The US Department of Defence published on Friday a sixth batch containing 71 files on unidentified anomalous phenomena, known as UAP and also described as unidentified flying objects, revealing documents, video footage and an audio recording dating from 1952 to 2025.
Sixth release reveals scale of withheld files
The Pentagon said the redactions were intended to protect the identities of witnesses, the locations of government facilities and potentially sensitive information about military sites unrelated directly to the reported phenomena.
It added that the files released under an order from President Donald Trump contained no redactions of information about the nature or existence of any incident reported as an unidentified anomalous phenomenon.
Military programme studied future air and space technologies
Among the most prominent materials are documents linked to the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications programme, established by the Defence Intelligence Agency in 2008 to study potential air and space threats extending decades into the future, before the programme ended in 2012.
One document explains that part of the future threat environment concerns advanced aerospace weapon system applications, and that the programme sought to understand the physics and engineering of those applications and their links to external threats through 2050.
According to the document, the initiative focused on breakthrough technologies and applications that could disrupt developing technological trends.
The batch includes 37 reference documents produced under the programme, covering subjects such as warp drives, wormholes, antigravity, negative-mass propulsion and cloaking technologies.
The 37 documents had been publicly available for years, including through previous Defence Intelligence Agency releases under the Freedom of Information Act. However, the new versions revealed details previously withheld by the agency, including the names of the agency offices that prepared the documents.
In accompanying notes, the Pentagon cautioned that the materials should be understood as “reference and synthesis products”, not original research, stressing that their release did not mean the concepts discussed had current official endorsement.
Several of these concepts are linked to ideas commonly presented in science-fiction works, without the publication of the studies proving that they can be applied in practice.
Study links aerial phenomena to human injuries
The documents include a 38-page technical study prepared in 2010 that analysed what it described as “evidence of inadvertent injuries to human observers from advanced and anomalous aerospace systems”.
Researchers recorded that three people who had previously been physically fit and active were exposed to an unusual aerospace incident and subsequently developed multiple medical symptoms.
The symptoms included heat, skin reddening and hair loss. The study said one person showed “signs of radiation sickness”, followed over several years by signs it described as malignant transformations.
The document did not identify the source of the exposure that caused the symptoms, but described the three people as antenna engineers.
The study’s author compared the cases with 42 published incidents and about 300 unpublished incidents of conventional injuries caused by radio frequencies whose radiation source was known.
The author concluded that the number of accurately reported incidents and the medical data collected supported the hypothesis that some advanced systems may already be in use, without the United States having a complete understanding of them.
That remains a conclusion attributed to the study’s author, not confirmation by the Pentagon that the hypothesis is correct.
Most of the released videos resemble material in previous batches, showing unclear recordings captured by military cameras of unexplained objects moving at different speeds.
Military recordings track unexplained objects regionally and internationally, as reported in the article itself.
A recording of an incident dating from 2022 shows a phenomenon estimated to have been travelling at between 80 and 180 miles per hour. An accompanying report says platform operators were carrying out a mission in the Middle East when they spotted several objects at unknown altitudes.
The crew estimated the objects to be between one and two metres in size and said they were flying sporadically within the target area.
Another recording from the Middle East concerns a report submitted by US Central Command to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
The file contains one minute of footage captured by an infrared sensor aboard a US military platform in 2025, showing about six objects moving together.
The report described the objects as six small clustered spheres that appeared agile and changed direction repeatedly. The report’s author estimated their speed at about 480 miles per hour, while the incident remained classified as unexplained.
The materials also include footage from the Yellow Sea submitted by US Indo-Pacific Command to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
The video was recorded in 2023 by an infrared sensor on a US military platform.
A 59-second recording from the East China Sea was also released. It was captured by a military platform in the same way during 2023 and submitted by the same command.
Four other videos came from local law enforcement agencies in Colorado, which submitted their reports to the Pentagon office tasked with investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena.
The Department of Defence said the partially blurred recordings were captured on mobile phone cameras in October 2023, using the rear camera of one of the devices.
An officer who prepared one of the reports described the phenomenon as “silent” and said it involved flashing red, blue and green lights.
These sightings were included in the new files without a conclusive explanation of the nature or source of the lights.
Historical materials released include video footage and a document about an incident near Tremonton, Utah, on 2 July 1952. It formed part of investigations by the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book. Delbert C.
Newhouse, a US Navy petty officer specialising in photography, reported seeing between 12 and 14 reflective objects and photographed the incident on colour motion-picture film with a handheld Bell & Howell Auto Master camera.
An Air Force assessment described Newhouse as an honest, reliable and experienced witness with more than 1,000 hours of aerial photography experience.
Investigators considered several possible explanations for the images, including sunlight reflecting off birds or balloons and the presence of a mirage effect, but initially did not reach a definitive identification of the objects.
Later assessments leaned more towards identifying the objects as seabirds reflecting sunlight, based on the possibility of distinguishing seabirds in the images and similar films showing birds as bright points of light in comparable conditions.
The files also included images of balloons known as “pillow balloons”, provided by General Mills Research Laboratories when the Tremonton recording was reviewed in late December 1952.
The review involved Blue Book staff, balloon specialists and representatives of General Mills Laboratories.
According to the Pentagon file, participants agreed that the objects closely resembled pillow balloons in flight and that their movement was consistent with that explanation. However, one laboratory representative remained less convinced, saying the objects appeared somewhat brighter and manoeuvred very rapidly.
The files also include a one-hour audio recording and transcript of statements made by Air Force officer Edward Ruppelt in 1952, in which he explained the service’s investigations into reports of unidentified flying objects.
Ruppelt said about 20% of the 800 reports examined by the Air Force remained unexplained. He added that investigators reviewed the reports and found that about 20% were very good reports submitted by highly reliable people, yet no conclusions could be drawn from them.
Ruppelt later ran Project Blue Book, which investigated reports of unidentified flying objects between 1952 and 1969. The new batch included other files linked to the programme.
The new release comes under a transparency order issued by the Trump administration to declassify and make government information about unidentified anomalous phenomena available to the public.
The Pentagon announced on Monday that it had created a legal exemption allowing current and former employees bound by non-disclosure agreements to share information related to these phenomena with the government.
