The Trump Administration on Friday launched a new website that will host a collection of “new, never-before-seen” files on UFOs, according to the Pentagon. (And yes, we’re apparently okay with calling them UFOs again, since the new website’s URL is war.gov/ovni.)
in public advertisement by the Department of Defense, which under Trump was renamed the Department of War, the initial set of files hosted on the site will include those containing videos, photographs and original documents of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) from across the US government. The materials have been reviewed for security reasons, but many “have not yet been analyzed to resolve anomalies,” the Department’s statement read.
The collection will also grow over time as additional files are released on an ongoing basis, he noted.
The publication of the documents follows the December 2017 news, divided by The New York Times, politicaland others, about a classified $22 million 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 greater concerns about what is in our skies, as was the case with the 2024 US drone sightings. Figuring out what’s truly inexplicable has been complicated by the fact that our skies look very different than in years past, thanks to things like SpaceX launches and satellites. That’s why a collection of files backed by military intelligence is interesting.
News about government funding of the Pentagon program has also influenced pop culture in recent years, as reflected in films such as 2023’s “Jules” about a man’s kinship with an alien that crash-landed in his backyard, “Bugonia,” which deals with conspiracy theories surrounding aliens among us, and in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film “Disclosure Day”, which refers to government cover-ups around the issue.
Years ago, a release of UFO files would have been major news, but today many Americans are more concerned about daily pressures such as the Iran war and its impact on gas prices, the rising cost of living, job losses attributed to artificial intelligence, health care, 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 Disclosure 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 DOW’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and components of other US intelligence agencies.
Ahead of this, independent 404Media news site It was also discovered 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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