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Declassified records reveal infrared combat footage, Apollo-era astronaut encounters and military pilot testimony that federal agencies quietly shelved for decades

The U.S. government has been sitting on evidence of unexplained aerial phenomena for decades, and now, for the first time, it is being forced to show its hand.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman pulled back the curtain Friday on the Trump administration's sweeping UAP disclosure effort, confirming that newly declassified files are surfacing a mountain of strange, unresolved sightings that federal agencies never seriously investigated.

"What's being surfaced isn't crashed ships or alien bodies, but real unexplained phenomena," Isaacman told Fox News Digital.

The admission is striking. Not because it confirms extraterrestrial life, but because it exposes just how much the government chose to ignore.

The Trump administration has now released two waves of declassified UAP files as part of a broad transparency push, ordering agencies to comb through internal databases for decades of buried reports on unexplained aerial activity. Officials say more releases from the CIA and other intelligence agencies could be imminent.

The newly surfaced material is extraordinary in scope. It includes infrared footage from 2023 that appears to capture a U.S. F-16 shooting down a diamond-shaped object over Lake Huron. It contains reports of unidentified aerial objects spotted near military operations in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Greece and across the Middle East. And it includes firsthand accounts from Apollo and Gemini-era astronauts describing strange lights and unidentified objects observed from space.

Also in the files: testimony from intelligence officers and military pilots who encountered phenomena during active operations and training exercises they simply could not explain.

Isaacman was blunt about what the real scandal is here: not aliens, but institutional neglect.

"Government agencies really didn't take this quite as seriously in the past until President Trump put out the tweet, basically giving an order to government agencies and going out and saying, look, this time you better go through the files, you better start searching your databases and bring things up," he said.

The sheer volume of sensing technology now in operation makes it nearly impossible for anomalies to go unnoticed, Isaacman argued. But it also complicates interpretation.

"Everybody's got a camera phone, a doorbell camera. Every military aircraft flying has a million sensors," he said. "You're gonna pick up things. Pick up things that flew at a different angle, you know, across the lens that maybe if you had a better angle on, you'd be like, oh, that's a balloon, or that might be a missile in a combat region. But because we caught it at an angle, it's an unexplained phenomenon."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has backed the disclosure drive, directing agencies to revisit long-buried UAP records in the name of government transparency. Isaacman signaled that additional "big file tranches" from intelligence agencies are expected to go public soon.

"There's nothing I'm aware of in terms of alien bodies or spaceships," Isaacman said. "But observations from decades past, from some of our adversaries and potentially some of our allies, essentially saying, 'We saw something, we documented it, and we kept it buried in a file somewhere,' are now being made public."

Isaacman described the effort as a form of mass public accountability, calling it "citizen science" and urging Americans to scrutinize the released files themselves.

"I think the president has really got government agencies now taking this seriously, to go look at the files and bring the data to light, and he's putting it all out for everyone to analyze," he said. "This is citizen science right now. Take a look at our files, tell us what you think."

The NASA chief also used the moment to make a broader argument: that the search for life is not fringe speculation but a core scientific mission.

"I think if we go and bring samples back from Mars, you've got better than a 90% chance of former microbial life," he said.

He pointed to Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa as locations scientists believe could harbor microbial life or biosignatures, chemical markers associated with living organisms.

"Things that could indicate perhaps that there was microbial life there or some other form, of which it changes the whole equation from surely there is life out there somewhere to what if it's everywhere," Isaacman said.

He also made a pointed argument about credibility in the age of AI-generated deepfakes, warning that public trust in authentic footage is eroding fast and that broad disclosure is one way to fight back.

"I would say that some of the most interesting data that NASA has provided as part of the UAP disclosure was taken on the surface of the moon from Apollo 12 and 17," he said. "You can't be a moon landing denier and also believe that those photos captured unexplained phenomenon."

The disclosure effort is ongoing. Officials say additional UFO and UAP files will continue to be released in future batches as the administration pushes forward with its transparency mandate.

The question now is not whether something unexplained is out there. The question is why it took a presidential order to make the government finally look.