The Pentagon has released 72 new UFO files detailing eyewitness accounts of mysterious objects in the sky including a spinning disc shooting beams of light, glowing red orbs, and a potato-shaped craft
Fresh UFO documents have been unveiled by the Trump administration, featuring several striking accounts of enigmatic aerial phenomena. One involved a spinning disc that emitted beams of light.
Another described a glowing red sphere of a colour the witness had never encountered before. Then there was the object likened to a potato, and also a bean, but covered in glistening, fish-like scales.
These were amongst the UFOs detailed in papers published on Friday by the Pentagon, marking the third disclosure since President Donald Trump instructed his administration to provide the public with complete transparency regarding what it understands about extraterrestrial life and puzzling sky objects.
The 72 documents unveiled on Friday don’t contain the sort of bombshell revelation that Mr Trump has hinted at. There’s no definitive proof of alien existence or governmental conspiracies.
However, the papers unveil fresh particulars about some recent encounters, alongside the government’s attempts to clarify what many consider baffling.
Consider, for example, the potato. It occurred in 2022, during a crisp February morning in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Five US Army personnel at Fort Carson emerged from an office building and spotted something peculiar suspended above Cheyenne Mountain, several miles to the west.
“The object was ‘potato’ shaped with distinct edges and appeared to look painted in a creamy/whitish opalescent color,” according to an account in an FBI document. It comprised “articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping and irregular shaped”.
It remained stationary, glistening, for approximately two minutes, the men recalled to the FBI. Then it disappeared in an instant.
None of the men carried phones with them. There is no footage and there are no photographs.
Officials charged with examining the incident stated they couldn’t account for it readily. Their report concluded – with “low confidence” – that it might have been “backscattering of sunlight”.
Dim light from the emerging sun could have bounced off the mountain’s snow and lit up low clouds overhead, it suggested.
The men maintained it was a bright, cloudless day. No aircraft or balloons were thought to be in the vicinity.
The four-page report, extensively censored and credited only to an “intelligence community partner”, stated it didn’t seem to be technology from a foreign adversary.
An FBI illustration appears exactly as one might expect – resembling a scaly, pale potato hovering above a low mountain. The case remains unresolved.
A similarly inconclusive report scrutinised a sequence of sightings in October 2023, this time by six federal law enforcement officers.
On multiple occasions, the officers reported, they witnessed a brilliant orange orb materialise above a ridgeline and produce two to four smaller red orbs.
The orbs vanished rapidly most of the time, but in one instance, the officers claimed an orb remained suspended motionless in the sky for several hours. The report stated there is no video or photographic evidence of the sightings.
An assessment dated this month examines a range of potential explanations. Military aircraft were carrying out training exercises in the region, with some deploying flares.
There may have been additional testing of experimental US technology in the vicinity, the report noted. It described these as “plausible” though not definitive explanations.
However, it didn’t dismiss the possibility that it involved some “unrecognised technology”.
With comparatively scant evidence available, it urged further investigation into the incident. The assessment was carried out by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, established by Congress in 2022 to examine reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).
Earlier reports from the agency indicate it has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial life. Amongst the latest files is an FBI report from February outlining a sighting in an undisclosed location in the north east United States.
An individual whose identity is redacted reported returning home to witness an intense light hovering beneath the trees in their rear garden. It was characterised as a sphere of “brilliant and beautiful” red, unlike anything the person had previously observed.
“Inside the red sphere, at the centre, there appeared to be what (redacted) described as a ‘white plasma sun’ about the size of a basketball,” according to the FBI file.
A second sphere materialised, and both silently departed from view, the file states. Mobile phone footage captures two glowing red orbs drifting across the heavens.
The White House posted the video on social media on Friday with no accompanying message beyond the file’s title: “‘NORTHEASTERN ORB SIGHTING,’ 2025.”
Thus far, the Trump administration’s openness initiative has resulted in the publication of roughly 300 files spanning back to the 1940s, some entirely fresh to the public and others providing additional details on previously known incidents.
The latest collection features a 2008 CIA document from Zimbabwe marked as “never before released”.
On a July afternoon above the nation’s primary airport, witnesses allegedly observed something resembling a scene from a Hollywood blockbuster: it was “disc-like in shape with a hollow center, and had a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe”.
“At one point during observation, ‘beams’ were observed emanating from the object,” the CIA document stated.
The illumination shifted colours, and the craft climbed high beyond sight, the document reveals.
Discussion arose regarding its origins, according to the document, with some proposing a foreign government while others suggested “extraterrestrial origins”.