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Published 10:02 11 Jul 2026 GMT
The Pentagon has released 19 new UFO videos as part of its fourth batch of declassified files, including infrared footage of an object in the Middle East that appears to change shape mid-flight before altering direction at high speed.
The files were published on Friday on the government's dedicated UFO site, WAR.GOV/UFO, as part of the PURSUE programme ordered by President Trump earlier this year.
The fourth batch contains 40 files in total, including military sensor footage, historical documents dating back to the 1940s, and first-hand accounts from serving personnel.
The Pentagon has classified all of them as 'unresolved cases', meaning it cannot explain what the objects are.
The clip was captured in 2023 by an infrared sensor aboard a US military platform operating in the Middle East.
It shows a UAP, or unidentified anomalous phenomenon, that appears to change form before shifting direction at speed.
The footage runs for 10 seconds and was submitted to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon's dedicated UFO investigation unit, by US Central Command.
It is one of several clips in the latest release that have drawn immediate attention online.
Well, there was a lot. Among the most striking files:
A 2020 video from the Atlantic Ocean appears to match long-rumoured footage of a 'floating brain' type UAP.
It shows a blob-shaped object with narrower sections dangling beneath it, filmed by a military sensor platform.
The object moves steadily but at an unknown speed.
A 2023 clip from the Yellow Sea shows a UAP that appeared to interfere with the military's own equipment.
The footage runs for nearly five minutes, during which the electro-optical and infrared sensors progressively degrade. The image gets worse the longer the object is on screen.
A 2024 video from the South China Sea, running for one minute and 46 seconds, shows a string-like UAP slicing through clouds on infrared.
A photograph appears to capture an object approaching Earth from low orbit. The figure is small and bright but appears to be heading towards the surface.
A separate video shows a glowing UAP with six prongs of light coming off it, flying at a steady but unidentified speed.
In the same clip, an object resembling the 'jellyfish UFO' previously reported over Iraq in the late 2010s can be seen moving through clouds in the distance.
One first-hand account, filed through a 2019 Navy reporting system, describes a sighting over the eastern United States by a military aviator with 28 years of experience across the Air Force and Navy. He described the object as 'unlike anything I had seen'.
The batch also includes files going back to the late 1940s.
A 1949 document details a conference held to discuss sightings of 'green fireballs' near Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the site where the first nuclear weapons were developed.
The attendees included prominent scientists, some of whom had worked on the Manhattan Project.
The green fireballs had been appearing repeatedly over sensitive military installations and could not be explained.
A 1948 document from Project Sign, one of the US government's earliest formal efforts to investigate UFO reports, contains 100 sighting reports filed between 1947 and 1948.
Project Sign was eventually succeeded by Project Blue Book, which ran until 1969.
A series of NASA images from the 1996 STS-80 Space Shuttle Columbia mission shows a small triangular or cone-shaped object photographed by astronauts in orbit.
The Pentagon began releasing files on May 8, following Trump's executive order directing the declassification of government records related to UAPs and extraterrestrial life.
Three batches were published before this one, on May 8, May 22, and June 12.
The first batch included archival photos, military video and documents related to NASA's Apollo 12, Apollo 17 and Gemini 7 missions, during which astronauts reported unexplained sightings.
The second included a first-hand account from a senior intelligence officer who described a series of close encounters lasting over an hour from a military helicopter.
He wrote that he observed 'countless orange orbs swarming in all directions against the backdrop of the mountain' and said he was 'virtually speechless after these observations'.
The third batch included testimony from five FBI agents who reported seeing strange orbs on the horizon in 2023.
One recalled his partner asking: "Are you seeing this?"
It also included a 2008 CIA report about a disc-shaped object with rotating lights seen above an airport in Zimbabwe, which was transmitted to the White House Situation Room.
Previous releases have also shown footage of UFOs near foreign submarines, objects moving at speeds that appear impossible under known physics, and silent hovering orbs observed over US military bases.
Former senior Defence Department official Christopher Mellon has said these incursions happen 'hundreds' of times a year, including one incident where UAPs violated airspace over Langley Air Force Base for 17 consecutive days.
The Pentagon has previously stated that it has found no confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial life.
But it has also acknowledged that these cases remain unresolved, meaning it cannot rule it out either.
Mixed, as always.
UFO researchers have pointed to the shapeshifting footage and the Yellow Sea sensor degradation as the most significant clips in any of the four batches so far.
Sceptics have noted that most of the videos remain blurry, ambiguous, and open to multiple interpretations.
TMZ described the footage as 'head-scratching' and asked readers: "If seeing is believing, what do you make of what you saw?"
The Debrief, a defence and intelligence publication, noted that 'most of the new videos leave much to the imagination'.
The Pentagon has said it will continue to release additional files on a rolling basis.
All four batches of declassified files are available on the Pentagon's PURSUE site at WAR.GOV/UFO.
The site includes video, photographs, historical documents, and detailed descriptions of each file, including when and where the footage was captured and which military or government agency submitted it.
The fifth batch has not yet been given a release date.
