President Trump announced this past week that he would instruct Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other departments to declassify files tied to unidentified flying objects, aliens and connected phenomena. “These highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters” warrant full disclosure, Trump said.

The move follows years of public fascination with grainy infrared videos from military aircraft. Those clips show objects moving at speeds defying known technology or seemingly breaking physics laws. Military officials often attribute such sightings to birds, balloons or drones. Pilots can fall victim to optical illusions that make slow-moving objects appear to race by, according to former officials. Infrared camera glitches also create illusions of objects diving into the ocean and resurfacing, when debris or balloons simply pass over water.

Some cases remain unexplained. “We do have some very anomalous objects,” Jon Kosloski, director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, told lawmakers in 2024. His office has found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology. Congress created AARO in 2022 to probe claims of secret government alien programs.

Trump’s directive came days after former President Barack Obama appeared on a podcast. Obama said, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” sparking speculation of a slip about visitors to Earth. He later clarified that he meant life likely exists elsewhere in the universe, not that aliens had reached our planet. Trump accused Obama of revealing classified secrets, then issued his declassification order.

The scope of files to be reviewed hinges on Pentagon definitions. It could include a handful of recent video sightings or millions of reports spanning decades. AARO’s 2024 findings debunked allegations of reverse-engineering crashed UFOs. Yet the office uncovered a bizarre internal Defense Department network investigating interdimensional creatures and werewolves at a Utah ranch. No contact occurred, investigators concluded.

UFO believers assailed AARO’s first director, Sean Kirkpatrick. They called his report a cover-up for Washington’s true alien encounters. “People have built up this story in their minds, with an expectation that there’s some stockpile of documents that detail alien landings and reverse engineering, and there isn’t,” Kirkpatrick said in an interview.

Interest in UFOs surged after a 1947 incident near Roswell, New Mexico. Researcher Kevin Randle, a 76-year-old former Army helicopter pilot, spent decades interviewing witnesses who described crash debris and apparent alien bodies removed from the site. His work prompted 1990s Air Force disclosures: The debris came from spy balloons, and later sightings involved crash-test dummies.

Randle dismissed those explanations. “They wanted to stop the interest in the Roswell case because it was leading into areas they didn’t want us to look at,” he said.

A 1990s Central Intelligence Agency review traced most early UFO reports to classified U.S. spy planes. The agency acknowledged past deceptions, like calling high-altitude silver crafts weather anomalies. That fueled conspiracy theories, the CIA study stated.

UFO researcher Steven Greer, who pressed the CIA for its review under President Bill Clinton, labeled it a whitewash. He claims military and intelligence officials hid retrieved alien craft from the CIA director and Clinton. Greer doubts Trump’s order will succeed. “The very fact that the president ordered this and the secretary of defense looks into it doesn’t mean anything or that it will go anywhere, unless they go around those blockades,” he said.

Any deep dive into Pentagon files may simply expose officials’ own intrigue with the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. That fascination appears to match, or exceed, the public’s.