VETTED Reviews the Fifth UFO Tranche: Orb Videos, a Possible Balloon and Decades-Old Cover-Up Files

The Department of War released its fifth tranche of UFO files on August 7, 2026, and I went through it live, video by video, photo by photo, PDF by PDF. My overall take going in was blunt: I did not expect bombshell revelations, and I told viewers I did not want to gaslight anybody about that. The first tranche came out May 8, and now four more have followed with, in my opinion, very little context attached to any of it.

This matters to anyone following the disclosure story because these tranches are supposed to be the government making good on promises of transparency. I noted that I am not the only one saying these releases feel thin. People I would not have expected, believers and disclosure effort personnel, have also been saying online that these tranches essentially have nothing. Without context, it is hard to make out what anything actually is, though I did admit a few things in this batch were interesting.

The AC-130 Gunship Orb Footage Over the Gulf of Oman

The first set of videos, labeled DOWUAPPR117 through 122, showed roughly five clips from the same event: 16 seconds of secondary cell phone footage recording an infrared sensor display aboard a US special operations AC-130J gunship. The description itself admits this is not native primary sensor data and that filming a screen introduces blurring, flickering and other limitations. The files describe cold orbs approximately 4 feet in diameter. Watching it, I could not tell whether the camera or the object was moving, and with the audio being nothing but ambient room noise, there was no way to determine anything meaningful about the movement.

A companion document, DOWUAPD101, gave the footage some actual context: on September 8, an AC-130 gunship observed approximately 25 instances of UAPs during a live fire exercise in the Gulf of Oman, described as core orbs flying at low altitudes between 250 and 1,300 mph, moving in different formations, maneuvering aggressively, and appearing to react to the aircraft's main cannon fire. I said this was the kind of context I actually want, since most of the video files come with none of it.

A Splash Video and a Possible Balloon in the Middle East Clips

Another cluster of videos came from the Pacific Ocean in 2019, roughly a minute long with no audio, showing what looked like an object splashing down into water, followed by related footage of the same object from a different angle. I compared it to the Jeremy Corbell and Alex Wiggins so-called splash flash footage, though I could not confirm it was the same incident. A longer 2 minute 33 second clip from the same event, captured by a US service member's handheld device in 2019, showed what appeared to be two lights moving in unison, though I said the visible distortion made it look like camera movement rather than the objects themselves moving erratically.

From a 2025 Middle East incident, an infrared sensor aboard a US military platform tracked a small white object over a city for 1 minute 39 seconds. Toward the end I pointed out what looked like a wobbling shape at the bottom of the object, resembling a balloon, and even what might have been a puff of air being released. I was careful to flag this as my own read of the footage, not a confirmed finding, but noted that the tranches have included confirmed balloons before, so it would not surprise me if this was another one.

An FBI Special Agent's Photos From a 2026 Western US Sighting

The final video, only 10 seconds long, came from a US government special agent in the western United States in 2026, tied to FBI file UAP D032, and by itself showed almost nothing. The accompanying FBI report filled in more detail: the agent, who has no aviation or pilot experience, was alerted to an RF detection and asked to look toward a bearing of 58 degrees. Using a thermal optical device, he saw a black object in the sky, then a second object to the right moving at the same speed, both described as black hot. He watched them for 5 to 10 minutes before losing them, and could not estimate altitude or speed. Photos from that sighting were included in the release.

Artistic Renderings of a 2002 Bagram Triangle and a 2011 Isosceles Sighting

Several of the images in this tranche were not photographs at all but FBI-commissioned artistic interpretations of witness testimony. One depicted a black triangle over Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan, in June 2002, based on a first-hand account from a former service member, tied to file FBI UAP D024. A second rendering, based on descriptions from two former US military members, showed a black triangle with three lights from an incident in June or July 2011.

The PDF report behind the 2011 image was detailed. Two witnesses, one with 6 and a half years and the other with 24 years in the Army, described leaving a driveway around 8 or 9 p.m. when they saw three lights and a massive black isosceles triangle flying north, with a car-sized white light in each corner and a low pulsing hum. One witness estimated it at 800 feet up, 200 feet long and 100 feet wide, though he said it could have looked more equilateral than isosceles. They tried to get a phone out to record it but missed their chance, and the object passed over a tree line in 10 to 15 seconds with no contrails. The witnesses said neighbors may have also seen it and were being asked to come forward.

The Colorado Springs Triangle That Allegedly Hit Mach 1 or 2

A third rendering, tied to FBI file UAP D030, depicted a 2023 sighting near Colorado Springs. The witness report described a man watching stars with a coworker when he noticed a dark, pixelated-looking cloud, out of which emerged a solid black equilateral triangle with a diffuse red light on each corner, roughly the size of a parking lot and three to five stories thick by his estimate. It reportedly moved at a helicopter-like speed at 3,000 to 5,000 feet before almost instantaneously accelerating to possibly Mach 1 or Mach 2, banking in a direction opposite to how a conventional aircraft would turn, with a mirage-like wave effect radiating around it. He heard no sound and smelled nothing unusual. About 60 seconds after losing sight of it, he called his wife, who said his voice sounded robotic, as if there were electronic interference on the line.

A related but separate FBI account described a different Colorado Springs couple on their back porch in October 2023 who saw a translucent, haze-wrapped triangle pass low overhead, appearing to shimmer as if viewed through mist or water. The witness described a band of silvery blue light along its trailing edge, theorized as possibly related to propulsion, and said it banked up sharply before disappearing after only about 4 seconds of total observation, too fast to grab a phone. His wife separately recalled a dark seam running around the object's edge.

Historic Files: Ghost Rockets, a 1953 Navy Film Study and Puerto Rico Radar Tracks

Beyond the recent sightings, the tranche included a batch of older declassified material. A 1953 US Naval Photographic Interpretation Center report analyzed film shot in Utah, describing objects with a fairly constant blue white color and using a stop-frame projector with 22 times magnification to plot them, though the underlying film itself was not included with the release. A 1965 CIA document concluded that a 1964 high-speed radar contact north of Puerto Rico was probably a delta-wing fighter with performance exceeding an F-8C, tracked at over 3,800 knots by the USS Guyatt's radar, while other objects reported that same week were likely reconnaissance aircraft near a missile test range.

A 1963 diplomatic cable from Brazil described a bizarre newspaper report from Conde, Bahia, claiming a large metal sphere fell and gouged a 4-meter crater, with a dead crewman aboard in a uniform or space suit bearing undecipherable markings. A follow-up cable called the story apparently fabricated, noting no such object was found by reporters who rushed to investigate, though a public security official speculated it might have been a weather balloon.

A January 1947 War Department intelligence review, declassified in June 2026, covered so-called ghost rockets over Scandinavia first reported in Sweden in May 1946, described as fireballs with tails or shiny cigar-shaped objects, with altitudes ranging from treetop height to 160,000 feet and speeds up to lightning fast, with no metal fragments ever recovered aside from nonmetallic slag. A separate 245-page 1947 to 1948 Wright-Patterson Air Force Base file on Project Sign studied about 180 incidents, sorting objects into discs, cigar-shaped craft, spherical balloons and unexplained balls of light, and even requested help from the RAND Corporation to define what design and performance traits a genuine spaceship or test vehicle might have.

Pilot Reports of Repeating Lights Over North America and a Watch That Ran Fast

One FBI report described a pilot who, since October 2023, has seen unexplained white lights roughly ten times while flying commercial routes, including from Boston to Dublin, off the West Coast, near North Dakota, and the mid-Atlantic, estimating them 200 to 500 miles away and ruling out Starlink flares, satellites or meteors based on his experience. He captured video from his cockpit in February 2024 over Minnesota showing multiple lights moving and changing brightness. The same pilot separately described the 2002 Bagram triangle sighting, corroborating the earlier artistic rendering, saying a colleague also witnessed it and asked, "Did you see that?"

Two more FBI statements described a pair of individuals in the field observing dash-shaped red lights near a mountain ridge that appeared triangular or diamond-shaped through night optics, with clusters of three lights moving in tandem. Strikingly, both witnesses independently reported that one man's mechanical analog watch had drifted 25 minutes ahead of every other clock nearby, including phones and a digital watch, despite having never been off by more than 60 to 90 seconds in five years of ownership. Neither witness reported fear, only curiosity, and both said the lights showed no exhaust, tail or sound.

My Verdict: More Bread Crumbs, Not the Craft and Bodies

After going through every video, photo and available PDF, my conclusion is that this is, in my words, "kind of a nothing burger" in the sense that there is still very little context. I said the vintage 1940s and 1950s documents were interesting for nostalgia's sake, but past that there is not much connecting tissue between the sightings, the reports and the renderings. My argument is that if officials claim to have identified alien craft and bodies, that is the only information that should be on the table, and everything else is what I called "bottom of the barrel" material, comparing it to items you'd give to Goodwill when moving house.

I compared the situation to ordering a steak at a restaurant and having the waiter return again and again to describe how good it will taste without ever bringing the food. My position is that demanding evidence is not the same as attacking whistleblowers, and that both things can happen at once: supporting people who come forward with testimony while still insisting on proof before treating extraordinary claims as fact. As I put it, credible-sounding testimony alone should not be enough for the public, and nothing should stop people from continuing to ask for the craft and bodies that have been promised for decades.

What would actually convince you these tranches are worth taking seriously: harder video evidence, or full unredacted witness reports?