Overview
- The Defense Department, which posted 161 files Friday, opened a public portal for declassified records on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.
- The tranche includes Apollo and Gemini mission materials such as Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 photos of unexplained lights and a Gemini VII audio transcript, with Pentagon captions noting no consensus on what the images show.
- Recent military reports describe unusual behavior, including a 2023 craft making multiple 90‑degree turns at about 80 mph, a 2022 object hitting the East China Sea with no visible splash, a 2023 case of a pilot’s weapons going offline near a small UAP, and a 2013 infrared video from the Middle East.
- The new war.gov/UFO site drew 340 million hits in its first 12 hours, according to chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.
- Officials and scientists say the material is often low‑quality or ambiguous and should destigmatize study rather than prove extraterrestrial tech, and the Pentagon says more declassified batches from multiple agencies will follow on a rolling basis.