New Declassified Pentagon Files Reveal UFO Encounters

The U.S. Pentagon has published a fourth batch of declassified unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) files, expanding its public archive with dozens of new documents, videos and images that detail unexplained sightings reported by military personnel and federal agencies.

The release includes incidents near sensitive military sites, unusual airborne objects tracked by surveillance systems, along with additional historical records from NASA’s Apollo program.

The latest release adds 40 files to the government’s growing UAP archive. The collection includes 19 videos, 14 documents, four audio recordings, and three images sourced from the Pentagon, NASA, the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Energy. The files stem from President Donald Trump’s executive order directing agencies to declassify selected government records. Earlier batches became public in May and June.

Nuclear Site Encounter
One of the most detailed reports centers on an incident near the Pantex nuclear weapons plant outside Amarillo, Texas, on 1 September 2015. Two security officers responded after an unidentified object entered the facility’s airspace, prompting a temporary lockdown.

Witnesses described the object as diamond-shaped with a rounded top. Estimates placed it at roughly four feet tall and two feet wide. Accounts differed on its color, although everyone agreed it moved silently at about 10 to 15 mph.

The officers pursued the object but failed to close the distance. After stopping their vehicle, they examined it through binoculars and reported seeing no visible propulsion system. Investigators ultimately classified the encounter as non-threatening because the object never approached sensitive assets.

Military Tracking Challenges
Another file documents a 2019 range-fouler incident involving a surveillance aircraft. Military personnel observed a small rectangular object moving through restricted airspace during operations.

According to the report, the object displayed flight characteristics the crew had never encountered. It accelerated quickly enough to escape the aircraft’s tracking system before operators could maintain a lock.

A separate debrief from the same year describes another unusual sighting over the eastern United States. The reporting aviator wrote that the object showed flight behavior “unlike anything I had seen” during 28 years of Air Force and Navy service. He added that the object disappeared from the camera’s field of view before the crew could identify it. Other experienced personnel aboard the aircraft also could not explain what they observed.

Apollo Records Return
The release also broadens NASA‘s contribution to the public archive. Newly published material includes images of unidentified objects alongside mission debriefings from Apollo 14 and Apollo 17. Earlier document releases had already included records tied to the Apollo 12 and Gemini 7 missions.

Several newer military videos also draw attention. One recording captured over the Yellow Sea in 2023 appears to show an unidentified object interfering with electro-optical and infrared sensors. The nearly five-minute clip becomes progressively more degraded as the recording continues.

Another video resembles the long-rumored "jellyfish" or "floating brain" UAP. The footage, recorded over the Atlantic Ocean in 2020, shows a blob-like object with several narrow appendages hanging beneath it.

Some of the newest incidents occurred in 2025 within the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility. One military sensor tracked what analysts described as a six-pointed star-shaped contrast over the Yellow Sea. Another monitored an unidentified object over the East China Sea for several minutes. The Pentagon began releasing UAP files in May and says additional records will continue to appear as agencies complete declassification reviews.

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Researchers Found Clue On Hannibal's Alps Crossing

It's one of military history's most exciting chapters. In 218 BCE, Carthaginian general Hannibal crossed the Alps with a squadron of 37 war elephants to invade Italy.

While we can't say which route he used to cross this rugged terrain, a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) offers some new clues. The new analysis shows which of Hannibal's potential routes would have been less taxing on his 40,000 men, 7,000 horses and 37 war elephants. His best option likely would've been the Col de la Traversette, a pass with an altitude of 9,669 feet on the border between Italy and France.

Hannibal hailed from Carthage, a dominant ancient Phoenician city-state and empire in present-day Tunisia. During the Second Punic War, Carthage controlled North Africa's coast and the Iberian peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal). Rome sought to use its naval dominance to force its rival to surrender.

To bring the war right to Rome's doorstep, Hannibal led his army over the Alps from France into Italy. This was easier said than done, as it required traversing rugged terrain, snow, and ice, while surviving mountain passes that were controlled by local tribesmen who could attack them from above. However, going through the mountain range meant he could avoid Rome's fearsome navy on the Mediterranean and its army garrisons on land.

Only two primary sources of the event survive and were written 20 and 160 years after the event. And since no archaeological evidence is available, interpreting the events of the crossing is difficult. All modern theories depend on interpreting the three place names used by the writer Polybius (Island, Skaras, and Allobroges) and the wider range of tribe and place names written by Livy. Scholars then compare those locations with current geographical knowledge.

According to Livy's account, Hannibal marched his army across the Alps in just 16 days. However, Hannibal's entire military campaign took over roughly two months and ended up being very costly. Hannibal lost upwards of 20,000 men and Carthage ultimately lost the war.

Why he used elephants for the crossing is still unclear. He may have intended them to provide a tactical element of surprise during his first battles against the Romans. He also may have hoped that the wonder of seeing these elephants may help him help recruit the Celts of Northern Italy to his side.

In this new study, a team from the University of Oxford in the U.K., the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), and Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany evaluated the competing theories about which route over the mountains Hannibal took. Previously, historians believed that he may have taken the Col du Clapier, an 8,127 feet-high mountain pass between Savoy, France, and Piedmont, Italy.

The team used route modelling and elevation data, to estimate the energy cost of each possible Alpine crossing. They used data collected on how much energy modern African elephants would use to make a crossing like this, based on their body mass and the terrain.

Their results suggest that the Col de la Traversette would have been both the shortest and most energetically efficient route. When compared to the Travesette route, traveling via the Col de Montgenèvre would have required 11 percent more energy. Col du Clapier would have required 16 percent more, while Col du Mont Cenis needed 19 percent more energy.

The team's models also underscore what a physical challenge it was to move an army (and elephants) through the mountains. If they took the Traversette route, the men would have lost 19 percent of their body fat reserves, which may be one factor behind the high human mortality rate later in battle. Hannibal lost roughly 20,000 men by the end of the campaign.

Surprisingly, the new analysis suggests that the war elephants would have fared better on the crossing. Elephants would have only lost four percent of their fat reserves, based on the team's models. These high energy reserves likely explain why many, if not most, of the elephants survived.

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The Battle of Covadonga (720)

Occurring in about 720, the Battle of Covadonga was a clash between Muslim warriors and a much smaller Christians from Asturias in northern Spain, who were led by their king, Pelayo. It guaranteed the survival of a Christian foothold in Iberia and is sometimes described as the start of the Reconquista—the reconquest of Spain from its Umayyad rulers, who had invaded the peninsula only nine years earlier.

When Don Pelayo was elected king of Asturias around 718, he drew upon the climate of ill feeling among his subjects toward the Moorish rulers of the Muslim kingdom known as Al-Andalus, which occupied much of the Iberian Peninsula, and instigated a rebellion, refusing to pay tribute.

Rather than a single engagement, Covadonga can be seen as the final act in a series of rebellions starting in 718 and lasting for two to three years. During this time Pelayo had successfully repulsed attempts by the Moors to reassert control in Asturias.

In 720, a large force estimated at some 20,000 Moorish fighters was sent to Asturias to deal with the problem. After a series of minor defeats, Pelayo was forced to retreat into the mountains. Here he formed a defensive position in a gorge flanked by steep sides, taking shelter in a large cave with part of his force and deploying other detachments on either side of the gorge. Pelayo’s force was probably fewer than 500 men, but the terrain meant that a large frontal attack was impossible. On arrival, Al-Qama, the Moorish leader, sent surrender terms to Pelayo, who refused to accept them.

Al-Qama ordered his attack and sent his elite troops into the gorge. The Asturians fired arrows from both sides of the gorge, inflicting terrible casualties on the Moors, who were then pushed back by a sudden counterattack led by Pelayo. The Moors’ return fire was ineffective, and the arrows they shot upward toward their foe instead fell back and landed on their own men.

As the panicked Moors retreated, they were attacked by the Asturians, whose numbers were suddenly swelled by villagers who saw that victory might be possible. Some of the surviving Moors died in an avalanche while trying to flee across the surrounding mountains, while others drowned in the fast-flowing Deva River. Al-Qama himself was killed in the fighting. Afer the battle, Pelayo established his capital at nearby Cangas de Onís, ruling there until his death in 737.

Victory at Covadonga and the subsequent rout of the retreating Moors secured the independence of Asturias. This ensured that one small part of Iberia remained under Christian control.

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Spanish Wars of the Reconquista (717 to 1492)

The Moorish Empire was firmly established on the Hispanic Peninsula in 711 after the Battle of Guadalete.

The conquering Mohammedan armies vanquished the Visigoth kingdom in a stroke, and quickly over-ran much of the Iberian Peninsula. Their expansion was not permanently checked until they contended with the Frankish kingdom north of the Pyrenees, twenty years hence. By that time, the Moors controlled all of the Iberian Peninsula outside of the mountainous Christian Kingdom of Asturia in the Northwest.

The subsequent wars fought between Christian and Muslim powers on the Iberian Peninsula, over the next 750 years are often collectively referred to as the Reconquista, because the general trend over time was for the Christian kingdoms that originated in Asturia to gain territory from the Muslim Moors. But it took the Christians nearly 8 centuries to regain the region they had lost in one blow, and very few significant gains in territory were made until the 11th century.

The Wars of the Reconquista are relatively difficult to follow for those unfamiliar with Spanish history. They occurred intermittantly and were complicated by civil wars within both the Christian and Muslim kingdoms, so many of the battles were regional conflicts rather than part of a united Christian or Muslim front.

There were Muslims subjects living in Christian domains and Christian subjects living in Muslim domains; treachery and politicking abounded, and independent Christian princes sometimes allied themselves with Moors against their Christian enemies, and visa versa. The battles considered here are primarily those between Christian and Moorish powers. Civil wars within the Christian and Moorish kingdoms that occurred contemporaneously are dealt with elsewhere.

The region under Moorish control on the Iberian Peninsula was referred to as Andalusia, and within a few years of the Muslim conquest it included all of Spain except the Northwesternmost corner.

In 756 a new Emirate was formed, independent of the Caliph of Baghdad and Cordova was maintained as the Moorish capital. This city became a center for Moorish civilization and commerce, and for much of the ninth and tenth centuries, it was one of the most prosperous and cultured cities in Europe. It remained the Muslim capital until the early 11th century when Caliphate of Cordova collapsed entirely and the Moorish empire broke up into independent kingdoms.

Soon afterward two empires arose and fell in Muslim North Africa (the Almoravids, and the Almohads), and their leaders attempted to gain control of the Moorish kingdoms in Iberia. These Berber princes held court in Seville for much of the 12th and 13th centuries, but never consolidated all of the Muslim kingdoms under their control.

They spent much of their time fighting with Christian kingdoms to the north, and also with rival Muslim kingdoms. During these centuries the Christians made great gains against the divided Moors, and when Seville finally fell in 1248, the Muslim kingdom of Granada, which had already been established as a vassal state of Castile became the last remaining Muslim stronghold. Granada continued to thrive for over two centuries before the last of the Moorish kingdoms was driven from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 by Isabella and Ferdinand.

This historic battle at the Cave of Covadonga, is probably more properly considered as part of the Moorish Conquest of Spain that of the Reconquista—except for the fact that it was a Christian victory, and assured the survival of a sovereign Christian realm within Hispania. It is therefore often considered the first battle of the Reconquista even though almost all serious contention between the Christian kingdoms of Spain and the Moorish powers was delayed for at least 200 years.

It was the Frankish kingdom in Gaul, rather than the isolated and overwhelmed Christians of northern Spain, that opposed the Moorish expansion over the Pyrenees. Even after their decisive victory over the Moors at Tours in 732, the Franks continued to fight the Mohammedans, particularly over the coastal region of Catalonia.

In 778 however, the Franks, under the command of the great Christian warrior Charlemagne, withdrew all of their forces from Spain due to conflicts in Saxony. During their retreat over the pass of Roncevalles the rear guard was attacked, and this formed the basis of the legend of the "Death of Roland".

With the retreat of the Franks, the king of Asturia was officially recognized by the Pope as a sovererign Christian kingdom within Spain. From this beginning, the kingdoms of Leon and Castile, which were to eventually reconquer all of Spain and Portugal for Christiandom, eventually emerged.

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The Moorish Conquest Of Spain (711 to 732)

In 711 A.D. a wave of Berber Moors crossed the straight of Gibralter and swept into Hispania. The Visigoth kingdom, which had held sway on the Iberian Peninsula for almost 300 years, was divided by a recent civil war, and had neither the leadership, nor unity to resist the invasion.

Stories of treachery by disgruntled Jews and exiled enemies of Roderic, the Visigoth king, abounded. It was even said that Count Julian, a fierce rival of the Visigoth king, had invited the Moors to help overthrow the hated Roderic, and that several important towns, including Toledo, had turned in favor of the conquerors.

In any case, the Visigoth resistance was utterly inadequate, and after making a desperate stand at the Guadalete River, the national government collapsed. Several towns resisted the invaders and were besieged, but there was no further organized resistance from the Visigoths, and within a few years the Moors had swept over most of the Iberian Peninsula.

There were a few notable Visigoth heroes however. Theodomir was a Visigoth knight who heroically fended off an army of Moors, but ultimately surrendered his town on favorable terms. Pelistes was a valiant noble who tried in vain to hold the town of Cordova, but was ultimately captured. More significant was Pelayo, who led a band of Visigoths and native Iberians north where they held out for several years in mountain fastnesses. This band of Christian refugess grew over the years, and about 10 years after the Moorish invasion successfully defended themselves from Moorish incursions at the Battle of Covadonga. This small Christian stronghold in the northern mountains eventually grew into the kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, and Castile, and Pelayo is credited with laying the seed of the Christian Reconquest of Spain.

Although the Moors met with no significant Visigoth resistance, when they ventured into territory north of the Pyrenees they encountered the more formidable Franks.

Their first defeat at the hands of the Franks was delivered by Odo, the Duke of Aquitaine, who rescued the city of Toulouse from a desperate seige in 721. The Moors were so severely defeated in this action that they did not make another attempt to invade Gaul for ten years.

When a new Moorish governor came to power in 730 however, he raised another army and prepared for a new invasion of Gaul, with the obvious ambition of conquering all of civilized Europe for the Mohammedans. The Moslem army invaded Gaul in 732, took the city of Bordeaux by storm, and obliterated Odo's army of Franks at the battle of Garonne River.

Odo escaped and sought the help of Charles Martel, the hero of the battle of Tours. This battle, which is considered on of the most significant in western history, was very hard fought and was reputed to have lasted for several days, but ended in a complete victory for the Christians and the death of the Moorish commander.

The Battle of Tours effectively ended the Muslim incursions into Gaul. The following decade saw the fall of the Umayyad dynasty altogether, and the establishment of a Moorish dynasty in Cordova independent of the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad.

During the following fifty years, the tables turned, when a large army of Franks under Charlemagne crossed the Pyrenees into Hispania and attacked Muslim kingdoms in the region. The depredations of the Franks against the Moors ended only in 778 when a rebellion in Saxony caused Charlemagne to recall his army, but by that time, the impulse of the Moors in Spain to carry their conquests into the Frankish dominions of Gauls was permanently checked.

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