The Pentagon has released 41 declassified UFO files, adding new Pentagon UFO videos, renderings and documents to a public record that now stretches from 1953 to this year. The latest batch includes footage from the Middle East and Pacific Ocean, giving readers another look at material that was once sealed inside the US defence department.
The release includes over a dozen videos, three images and a score of PDF documents. One video from the Gulf of Oman in 2021 appears to show a dark cold orb moving in irregular patterns, while another from the Middle East in 2025 shows a round sphere travelling in a straight line over an urban residential area.
President Trump and 161 files
President Trump called for the documents to be released in an executive order earlier this year, and the US defence department uploaded the first tranche of 161 files on 8 May. The Pentagon has since moved through five drops, with the newest batch adding 41 more items rather than closing the record.
That matters because the release is not just a single video drop. It combines moving images, still images and written files, so researchers can compare what the camera captured with the language used to describe it. One declassified FBI document also says a former military pilot saw lights in the sky in October 2023 on a flight between Boston and Dublin.
1953 memo and older cases
The historical record cuts both ways. A 1953 PDF document from the US Naval Photographic Interpretation Center says two videos from Montana in 1950 and Utah in 1952 showed objects whose characteristics were inconsistent with those of natural phenomena. That sits alongside newer files described as mysterious or unexplained, showing that the government’s own record has long mixed uncertainty with formal evaluation.
The oldest document in the latest release dates to 1953, while the most recent is from this year. All of the images are renderings, including one of a vast dark triangle with round lights at each corner based on a first-hand encounter reported by two former US military service members in the summer of 2011.
Middle East and Pacific Ocean
Among the footage, a black sphere in a 2019 Pacific Ocean clip appears, disappears and then reappears while quivering and drifting from left to right. The description says the imagery was captured by a sensor and the display itself was recorded using a handheld device.
For the public, the immediate change is access: 41 more files, more video, and a longer paper trail. For researchers, the harder task is separating description from explanation, especially where the same archive holds both unexplained material and an older memo saying two earlier objects did not match natural phenomena. What the Pentagon says about the 2025 Middle East sphere and the other newly released videos is now the pressure point in the story.
