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The Trump administration on Friday launched a new website that will house a collection of “new, never-before-seen” files about UFOs, according to the Pentagon. (And yes, we’re apparently okay with calling them UFOs again, as the URL to the new website is war.gov/ufo.)
In a public announcement by the Defense Department — which, under Trump, rebranded as the Department of War — the initial set of files housed on the site will include those containing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entire U.S. government. The materials have been reviewed for security purposes, but many have “not yet been analyzed for resolution of any anomalies,” the Department’s statement read.
The collection will also grow over time as additional files are released on a “rolling basis,” it noted.
The release of the documents follows the December 2017 news story, broken by The New York Times, Politico, and others, about a $22 million classified Pentagon program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which had been investigating military encounters with unknown objects.
Since then, interest in UAPs, now the modern term for UFOs, has grown among the public, fueling increased concerns about what’s in our skies, as was the case with the 2024 U.S. drone sightings. Figuring out what’s truly unexplained has been complicated by the fact that our skies look much different from in years past, thanks to things like SpaceX launches and satellites. That’s why a collection of military intelligence-backed files is interesting.
The news of the government’s funding of the Pentagon program has also influenced pop culture in recent years, as reflected in films like 2023’s “Jules” about a man’s kinship with an alien who crashed in his backyard; “Bugonia,” which deals with conspiracy theories around aliens among us; and in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film “Disclosure Day,” which references government cover-ups around the topic.
Years ago, such a release of UFO files would have been major news, but today many Americans are more concerned about daily pressures, like the Iran war and its impact on gas prices, the ever-growing cost of living, job losses blamed on AI, healthcare, climate change, and other more pertinent issues.
According to the Pentagon, the release of the UFO files is the result of an interagency effort, 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’s 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.
Ahead of this, independent news site 404 Media spotted in March that the Executive Office of the President had registered the domain aliens.gov; however, that site is not active at this time.
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