U.S. Department of War launches PURSUE and releases first UAP files

What is in this tranche?

This tranche of May 8, 2026, marked the start of the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE release series (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). It contains 161 entries: 119 PDF documents, 28 videos, one of them an audio recording, and 14 images. The largest share consists of U.S. military mission reports and sensor videos from 2013 to 2026, mostly from the Middle East, and FBI reports from 2023 to 2025. Alongside them are NASA records from Gemini 7 to Skylab, the FBI file on “flying discs” from 1947 on, early Army Air Forces and Air Force files, and State Department cables and memoranda.

U.S. military mission reports and videos 2013–2026

The largest part of the tranche consists of 45 document entries and 27 videos from the U.S. military: 33 mission report entries (reports D23 and D32 are listed two and three times, once per paired video), six Range Fouler forms, emails on clearing reports for release, and short sensor recordings that commands such as U.S. Central Command and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command submitted to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) as unresolved UAP reports. Most reports come from reconnaissance flights over Iraq, Syria, the Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean, and many are heavily redacted. Two records, a 1996 study on space-booster failures and a Vandenberg Air Force Base launch summary, do not mention UAP.

• DOW-UAP-D10, Mission Report, Middle East, May 2022 – Mission report of May 6, 2022 (Operation INHERENT RESOLVE): according to the report, five UAP crossed the video screen; the first fit the visual profile of a possible missile, the other four looked more like birds.

  “ALL 4X REMAINING UAP FIT CLOSER TO THE PROFILE OF POSSIBLE BIRDS.” (p. 6)

• DOW-UAP-PR19, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, May 2022 – The paired five-second infrared video: according to the official description, an area of contrast moves from left to right across the bottom third of the frame.
• DOW-UAP-D33, Mission Report, Greece, October 2023 – Mission report of October 26–27, 2023: a possible UAP just above the surface of the sea that made multiple 90-degree turns at an estimated 80 mph.
• DOW-UAP-PR34, Unresolved UAP Report, Greece, October 2023 – The paired infrared video of almost three minutes: according to the official description, the sensor tracks the area of contrast until it can no longer be distinguished from the background.
• DOW-UAP-D55, Mission Report, Syria, November 2016 – Briefing slide of November 18, 2016: a P-8A sees a low-flying object over the sea about 55 nautical miles northwest of Latakia, Syria. The slide speaks of a possible missile and assesses the event as standard activity consistent with that of the KCTG it was monitoring; the official description lists it as UAP.

  “While this was the first observed occurrence of possible missile activity by P-8 aircraft in the Eastern Mediterranean it is assessed to be standard activity consistent with the assessed activity of the KCTG.” (p. 1)

Reports from 2023–2025

38 entries concern reports from 2023 to 2025, almost all from the FBI: 32 still images from U.S. government sensor systems (8 as images, 24 as PDFs) that the FBI submitted to AARO, interview records and a composite image on a sighting at a U.S. test site in September 2023, and the statement of an intelligence official. Alongside them is a slide set on observations by federal law enforcement agents in the western United States. The official short descriptions of the records Serial 3 to 5 each match the object described in a different record.

• Western US Event – Four slides on what six federal law enforcement agents observed in the western United States; a seventh was present at one sighting but saw nothing. They describe orange orbs that launched smaller red orbs, a glowing orb near a rock pinnacle and two kite-shaped objects. According to later AARO measurements, the glowing orb was about 1,050 meters away rather than the estimated 500–600 meters.

  “Each time, the orange orb would appear, launch red orbs, then disappear.” (p. 1)

• USPER Statement about UAP Sighting – Chronology by a senior U.S. intelligence official of a helicopter search on an evening in 2025: a ground observation post reports a “super-hot” orb on thermal imaging that splits in two and outruns the helicopter. Afterwards the official and the pilots repeatedly see rows of orbs flare up and go dark again.

  “They appeared to be oval shaped, orange in color with a white or yellow center and emitting light in all directions.” (p. 2)

• FBI September 2023 Sighting - Serial 4 – FBI interview record from October 2023: a woman who was preparing tests at the test site describes a silent, bronze-colored object the length of two or three Blackhawk helicopters, with an intense white light at one end.
• FBI Photo A1 – One of eight still images (A1–A8) without location or date: according to the official description, a small, dark, slightly irregular object is visible just below and to the right of the reticle; the operator could not identify it.

NASA: spaceflight 1965–1974

NASA is represented with 15 entries: air-to-ground transcripts and excerpts from crew debriefings for Gemini 7, Apollo 11, 12 and 17 and Skylab, an audio recording, and six photos from Apollo 12 and 17, five of them with areas above the lunar horizon marked. The astronauts describe light flashes, particles and bright objects, some of which they themselves attribute to rocket stages or satellites. NASA’s files also hold an English translation of the French COMETA report of 1999.

• NASA-UAP-D3, Gemini 7 Transcript, 1965 – Transcript of a NASA public affairs commentary on Gemini 7 air-to-ground communications: Frank Borman reports a “bogey” and hundreds of little particles three or four miles away. According to the transcript, Jim Lovell’s line about a “brilliant body in the sun” refers to the booster.
• NASA-UAP-D3A, Gemini 7 Audio Excerpt, 1965 – The corresponding audio recording with air-to-ground communications and public affairs commentary; the official description dates Borman’s sighting to December 5, 1965.
• NASA-UAP-D4, Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing, 1969 – Apollo 11 crew debriefing of July 31, 1969: a bright object on the way to the Moon whose shape, size and distance the astronauts could not determine, light flashes in the darkened cabin, and a light on Earth that Buzz Aldrin first ascribed to a possible laser and later thought was more probably a reflection off a lake, unless someone had beamed a laser at the Moon at that time.

  “It was very difficult to tell just what shape it was. And there was no way to tell the size without knowing the range or the range without knowing the size.” (p. 4)

• NASA-UAP-D7, Skylab Techincal Crew Debriefing 1973 – Excerpts from the debriefings of all three Skylab crews from June 1973 to February 1974, including a reddish object that Owen Garriott of the Skylab 3 crew describes as a satellite in a very similar orbit.

  “What satellite it was and how it happened to end up in such a similar orbit, no one ever explained to us.” (p. 5)

• NASA-UAP-VM6, Apollo 17, 1972 – Photo from Apollo 17, December 1972, with three dots in a triangular formation in the lunar sky. According to the official description, the Department of War has opened a case and the government has obtained the original film; the results of the NASA and Department of War analysis are to be released when complete.

The FBI file on “flying discs” 1947–1977

The FBI headquarters file 62-HQ-83894 comes in 18 parts: ten sections, seven individual serials and a collection of press clippings (Sub A). It shows how the FBI helped the Army Air Forces check reports in the summer of 1947, stopped doing so in the fall of 1947 and afterwards referred reports to the Air Force. Alongside it are two smaller files from the FBI’s Detroit office from 1957 and 1958.

• 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_1 – July to September 1947: a memo of July 10, 1947, records that Army Air Corps intelligence asked the FBI for help in questioning the first witnesses. Director J. Edgar Hoover made full access to recovered discs a condition.
• 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_3 – July to early October 1947, including the Tacoma case, in which, according to the FBI, two men admitted that a letter presenting their rock from Maury Island as part of a disc was entirely false. The section ends with Hoover’s letter of September 27, 1947, and the instruction of October 1 to refer future reports to the Air Forces.
• 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Serial_164 – Air Force Air Intelligence Requirements Memorandum Number 4, “Unconventional Aircraft,” of February 15, 1949: a checklist for sighting reports, down to soil samples and Geiger counter checks.
• 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Serial_438 – Memoranda of May 8, 1964, from the FBI office in Albuquerque on the object that police officer Lonnie Zamora reported by radio near Socorro, New Mexico, on April 24, 1964, as having landed and taken off. An FBI agent found four depressions and burned clumps of grass at the site.

  “Inside the four depressions were three burned patches of clumps of grass.” (p. 3)

• 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_10 – 1966 to 1977: replies stating that UFO sightings are not within the FBI’s jurisdiction, Air Force material on the end of its Project Blue Book on December 17, 1969, and a White House inquiry of June 1977. The section thus extends beyond the period up to July 1968 that the official description gives for the file as a whole.

  “He was also advised that the investigation of unidentified flying objects is not, and never has been, a matter within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI.” (p. 31)

Army Air Forces and Air Force 1945–1955

Nine older military files range from the “foo fighters” reported by Allied night fighter crews in 1944–45, through the first investigations by the Army Air Forces and the Air Force from 1947 on, to a 1955 report on a sighting in the Trans-Caucasus region of the Soviet Union. Three sets of incident summaries are numbered 1 to 233 and run from May 1947 to January 1949.

• 331_120752_Numeric_Files_1944–1945_37153_German_Armament_Equipment_Documents – File of the Allied headquarters SHAEF, January to March 1945: crews of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron report lights that followed their aircraft. The British Air Ministry suggests Me 262 jets and flak rockets as possible explanations but considers the matter unresolved.

  “The whole affair is still something of a mystery and the evidence is very sketchy and varied so that no definite and satisfactory explanation can yet be given” (p. 2)

• 18_100754_ General 1946-7_Vol_2 – Correspondence from August to December 1947, with the Air Materiel Command opinion of September 23, 1947, signed by Lt. Gen. N. F. Twining, that the reported phenomenon is real, and the directive of December 30, 1947, for Air Materiel Command to set up a project to collect and evaluate such reports.

  “The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” (p. 9)

• 38_143685_box7_Incident_Summaries_1-100 – Incident summaries 1 to 100 from May 1947 to January 1948 on the “Check-List – Unidentified Flying Objects” form. For the Godman Field, Kentucky, case of January 7, 1948, the sheet notes that Captain Thomas F. Mantell, while pursuing an object, apparently blacked out at 20,000 feet or flew on because the object seemed to be getting closer, and then crashed through lack of oxygen.

State Department 1952–2023

Seven State Department records: a 1952 memorandum on increased UFO reports, a 1963 memorandum from the Executive Office of the President, and five cables from the U.S. embassies in Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Mexico from 1985 to 2023.

• 59_214434_SP 16 [7.18.1963] – Memorandum of July 18, 1963, from the National Aeronautics and Space Council to the State Department: Maxwell W. Hunter II of its professional staff sets out thoughts on what policy should apply if an alien intelligence were discovered in space.

  “In any event, a policy of the immediate burying of all Terrestrial hatchets would likely be in order.” (p. 5)

• State Department UAP Cable 2, Kazakhstan, January 31, 1994 – Cable from the embassy in Dushanbe of January 31, 1994: the American chief pilot of Tajik Air and two American colleagues reported watching a very bright, maneuvering light for about forty minutes from their Boeing 747SP over Kazakhstan on January 27; the official description instead speaks of one Tajik pilot and three U.S. citizens. In its comment, the embassy states that it has no opinion on the matter.

  “COMMENT: WE HAVE NO OPINION AND REPORT THE ABOVE FOR WHAT IT MAY BE WORTH.” (p. 2)

• State Department UAP Cable 5, Mexico, September 16, 2003 – Weekly report from the embassy in Mexico City of September 16, 2023; its last item covers a hearing on UAP in the Mexican Congress on September 12, at which experts presented two alleged alien corpses; according to the cable, a former U.S. Navy pilot who testified there afterwards called this an “unsubstantiated stunt.” The title gives the year 2003 instead.