and the release was also at the explicit urging of some House members. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth framed the operation as 'concrete proof' of the Trump administration's approach to institutional transparency, stressing that those documents 'long hidden behind classification have fuelled legitimate speculation' and that 'it is only right that the American people can finally see them for themselves'. A rhetoric that also serves to reinforce the narrative of breaking with previous administrations, implicitly accused of handling the dossier with excessive opacity.

The issue, after all, has fascinated the American public - and not only - for generations, fuelling decades of conspiracy theories about alleged government cover-ups. Trump's choice to make it a flag of transparency fits into this groove, turning an issue that has long remained on the fringe of official debate into a political act with strong symbolic value. The Pentagon has already announced a third tranche of materials, expected 'in the near future': the dossier is evidently still far from over.