The Trump administration on Friday launched a new website that the Pentagon says will house a collection of “new, never-before-seen” files on UFOs. (And yes, we’re apparently okay with calling them UFOs again, which is the URL to the new website war.gov/ufo.)
In an audience announcement by the Department of Defense – which was renamed the War Department under Trump – the first wave of files on the site will include files containing videos, photos and original source documents from across the US government. The materials have been checked for safety reasons, but many have “not yet been analyzed to resolve any discrepancies,” the ministry statement said.
The collection will also grow over time as additional files are “rollingly” released, the report said.
The release of the documents follows the December 2017 news report, Broken Door The New York Times, Politicsand others, about a secret $22 million Pentagon program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which had investigated military encounters with unknown objects.
Since then, public interest in UAPs, now the modern term for UFOs, has increased, fueling increasing concerns about what is in our skies, as was the case with the 2024 US drone sightings. Figuring out what’s truly unexplained is complicated by the fact that our skies look very different than they have in years past, thanks to things like SpaceX launches and satellites. That’s why a collection of military intelligence-backed files is interesting.
News of the government’s funding of the Pentagon program has also had an impact pop culture in recent years, as evidenced by films like 2023’s “Jules,” about a man’s kinship with an alien that crashed in his backyard; ‘Bugonia’, which deals with conspiracy theories surrounding aliens among us; and in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film “Day of the unveiling”, which refers to government cover-ups surrounding this subject.
Years ago, such a release of UFO files would have been big news, but today many Americans are more concerned about daily pressures such as the war in Iran and its impact on gas prices, the ever-rising cost of living, job losses attributed to AI, healthcare, climate change, and other more relevant issues.
According to the Pentagon, the release of the UFO files is the result of a multi-agency effort called the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). This initiative includes the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Department of Energy (DOE), the DOD All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and components of other U.S. intelligence agencies.
Forward, independent news site 404 Media saw in March that the Executive Office of the President had registered the domain aliens.gov; however, that site is currently inactive.
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