The Pentagon released a third batch of declassified UFO-related documents on June 12, adding more than 50 previously classified files to its growing public archive of unidentified anomalous phenomena — none of which contain definitive evidence of extraterrestrial activity, according to USA Today.
Documents from the CIA, FBI, and military branches were uploaded to the Defense Department's online archive under the umbrella of a Trump executive initiative called PURSUE — short for Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, according to The Guardian. The government stated it "is unable to make a definitive determination on the nature of the observed phenomena," calling all cases unresolved.
Among the newly released materials is an FBI field report describing a Feb. 26, 2026, interview with two witnesses who told agents they observed a silent, meter-wide red sphere hovering in their backyard, with what they described as a "white plasma sun" inside it. A second orb appeared and the two objects moved away in formation, according to USA Today.
One CIA document concerns a 2008 episode in Zimbabwe in which an object seen above Harare international airport was described in agency records as resembling a disc, emitting beams of light, and displaying what witnesses characterized as rotating lights along its underside. The report floated two competing theories to account for it — that it belonged to a foreign government's surveillance program, or that it was of extraterrestrial origin — but reached no conclusion, according to The Guardian.
Military witnesses in Colorado Springs filed a 2022 report describing something in the sky that reminded them of an "angular, non-symmetrical potato." An initial review suggested the explanation was ordinary — sunlight bouncing off mountain snowpack onto low clouds — but AARO, the government's anomaly resolution office, dismissed that finding as low-confidence and kept the case open, according to The Guardian.
Sean Kirkpatrick, who previously led the all-domain anomaly resolution office, offered a dismissive verdict on the document releases when he spoke to Scientific American. "Without any analysis or context, [it] will only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and armchair pseudoscience," he told Scientific American, according to The Guardian.
Since the Defense Department's UAP file site went live on May 8, 2026, it has drawn upward of 1.7 billion visits from around the world, according to USA Today. The Pentagon said additional releases are planned.