US releases documents on hundreds of cases of ‘flying saucers and fireballs’

“The US Department of Defense today released a second round of declassified documents related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), at the previous request of President Donald Trump,” the Pentagon announced on its website on May 22. UAP is what the agency calls unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the documents include text, images and videos of UAPs that have caused much speculation. “Now is the time for the American people to see with their own eyes,” Mr. Hegseth said.

Reuters said the release included 222 documents and one of these was 116 pages long, recording a series of sightings of strange objects and investigations at a top secret facility in Sandia, New Mexico, from 1948 to 1950. The documents did not provide clear evidence of alien technology or life.

“This document includes 209 sightings of ‘green balls, flying saucers and fireballs’ near military bases,” according to the Pentagon.

A newly released video recorded from the US Coast Guard’s infrared sensor in April 2024 shows a strange object flying near an aircraft in the southeast of the country.

The documents include a report from a senior US intelligence officer in 2025, in which he said he saw “two large bright balls” appear next to their helicopter while on duty. The officer described the objects as “orange in color with a white or yellow core, emitting light in all directions.”

Fighters were then dispatched to identify these objects but were unsuccessful, according to the officer. The very spheres they encountered later were “chasing” the fighters.

“We were almost dumbfounded after witnessing those phenomena,” this person said.

On May 8, the Pentagon released more than 160 new documents about UAP, the first declassification of information requested by President Trump in February, including records from the late 1940s. These documents were posted on a Pentagon UFO site.

In February, Mr. Barack Obama caused a stir with his statement that “aliens are real” on a podcast. Although the former US president has corrected himself, many people still believe that this is “a slip of the tongue that revealed the biggest secret in history”.

In the US, reviewing UFO records is not without precedent. In the 1990s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reviewed everything they had collected and concluded that most UFOs were actually top-secret spy planes. However, such official conclusions have not satisfied the UFO interest community.