You would think that, in the middle of a war that is having catastrophic effects on the world economy, the US ‘Department of War’ might have better things to do than release UFO files. But you’d be wrong, as on Friday the Pentagon released a whole bunch of UFO files on their very own website (war.gov/ufo, if you don’t mind) for everyone to browse.

This first release (there are more to come) is comprised of 119 PDFs, 28 video files, and 14 images. Quite a few of the PDFs are old files (as in from the 1940s to the 1960s) from the FBI, NASA, Department of State and the Department of Defense, a number of which have already been released in some form – although the newly released files do in some cases have less redactions and more pages. Some of the NASA files are reports by the Gemini and Apollo astronauts of unidentified objects that they witnessed. Other PDFs are more recent, though they are things like ‘Range fouler’ reports of objects seen in controlled airspace, and offer little in the way of further details about objects seen.

A bunch of the videos are more recent – but don’t expect to see detailed, high-resolution captures of alien spacecraft. They follow the now-familiar template of being infrared sensor videos of small, unidentified blobs appearing to fly quickly across various landscapes – which could easily be balloons, drones, or detritus caught in wind. (You often will need to full-screen them to be able to see the object in question, due to their small size.)

For those wishing to try and identify all the extraterrestrial spacecraft in the tranche of new images and videos, we offer this handy guide (via John E.L. Tenney):

Okay, that’s a joke – but that’s about the extent of what you’ll find in the newly released files: specks and blobs, and a lot of older files and reports that we already know about. While this release of UFO files by the US government was a sure-fire news headline hit across the globe – and will thus be the subject of much talk among the general public – for ufologists and those with some knowledge of the topic, this release certainly falls a bit flat. Especially when some members of the administration have been intimating they’ve been shown extraordinary things in classified briefings.

John Greenewald Jr, who runs the Black Vault site dedicated to chasing down and storing declassified government materials, stated plainly that the files released so far suggest that the government was “picking from the bottom of the barrel” – and that rather than being revelatory, these files were instead really just another obstacle to learning the truth about the UFO phenomenon.

“This isn’t a victory lap for those wanting the truth,” Greenewald stated on his X account. “It’s another obstacle that is misdirection disguised as ‘transparency’.”

Maybe there will be more interesting things in future releases, but its difficult to understand why – if there was anything really worthwhile – they didn’t lead with that. Especially at a time when the Trump administration really needs to distract the public from a whole slew of bad publicity – including, ironically, another set of documents whose release remains incomplete, the Epstein files.

Even MAGA champion Marjorie Taylor Greene seemed to know what the score was: “I really don’t care about the UFO files. I just don’t,” she wrote on X. “I’m so sick of the “look at the shiny object” propaganda while they wage foreign wars, let rapist and pedophiles run free, and ruin the value of our dollar. Unless they roll out live aliens and test demo UFOs or actually admit what we know this really is then I have way better things to do on this Friday.”

You and me both Marjorie.

Links from around the web for more information on this topic:

• Official website for the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE)
• John Greenewald Jr’s X thread of all the UFO videos released in this drop
• Pentagon Releases Files on U.F.O.s (New York Times)
• The UFO community has been waiting for answers. Has the Pentagon delivered? (BBC)
• Hovering objects and flashing lights: what we learned from UFO documents released by the Pentagon (BBC)
• ‘Orbs,’ ‘Saucers,’ and ‘Flashes’ on the Moon: Pentagon Drops New UFO Files (Wired)
• The Pentagon just started releasing UFO files, but skeptics say they’re not impressed (Scientific American)