The files reveal that 13 Soviet MiG fighter aircraft were mobilized to pursue an unidentified flying object (UFO) during the Cold War period. The information comes from more than 300 pages of NSA reports released by the Disclosure Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act request.

The organization, which advocates for disclosure regarding unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), released the NSA reports after an initial denial of access and a successful appeal that followed. The documents had previously been classified as “Top Secret Umbra,” a high-security designation for intercepted intelligence communications.

The files include radar-tracking reports and accounts of objects appearing on military radar screens worldwide during the Cold War. Multiple incidents in what had been considered heavily redacted documents involved Soviet-made MiG fighter jets pursuing swarms of unknown objects.

Another report, although partially redacted, describes a mysterious star-shaped object that was said to be “impossible to be an aircraft.” The object moved with vertical oscillations at high altitude and was described as “bright white” with a slight “blue” tint.

Other reports describe objects with two yellow lights flying low without sound and changing direction from north toward west. Another UFO was described as “spherical or disc-shaped,” brighter than the sun and approximately half the diameter of the moon.

The Disclosure Foundation explained that the documents were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after the NSA initially refused disclosure. Hunt Willis, the organization’s legal affairs director, stated that the NSA continues to impose extensive redactions on UFO-related documents dating back to the 1960s. “It is unacceptable for security exemptions to remain on government documents that predate the Civil Rights Act,” he said.

Earlier in May, the Pentagon released more than 160 UFO-related files following an order from Donald Trump. The documents included testimony from Apollo space missions, reports of unexplained lights even in Greece, particles and flashes observed during flights to the Moon, and an FBI report from 1957 referencing a large circular structure seen in 1944 near a German military base.

A video from June 2024 showed a UFO with a vertical pole or rod beneath it, resembling an inverted teardrop, remaining fixed in the center of sensor view. The release also included photographs allegedly showing UFOs, among them a cluster of FBI images from the western United States, an unstructured image from Iraq, and a composite sketch from a 2023 incident.