STORY: :: U.S. Department of Defense handout
:: Given as Unidentified Location, Middle East / Given as January 1, 2013
:: An analyst says Pentagon’s UFO files show no strong evidence of aliens
:: Sacramento, California / May 8, 2026
:: Mick West, Unidentified anomalous phenomena analyst
“I think what we have here is quantity over quality. A lot of the files that we have are old files, old files from the FBI that were released years ago, and some of them dating back to the forties and fifties. And the videos, which I was most interested in, are really not particularly interesting. The videos with all the information on the screen redacted. So we have black boxes covering the numbers that will tell you what’s actually going on in the video. And then all we see is little white dots moving around on the screen. And we’re unable to identify them because they’re so small. So, unfortunately, the videos are not that interesting. And we hear lots of interesting stories, though. There’s lots of pilot reports and mission reports in this drop of documents that are interesting on the face of them. But we have no way of verifying them and when they’re paired up with a video. The video really doesn’t match what the pilot is saying. So we really don’t have anything like a smoking gun that really gives us great evidence of any kind of advanced technology and certainly not something like extraterrestrials.”
:: Given as Unidentified Location / Given as January 1, 2024
:: Given as Unidentified Location, Middle East / Given as January 1, 2020
:: Given as United Arab Emirates / Given as October 1, 2023
:: Given as Iraq / Given as December 1, 2022
The Pentagon said the release was aimed at providing what it called ‘unprecedented transparency’ to the American people.”
The disclosure of the long-sought documents and photos of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” will be followed by future releases as more materials are declassified, the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement.
Reuters could not independently confirm dates and locations of the photos and videos released.
Trump was the latest president to release U.S. government reports on UFOs, a disclosure process that began in the late 1970s. Experts said the batch of around 160 files released on Friday contained new videos of known sightings but gave no conclusive evidence of alien technology or extraterrestrial life.
Some critics cast the UFO disclosures as a distraction from Trump’s political woes, including the unpopular U.S. military campaign against Iran and public pressure to release further files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The records release is likely to fuel fresh debate over government secrecy and the possible existence of life in the cosmos.