Latest US release of UFO files reveals strange lights but few hard facts

In July 2025, at approximately 2100 local time in the north-eastern United States, an eyewitness observed an intense bright light in their backyard as they parked their car upon returning home from work. Photograph: War Department In July 2025, at approximately 2100 local time in the north-eastern United States, an eyewitness observed an intense bright light in their backyard as they parked their car upon returning home from work. Photograph: War Department Latest US release of UFO files reveals strange lights but few hard facts New batch of government documents takes no position on origin of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) A possible UFO sighting over a busy southern African airport, and yet more mysterious glowing orbs in the sky above the US feature in the latest batch of previously classified documents released by the Pentagon on Friday in its stated quest for “transparency” amid the irrepressible debate about the chances of extraterrestrial life. In keeping with the first two document drops of government papers last month, Friday’s tranche of more than 50 files contains no proof that the tantalizing videos and written accounts of possible alien encounters are anything other than perception, vivid imagination or conspiracy theories. Despite the assurance by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth , that the release “demonstrates the Trump administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency”, the Pentagon repeats the disclaimer that everything contained in the hundreds of files released so far are “unresolved cases”. The government “is unable to make a definitive determination on the nature of the observed phenomena”, it states. Pentagon releases second batch of UFO videos and first-hand testimony Read more The releases feature “plenty of black-and-white murk but nothing that looks even a little like an alien spacecraft”, Adam Kirsch, a senior editor at the Atlantic, wrote drily last month in a column entitled The Truth Is Still Out There. Friday’s batch includes reports of strange glowing orbs hovering above an unidentified north-eastern US city in 2025 and 2026 that piqued the FBI’s interest enough to dispatch two agent investigators to interview witnesses who reported fast-moving red and white objects. One of the witnesses, according to the FBI report, stated he “had always been interested in the topic of UAP [unidentified aerial phenomena]” and in 1987 claimed to have seen flashing red lights in the sky “like the front end of Kit from the tv show nightrider ”. Another document recalls a summer 2008 incident in Zimbabwe, when the CIA became concerned about a report of an “unidentified object hovering at high altitude over Harare international airport”. The disc-like object, which was reported as having “a series of rotating lights on the underside” and “beams” of light emanating from it, could have been “an advanced reconnaissance device belonging to a foreign government”, or “an unidentified flying object of extraterrestr