What Happened
On May 3, 2026, at a White House event celebrating NASA astronauts, President Donald Trump said the Pentagon is preparing to release UFO files uncovered by his administration, telling those present, “We’re going to be releasing a lot of things that we haven’t,” and adding that “some of it’s going to be very interesting to people.”
In a statement issued the same day and reported by Fortune, the Department of War’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) said it is working with the White House to release “never-before-seen UAP information” and welcomed “the president’s initiative to supercharge these efforts and make more UAP information available to the public as soon as possible.”
Background
The May 3 statement is the latest in a series of Trump administration announcements on UAP records release that began on February 11, 2026, when the President directed the Secretary of War and other relevant departments and agencies to begin identifying and releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, UAP, and UFOs. mdand2026-04-29-trump-artemis-ii-oval-office-ufo-files.md`.
Pentagon Position
Per the AARO statement reported by Fortune, the office said it is “working to consolidate existing UAP records and facilitate the expeditious release of never-before-seen UAP information.” AARO has previously said it has examined more than 2,000 UAP cases, with roughly 1,000 reports remaining in the active archive because they lacked sufficient data for analysis. The office’s first annual report, published in 2024, found no verifiable evidence that the U.S. government had ever confirmed a sighting of extraterrestrial technology. AARO’s 2024 position is documented at aaro.mil/UAP-Records.
Skeptical Counterpoint
Sean Kirkpatrick, a physicist and former career intelligence officer who served as AARO’s first director until 2023, told the Washington Post that he has seen the government’s UAP records and does not expect the announced release to contain disclosures of the kind public anticipation has built around. “Readers should not get their hopes up that there’s going to be some document with photos, interviewing the aliens when they came down,” Kirkpatrick is quoted as saying.
The Washington Post also quoted Greg Eghigian, a Pennsylvania State University professor and author of a history of UFO sightings, saying that for people who follow the topic closely “promises of big revelations have never lived up to the hype.”
Congressional Reaction
Per The Hill, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said on May 5 that he has continued to press the Pentagon on the disclosure of military UAP videos following Trump’s remarks. Burchett’s earlier statement that the videos he has reviewed “defy any reason” is
The 46 Pentagon UAP videos at the centre of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets remained unreleased at the time of this draft, with the April 14 production deadline having passed. mdand2026-04-30-luna-mk-ultra-hearing-may-13.md`.
What Remains To Be Confirmed
No release schedule, document inventory, or scope for the announced UFO files release has been published on whitehouse.gov, war.gov, or aaro.mil at the time of this draft. AARO’s full May 3 statement has not been located on aaro.mil at the time of this draft; the statement is reproduced in the Fortune article from the office’s communication with the publication.
