PURSUE UFO Files: Pentagon Drops Sixth Batch, 1952 Tape

The Pentagon dropped its sixth batch of UFO files on Friday, according to reporting on the release, and this one might be the strangest yet. The release, part of the government's PURSUE UFO files disclosure program, adds 71 files to the public archive: documents on a secretive military program that paid for studies of warp drives and wormholes, grainy new videos of unexplained objects, and an hour-long audio recording from 1952 in which the Air Force's first UFO chief admitted that a fifth of the sightings he reviewed were still a mystery.

The new files run the gamut from Cold War sightings to incidents filmed as recently as 2025. Documents range from 1952 to 2025, and 64 of the 71 files contain redactions. Believers will read the release as more evidence that the government knew more than it ever said. Skeptics will call it a heavily redacted document dump padded with science fiction reading material. Both sides have plenty to argue about.

What's inside the files

Most of the attention is going to the documents from the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, a Defense Intelligence Agency initiative set up in 2008 to study aerospace threats decades into the future. The program ended in 2012, but its paperwork lives on: 37 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents, or DIRDs, covering warp drives, wormholes, antigravity, negative mass propulsion, and invisibility cloaking.

Many of the DIRDs were already public through earlier Freedom of Information Act requests, but the new versions include details the agency had previously withheld, like the names of the offices that produced them. The Pentagon is quick to manage expectations. In notes accompanying the documents, it says the DIRDs are "best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research" and that they "should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed."

One document stands out. A 38-page, highly technical study from 2010 examines "evidence of unintended injury to human observers by anomalous advanced aerospace systems." Researchers recounted that three previously fit and active individuals experienced an anomalous aerospace-related event and later suffered heat and redness on their skin, hair loss, and in one case signs of radiation illness that developed into malignant transformations over several years. The three were described as antenna engineers. The author compared the cases to 42 published and roughly 300 unpublished incidents of conventional radiofrequency injury, and concluded there were enough incidents to support a hypothesis that "some advanced systems are already deployed, and opaque to full US understanding."

The voice from 1952

The file drawing the most attention is an hour-long audio recording and transcript of a March 26, 1952 presentation by Air Force Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, the man who would go on to run Project Blue Book, the Air Force's UFO investigation program from 1952 to 1969.

In the recording, Ruppelt explains the service's investigation into UFO incidents and says that of roughly 800 UFO reports the Air Force had reviewed, about 20 percent were still a mystery. "We've gone through these reports and come up with the fact that about 20% are very good reports offered by very reliable people and … just absolutely no conclusions can be drawn," he said.

The recording did not resurface by accident. Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri had been pushing for its release, and on May 8 he sent a letter to MIT Lincoln Laboratory asking it to locate a reel-to-reel recording catalogued as "AF-ATIC-FILM, 03/52" and labeled simply "flying saucer talk." Four months later, the recording is public, attributed to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

New footage, old arguments

The videos look like every previous batch: grainy footage from military cameras showing unexplained objects moving at speed. One 2022 incident shows a UAP traveling at 80 to 180 miles per hour. Another, filmed during a Middle East mission, shows roughly half a dozen small spherical objects flying in tandem, described in the accompanying report as agile and frequently changing direction. The incident remains unexplained.

Four of the videos came from local law enforcement in Colorado. The Pentagon said the partially blurred footage was captured by cellphone cameras in October 2023, and the reporting officer described the phenomenon as "silent" and as featuring "red, blue, and green flashing lights."

The tranche also reaches back to the Cold War. One file revisits a July 1952 sighting in Tremonton, Utah, where a woman reported a group of objects "milling about in rough formation," as reported by The Times. The Air Force believed they were pillow balloons, devices used to spread anti-Communist propaganda, though the manufacturer of those balloons was less convinced, and later investigators thought they might have been seabirds. No one reached a conclusive explanation.

The release comes four days after the Pentagon announced a legal waiver allowing current and former employees previously bound by nondisclosure agreements to share UAP-related information with designated PURSUE representatives. The waiver does not let anyone publish classified material themselves; it creates a protected channel to talk to the government's disclosure program instead.

The PURSUE UFO files, the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, have been released in batches since May, following a February directive from President Donald Trump ordering UFO records made public. This is the sixth batch, following releases on May 8, May 22, June 12, July 10, and August 7. The files span from 1952 to 2025, and the government says more will arrive on a rolling basis.

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