The Pentagon’s second batch of declassified UFO files released on May 22 includes videos such as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) being shot down over the Great Lakes and audio of astronauts witnessing a series of unexplained phenomena.
Dozens of documents were cleared for release on Friday, adding to the previous document dump on May 8, which revealed that Apollo 11 astronauts reported seeing a “sizable” object near the moon.
The Epoch Times' Jacki Thrapp offers the following highlights from a partial review of the newly released files.
UAP Shot DownThe U.S. Air Force shot down a balloon-shaped UAP over Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes located between the United States and Canada, on Feb. 12, 2023.
A U.S. Air Force Air National Guard F-16C shoots down a UAP over Lake Huron on Feb 12, 2023. Department of War
The video, which the War Department said was likely taken by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform, showed the UAP being struck and “fragmenting in a radial displacement pattern that suggests a high-energy event.”
Fragments fall from the UAP after it was shot. Department of War
The War Department did not reveal what fell from the object.
Officials did not share if any attempts were made to recover the fragments.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of War for additional information.
UAP Formation Caught on CameraThe Department of War released a video showing “four areas of contrast” seemingly making a formation, according to a video apparently filmed by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform.
A screenshot from a video titled “UAP USO Formation.” USO stands for unidentified submerged object. Department of War
The eight-minute clip, which was edited and digitally altered, showed four objects moving in a parallel direction as they became “increasingly indistinct over time as the video quality degrades.”
Four unexplained objects moving in the same direction in a screenshot from video. Department of War
The War Department did not share the date or location of the unexplained formation.
International SightingsAn infrared sensor spotted a UAP, described as “four areas of contrast,” zoom past what appeared to be ships in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in Iran on August 2022.
In a separate incident that year, video captured “multiple spherical UAP” near a submarine in March that were going “in and out of water.”
A UAP, or possibly more than one, appears on the lower left side of a classified video taken in Iran on August 2022. The red circle was added by The Epoch Times to clarify what the Department of War considered to be an unknown anomaly. Department of War
Additional videos showed UAP in Syria in 2021, a “spherical UAP over [Afghanistan] in and out of clouds” in November 2020, and a video that starts in color and shows a bright UAP over the water off the East Coast of the United States.
The latest document dump included a CIA intelligence information report from the Soviet Union that was recorded in the summer of 1973.
The decades-old report revealed that an unnamed source on the Sary Shagan Weapons Testing Range in Kazakhstan witnessed a “sharp, (bright) green circular object or mass in the sky.”
The source, who was identified as a former Soviet citizen, said the “green circle widened and within a brief period of time several green concentric circles formed around the mass.”
The witness did not hear any sounds associated with the phenomenon.
NASA AudioThe second batch of UFO-related files also included several audio clips released by NASA from its Mercury and Apollo missions.
An audio recording from Mercury-Atlas 7 on May 24, 1962, featured pilot Scott Carpenter describing reflective white particles that moved at “random” and appeared to “look exactly like snowflakes.”
He said the phenomena moved faster than his spacecraft.
Additional “little white objects” were also reported months later during the Mercury Atlas 8 mission.
On Oct. 3, 1962, pilot Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr. described “little white objects that tend to come from the capsule itself and drift off.”
Minutes later, Schirra reported a burst of light in his window.
“[I’m] getting a real burst of light in the window, and I really don’t know what it is,” Schirra said.
In December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission, the 11th and final crewed mission in the Apollo program, Cmdr. Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans reported “very bright particles or fragments of something” that drifted by outside the spacecraft as they transited to the moon.
Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 11:40