The Pentagon released its third batch of declassified UFO files on Friday. In them, law enforcement and other government officials repeatedly detail seeing mysterious orbs moving across the sky.
The reports of orb-like UFOs follow a previously declassified report in which a senior U.S. intelligence officer reported seeing “two large orbs flare up” next to their helicopter during a mission. The officer described those orbs as “orange with a white or yellow center, and emitted light in all directions.”
They also add to the pattern of orbs that a NASA group formed to study UFOs reported back in 2023, when they noted a large number of unexplained metallic orbs spotted at high altitudes around the world.
Mysterious orbs continue to be among the most-witnessed types of UFOs
According to the latest declassified Pentagon UFO files, at least five law enforcement agents in the western United States reported seeing strange lights over the course of two days in October 2023, close to a “sensitive national security site.” Separate witnesses reported seeing a bright orange “mother orb” that appeared to produce “smaller red orbs” over several hours.
The sightings started with “weird lights moving along in groups miles away,” according to one agent.” Red lights “accelerated instantly and maneuvered with perfect, smooth coordination into a horizontal formation,” according to another witness.
Witness 4 reported seeing smaller orbs “hatch from the larger very bright orange light” several times, losing count “after five occurrences.” According to Witness 3, the orbs resembled “grapes being expelled from a basketball,” and their partner asking, “Are you seeing this?”
Federal employees have ruled out the possibility that someone mistakenly identified the orbs as exhaust from military aircraft. They also consider it unlikely that unmanned aerial vehicles, foreign intelligence activity, or a meteorological phenomenon caused the orbs.
In another encounter that happened in July 2025, “witnesses described the orbs’ motion as silent and smooth, and as moving in tandem as though they were flying in formation or tethered together.”
Another encounter from October 2024 which occurred within 25 miles of the July 2025 UFO sighting, showed “a light source below the horizon, hovering above a pond at an estimated distance of 2,700 feet” in a video titled “Orbs Over the Pond,”
“The luminous object resembled a ‘plasma-like sphere’ intermittently changing shape and luminosity. At times, the primary light source appeared to separate into smaller luminous points,” the Pentagon report stated. “A luminous point below the primary source hovered just above the water and did not appear consistent with a surface reflection. The object remained generally stationary for approximately 45 minutes before disappearing.”
A potato-shaped UFO confounded a US Army intelligence officer
Also released in the new batch of files is a 2024 FBI document in which a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and four members of his unit witnessed a UFO over the Cheyenne Mountains in Colorado. They described it as a potato-shaped, somewhat translucent, slightly shimmering object. The officer also observed that it appeared to have been painted opalescent white, and there was no shadow.
“The object was made up of what can best be described as articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping, and irregular shaped,” the report states. “The object itself was perfectly still but each panel on the object shifted in slow waves starting at different points of origin but at the same time.”
The object reportedly “vanished” after about two minutes, having “cloaked” in the time it took to turn a head.