For decades, files stamped “Top Secret” have sat locked away in government archives — files describing fighter pilots chasing objects that defied physics, astronauts noting strange lights near the moon, and military officers watching metallic orbs hover silently over conflict zones. Now, under direct orders from President Donald Trump, the Department of War has begun releasing them to the public.
The initial tranche — more than 160 records posted to a new government portal at war.gov/UFO — represents what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called an “unprecedented” move toward transparency. “These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation — and it’s time the American people see it for themselves,” Hegseth said in an official statement accompanying the release.
The documents span eight decades of reported encounters. A November 1948 report, then classified Top Secret, relays the testimony of American officers and their Swedish counterparts, who concluded that the objects they observed “cannot be disregarded” and reflected “a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth.” A 1955 sighting by then-Senator Richard Russell — chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee — reported from aboard a train in the Soviet Union describes what witnesses called “flying disc aircraft.” His accompanying military aide, Lt. Col. E.U. Hathaway, was described by the reporting Air Attache as an “excellent source.”
The more recent cases are no less striking. A 1994 State Department cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan details how a Tajik pilot and three Americans observed a brightly lit object over Kazakhstan “making 90-degree turns, doing corkscrews and maneuvering in circles at great rates of speed.” A 2023 military report from the Aegean Sea describes a UAP flying just above the ocean’s surface and executing “multiple 90-degree turns at an estimated 80 mph.” A U.S. intelligence official recounted encountering a “super-hot” orb hovering over the ground during a helicopter search, followed by four or five additional orbs that “flared up and down.”
Among the most striking items: a 1969 debriefing of the Apollo 11 crew in which astronaut Buzz Aldrin recalled a “sizeable” object near the moon and a “fairly bright light source” the crew believed could be a laser. A NASA photograph from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission shows three dots in a triangular formation. The Pentagon states there is “no consensus about the nature of the anomaly,” though a preliminary analysis suggests it may be a “physical object.”
The release also includes more than 20 video files showing unidentified objects captured by military sensors across Syria, Japan, the East China Sea, and North America. One 2022 video shows a football-shaped object over the East China Sea. The most recent footage, dated January 1 of this year, shows two circular lights moving against a dark backdrop over North America.
Sean Kirkpatrick, former director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, warned that without rigorous analysis, the documents “will only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy, and armchair pseudoscience.” He assessed one widely circulated video — showing what appears to be an eight-pointed star weaving through the air over the Middle East in 2013 — as likely a hot jet engine creating a diffraction pattern in a camera lens.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) thanked Trump for “keeping his word,” while Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) confirmed that the Pentagon will release 46 additional UAP videos identified by whistleblowers at a later date. The Sol Foundation, a research group focused on UAP, pushed for legislation requiring a thorough review of classified records to provide Americans “the full truth about longstanding government knowledge and programs concerning technologies and vehicles not of human origin.”
Trump framed the release plainly in a post on Truth Social: “Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?'”
For Biblical scholars, the government’s admission that it cannot explain what its own pilots and astronauts have seen is not a revelation. It is a confirmation.
The sixth chapter of Genesis records one of the most enigmatic passages in the entire Bible. Creatures called Nephilim — from the Hebrew root naphal, meaning “the fallen” — appear on earth and cohabit with human women. The text is blunt:
“It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth — when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.” (Genesis 6:4)
The Nephilim resurface in the Book of Numbers, when the Israelite spies return from scouting the Land of Canaan and report: “We saw the Nephilim there — the Anakites are part of the Nephilim — and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” (Numbers 13:33)
Their testimony was specific and physical.
The Book of Judges adds another dimension that the Talmud takes very seriously. The prophetess Deborah, in her victory song, declares: “The stars fought from heaven, from their courses they fought against Sisera… ‘Curse Meroz!’ said the angel of Hashem. ‘Bitterly curse its inhabitants, because they came not to the aid of Hashem, to the aid of Hashem among the warriors.'” (Judges 5:20-23)
The Talmud (Moed Katan 16a) identifies Meroz explicitly as a planet in the stellar sphere — a celestial body whose inhabitants were cursed for failing to answer God’s call. The stars did not merely shine over the battlefield. They participated in it.
This is the field known as exotheology — the theological implications of extraterrestrial life — and it is a field where Judaism has more to say than most people realize. Dr. David Weintraub, professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University and author of ” Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It?, has studied the question extensively.
“Judaism accepts the possibility of extraterrestrial life,” Dr. Weintraub told Israel365 News. He goes further: Jewish theology may actually require openness to that possibility. “There are no limits on the power of the creator. Thus, for Jews to say that no life beyond the Earth could possibly exist would be unacceptable, as such an idea would appear to place shackles on God’s creative power.”
The Talmud (Sanhedrin 97a) connects the Nephilim directly to the Messianic era. In a discussion between Rav Nachman and Rav Yitzchak, Rabbi Yitzchak asks: “Do you know when Bar Naphli (the son of the fallen) will come?” Rav Nachman’s answer is direct: “It is Messiah.”
Rav Nachman roots that answer in the Prophet Amos: “In that day, I will set up again the fallen booth of David: I will mend its breaches and set up its ruins anew. I will build it firm as in the days of old.” (Amos 9:11)
The Hebrew word nophelet — “the fallen” — links the return of the Bar Naphli with the restoration of the Davidic dynasty. And there is a striking numerical confirmation: in gematria (Hebrew numerology), the words בר נפלי (bar naphli, the son of the fallen) equal 372 — the exact same value as בן ישי (ben Yishai, the son of Jesse), King David’s father. The return of the fallen ones and the return of the Davidic Messiah point to the same moment.
The author Erich Von Daniken famously argued in Chariots of the Gods that the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of a celestial chariot — the Merkavah — was in fact a description of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Dr. Weintraub stops short of endorsing the claim scientifically. “From a religious perspective, Von Daniken’s interpretations may be valid,” he said, “but it would be presumptuous to say they have scientific backing.”
What Weintraub does affirm is that confirmed contact with extraterrestrials would not shatter Judaism. “Elsewhere in the universe, God might choose to guide others along a different path into a worshipful relationship with God, and if that relationship has a different label, mazel tov,” he said. “The God of Judaism is universal, but Judaism is not. Judaism is for humans on Earth.”
The government’s files are labeled “unresolved.” The Bible’s files have been open for three thousand years. Pentagon analysts admit they cannot identify what pilots, astronauts, and intelligence officials have seen. The Sages identified it long ago — and placed its return at the threshold of the Messiah’s arrival. Whether the objects now being declassified are advanced human technology, foreign adversary hardware, or something that requires an entirely different framework to understand, the Jewish tradition has always insisted that the universe is far larger and far stranger than what fits inside human categories. The only question worth asking is not what these phenomena are — but what their appearance, at this particular moment in history, means.