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PURSUE — Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters

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PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters)

PURSUE is a U.S. federal UAP records portal launched May 8, 2026 by the department-of-war at war.gov/UFO, operationalizing donald-trump’s February 19, 2026 Truth Social directive to release government files on UAP, UFOs, and “alien and extraterrestrial life” (src-uap-trump-disclosure-2026).

Etymology

The name expands as Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. As of the May 8, 2026 launch capture (src-pursue-portal-launch-2026-05), the portal contains no public sighting-submission form — the “Reporting” element of the acronym appears to refer to government release rather than civilian intake. AARO retains civilian/insider intake under existing statute.

Origin

Established in response to donald-trump’s Truth Social directive dated 2026-02-19 tasking the Secretary of War “and other relevant Departments and Agencies” with finding and releasing UAP/UFO/alien-life records. Buildup: src-trump-tpusa-ufo-tease-2026-04, src-trump-pentagon-uap-files-2026-05, src-alien-gov-domains-2026-03.

Operating Structure

Release 01 (May 8, 2026)

  • “CLEARED FOR RELEASE — MAY 8, 2026.”
  • Pentagon X-post and CBS reporting: 162 files total (120 PDFs, 28 videos, 14 images); 108 redacted (≈67%). src-space-com-pursue-video-trove-2026-05 cites 161, a one-off counting variance.
  • Page 1 of 17 (~10 records/page → ~170 portal entries) is composed entirely of fbi PDFs from a single file series — see fbi-case-file-62-hq-83894.
  • Featured imagery: an Apollo 17 lunar photograph with three dots above the surface; an FBI eyewitness sketch of an “ellipsoid bronze metallic object” 130–195 feet long; FBI photographs from New Year’s Eve 1999; an “inverted teardrop” object over the UAE (2024); an object over Iraq (2022); a circular UAP in Greek airspace; a 2026 U.S. Army case; a 2020 USAF southern-U.S. case; an INDOPACOM “football-shaped” object near Japan.
  • Apollo 12/17 voice transcripts include the “very jagged, angular fragments that are tumbling” / “Fourth of July out of Ron’s window” passages — see lunar-uap-historical-claims and apollo-17.
  • apollo-11 Aldrin content surfaces post-launch: AP-wire (Kim/Binkley) headlines buzz-aldrin’s 1969 debriefing description of “a ‘sizeable’ object close to the moon” and “a fairly bright light source… could be a laser” — first widely circulated text fragment from NASA-UAP-D4 (src-fortune-aldrin-apollo-11-uap-2026-05; corroborated and expanded in src-newsweek-luna-teases-disclosure-2026-05 with the S-IVB Saturn V third-stage prosaic hypothesis).
  • Newly surfaced Release-01 records (May 9–10 follow-up coverage): 1957 fbi interview with wladyslaw-krasuski describing a 1944 75–100-yard “circular vertically-rising vehicle” near a German military compound; March 2023 “blue triangular” object hovering for ~3 minutes near a U.S. national-security facility; November 2023 centcom Syria “bouncy ball” UAP observed ~7 minutes by USAF personnel; June 2024 usnorthcom “inverted teardrop with a vertically linear trailing mass”; an Aegean Sea report describing “multiple 90-degree turns at an estimated 80 mph” plus “super-hot” orb and 4–5 additional flaring orbs; 1948 U.S. airmen / Netherlands report citing Swedish observers (“no presently known culture on earth”).
  • NPR-foregrounded records (May 8 sweep, src-npr-pursue-release-2026-05): the November 1948 USAF Directorate of Intelligence Top Secret cable on European unidentified-object sightings is the oldest file in Release 01 — explicitly records consultation with Sweden’s intelligence service, who described the phenomena as “obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth”; the 1948 cable is unredacted. The October 1955 Sen. Richard Russell Soviet-train sighting (with Lt. Col. E. U. Hathaway and others) — two “flying disc aircraft” observed from a train window in the former USSR; PURSUE version is the first unredacted release after a partially-redacted CIA prior release.

Stall between Release 03 and Release 04 (June–July 2026)

No tranche was released between Release 03 (June 12) and Release 04 (July 10) — roughly four weeks, despite the “every few weeks” cadence promised at launch. A July 2, 2026 LAmag piece published on World UFO Day (src-world-ufo-day-pursue-stall-2026-07) noted the White House had not publicly acknowledged the day nor responded to the June 9 Capitol Hill requests from david-grusch and Reps. tim-burchett, anna-paulina-luna, and eric-burlison for more records and whistleblower protections. The stall ended with Release 04 eight days later.

Reception

Pre-launch signal

Relationship to Other Disclosure Efforts

Release 02 (May 22, 2026)

Released exactly 14 days after Release 01 — operationalizing the rolling-release cadence that DoW officials had previewed in the days after launch. Confirmed by The Washington Times (Mike Glenn, src-pentagon-second-batch-ufo-release-2026-05).

  • Headline anecdote: Form 302-style report of a senior U.S. intelligence officer pursuing “glowing orbs” near a sensitive U.S. military facility; object rose from the ground, approached within 10 feet of the helicopter under night-vision, split in two, outran the chase.
  • Earliest-era newly declassified files: 200+ sightings of “green orbs,” “discs,” and “fireballs” at Sandia, NM (1948–1950) by the U.S. Air Force and the armed-forces-special-weapons-project — the densest documented early UAP–nuclear-facility cluster on record.
  • 1973 cia document: Soviet intelligence source at the sary-shagan missile-defense test range in Kazakhstan observed a “luminous, bright-green unidentified object” forming “concentric circles” over several minutes before silently dissipating.
  • Portal traffic: war.gov/UFO has logged more than 1 billion hits since the May 8 launch (Pentagon officials).
  • Posture (unchanged): “unresolved cases,” Pentagon non-determination, “we welcome the application of private sector analysis.”
  • Pre-release portal signals (May 21): the “Release 01” page heading was shortened to “Release”; the site briefly listed up to 140 blank file-listing pages before reverting — anticipated by micah-hanks in The Debrief (src-debrief-pursue-next-batch-preview-2026-05).

Release 02 — DoW primary source

department-of-war press release attributed to Sean Parnell (Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs / Chief Pentagon Spokesman) — src-dow-pursue-release-02-2026-05. Notable details:

  • March 6, 2026 — Eight U.S. House Reps formally requested 51 UAP-related records held by DoW and the IC. This is a distinct congressional pressure track from anna-paulina-luna’s March 31 46-video letter (src-luna-46-uap-videos-demand-2026-03) — predating Luna’s letter by ~25 days and broader in scope.
  • aaro is named as the entity that identified responsive materials “held on a classified network.” DoW caveat: “Many of these materials lack a substantiated chain-of-custody.”
  • Specific record walkthrough of the “4 UAP Formation Iran 26 Aug 2022” video: CENTCOM AOR, IR sensor, classified-network upload June 2024. DoW-authored video description uses the sensor-faithful “areas of contrast” register matching mick-west/Metabunk terminology (src-metabunk-pursue-analysis-2026-05).
  • Redaction policy formalized: redactions protect only eyewitness identities, facility locations, and non-UAP-relevant military-site info. No redactions are applied to information about “the nature or existence of any encounter reported as a UAP” per Trump’s directive — first explicit government statement of the non-redaction-on-UAP-content posture.
  • Release 03 explicitly previewed: “actively working on the third release,” “announced in the near future.”

Release 02 — Newsweek-surfaced specifics

Corroborated and expanded by Newsweek (Castro & Robinson, src-newsweek-pursue-release-02-2026-05):

  • Lake Huron 2023 shootdown footage actually released — Pentagon footage assembled by aaro in response to lawmaker requests; framed as “one of the clearest military engagement clips” in the archive (see lake-huron-shootdown-2023; aesir11).
  • Apollo 12 post-mission medical-debrief audio: Conrad, Gordon, and Bean describe eyes-closed “flashes” during sleep periods; NASA later concluded internal visual effects (cosmic-ray phosphenes) — not external light sources.
  • Sandia, NM file inventory: 116 pages, 209 reports, residual copper powder investigations, fed into Project Grudge (1949 USAF program).
  • 2022 Iran IR clip: four objects over water near Iran.
  • 2024 U.S. Coast Guard recording of an aircraft-proximity UAP over the southeastern U.S.
  • 2022 submarine-vicinity transmedium clip: several spherical objects entering/exiting water — flagged by AARO for further analysis (transmedium-uap; unidentified-submerged-objects).
  • Helicopter Form 302 (late-2025) new detail: “two large orbs” forming a distinct triangle before disappearing — same encounter family as src-fox-helicopter-near-miss-orbs-2026-05 with new triangle-formation detail.

Release 02 — Preview content (Luna 46 videos)

Per micah-hanks’s May 21 2026 preview (src-debrief-pursue-next-batch-preview-2026-05), up to 46 aaro-held UAP videos demanded in anna-paulina-luna’s March 31, 2026 letter (src-luna-46-uap-videos-demand-2026-03) are slated for release. Named clips include:

  • August 26, 2022 — four-object formation over Iran.
  • 2021 — Syrian “instant acceleration” object.
  • March 25, 2022 — multiple spherical USOs near a U.S. submarine (“in and out of water”); “UAP USO formation Wiley 2X Zinc” → transmedium-uap.
  • November 23, 2020 — sphere over Afghanistan in/out of clouds; 2022 “erratic” sphere; “pulsing” sphere over water; three-video April 12 2021 spherical sequence.
  • 2022 MQ-9 Reaper EO capture of a “metallic-orb” — AARO 2025 mission brief: “consistent with other ‘metallic orb’ observations in the region.”
  • October 15, 2022 — cigar-shaped / fat spherical UAP; a USCG HC-144 Ocean Sentry FLIR capture of a Tic Tac-shaped object.
  • October 29, 2020 — three “fast mover” UAPs observed by U.S. personnel.
  • AARO-resolved cases in the queue: the January 26, 2023 Eglin AFB diamond-formation (AARO: “very likely an ordinary object,” lighting-balloon hypothesis with “moderate confidence” — critiqued by mick-west as under-evidenced; see lighting-balloon-hypothesis); the February 12, 2023 Lake Huron AIM-9X shootdown filmed by F-16C pilot callsign AESIR11 — per sean-kirkpatrick’s April 27 2026 center-for-naval-analyses talk, one of the early-2023 hobbyist-balloon shootdowns.
  • Luna–Kosloski–Burlison joint May 15, 2026 review: anna-paulina-luna, jon-kosloski, and eric-burlison completed review of “40+ videos set for declassification”; Luna’s X post expresses “full support” for Kosloski’s good-faith declass efforts — the first explicit Luna endorsement of Kosloski.

Release 03 (June 12, 2026)

Released ~21 days after Release 02, fulfilling the third tranche previewed in the Release 02 DoW press release. DoW primary source: src-dow-pursue-release-03-2026-06 (Sean Parnell). Coverage: Newsweek (src-newsweek-pursue-release-03-2026-06), CBS News (src-cbs-pursue-release-03-2026-06), and a Galileo Project readout from avi-loeb (src-loeb-pursue-release-03-2026-06).

  • Portal traffic (Release 03 announcement): WAR.GOV/UFO received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since the May 8 launch, per sean-parnell’s June 12 press statement — up from the >1 billion figure cited at Release 02. Public interest described as “unprecedented levels.”

  • Release 04 signal: DoW and “agency partners” are “actively working on the next release of UAP files” per the Release 03 primary-source statement.

  • Contents: 53 documents + 10 digital renderings/images and 6 videos + 3 nasa audio recordings, drawn from the cia, fbi, NASA, and DoD. pete-hegseth reiterated the “unprecedented transparency” framing; spokesman sean-parnell confirmed continued PURSUE declassification.

  • Shift toward eyewitness footage: per CBS, four of six videos are FBI-collected eyewitness footage (not military sensor footage) accompanied by witness-interview narratives and FBI digital renderings — a register change from the Reaper-IR-dominated earlier tranches.

  • Artist reconstructions, not sensor data: Above the Norm News (src-uap-science-council-access-denied-2026-06) reports that the six “videos” in Release 03 are artist reconstructions drawn from witness descriptions, not instrument sensor feeds. The centerpiece October 2023 western-U.S. case carries no video, photo, or sensor recording — only written testimony from six federal agents. AARO matched ~60% of that incident to military aircraft dropping IR countermeasure flares (confirmed via flight logs and radar); the remaining ~40% is labeled “Unrecognized Technology, Pending.” The most notable clip (glowing red sphere, ~1 m, white plasma center) derives from a July 2025 backyard home video.

  • Featured orb cases: a July 2025 “Northeastern Orb Sighting” (two silent lights moving “as though flying in formation or tethered”); an October 2024 “Orbs Over the Pond” plasma-like sphere hovering ~2,700 ft for ~45 min; and an October 2023 western-U.S. case in which five federal law-enforcement special agents gave aaro accounts of orbs “hatched” from a larger orange light — Witness 3 likened them to “grapes being expelled from a basketball,” Witness 3’s partner asked “Are you seeing this?” (overlaps the western-U.S. orb family in earlier releases; see src-fox-helicopter-near-miss-orbs-2026-05).

  • 2022 Colorado Springs object: a “potato”-shaped, opalescent, “articulating fish scales” UAP near Fort Carson that “cloaked” with no shadow; an intelligence partner offered a “low confidence” snow-backscatter explanation; unresolved.

  • 2008 Harare Airport report: a disc with a “hollow center” and rotating lights emitting “beams” over the Zimbabwean airport, transmitted to the White House Situation Room.

  • Historical files: the 1952–53 CIA Robertson Panel “debunking” / “morbid national psychology” primary document; a 1992 CIA confession that U-2 and OXCART flights caused >half of late-1950s–1960s UFO reports (see oxcart-u2-ufo-explanation); and 1949 j-edgar-hoover–Rev. Barnes Cascades correspondence (earliest case in the tranche).

  • AARO June 5, 2026 report: avi-loeb highlights a report signed by jon-kosloski describing an orange “mother” orb launching smaller red orbs, with 40% of reported phenomena remaining unresolved. Loeb called Release 03 “the most intriguing thus far.”

  • EO discrepancy (flagged): CBS states the rollout was “prompted by an executive order President Trump signed earlier this year.” This conflicts with the wiki’s authoritative framing (Feb 19 2026 Truth Social directive operating without a formal EO as of May 8 — see Pre-launch volume framing below). Treat the EO assertion as unreconciled pending a primary source.

Pre-launch volume framing (Feb 2026)

Three months before the launch, lue-elizondo on NewsNation/CUOMO predicted the eventual UAP file trove would “dwarf the millions of documents in the Epstein files,” rooted in 80+ years of holdings across the intelligence community, defense agencies, and department-of-energy (src-newsnation-elizondo-pandoras-box-2026-02). PURSUE Release 01 contained only 162 files — a sharp contrast to that pre-launch expectation, and a useful volume benchmark for assessing subsequent rolling tranches. Elizondo also predicted Trump would need to sign an executive order to compel agency compliance; the public record as of May 8 shows the directive operated via Truth Social + Pentagon coordination rather than a formal EO.

Release 04 (July 10, 2026)

Published 28 days after Release 03, maintaining the rolling-release-cadence. DoW primary confirmation via spokesman sean-parnell (src-dow-pursue-release-04-2026-07 — note this primary statement is notably thinner than Release 02/03, omitting file counts and traffic figures); coverage: CBS News (src-cbs-pursue-release-04-2026-07), The Debrief (src-debrief-pursue-release-04-2026-07), and The Hill (src-thehill-pursue-release-04-2026-07).

  • Contents: 40 files — 14 documents, 19 videos, 4 audio files, 3 images — from the Pentagon, nasa, cia, fbi, and the Energy Department. About half date from 2010 or later.
  • Pantex nuclear-facility intrusion (Sept 2015): a silent, propulsion-less object intruded on airspace over the Pantex nuclear-weapons plant near Amarillo, TX, triggering a lockdown and a vehicle/foot pursuit by two officers; described elsewhere in the tranche as a slow-moving, four-foot “diamond-shaped object.”
  • Atlantic Ocean (2020): a Navy weapons systems officer’s heavily redacted report describes a “darker, maroonish,” 12-15 ft “somewhat deformed balloon”-like object at the merge — also described by The Hill as matching the long-rumored “floating brain” footage.
  • Eastern U.S. (2019): an aviator with 28 years of USAF/Navy service reported a small, high-speed rectangular object with “flight characteristics unlike anything I had seen.”
  • 2025 INDOPACOM sensor footage near China: a Yellow Sea “area of contrast resembling a six-pointed star,” and a separately tracked East China Sea object — the most recent-dated events in the tranche, and the first vault-documented PURSUE cases geographically sited near china.
  • 2019 “range-fouler” report: a small rectangular object with “flight characteristics never before seen” that outran a surveillance plane’s tracking system.
  • 2023 Yellow Sea sensor-degradation video: a UAP appears to progressively degrade a U.S. military platform’s EO/IR sensor footage over ~5 minutes.
  • NASA-UAP-D030 (STS-80, 1996): three Space Shuttle Columbia astronaut photos of a small triangular/cone object in low-Earth orbit, commonly explained as outgassed ice particles.
  • Historical files: the transcript of a 1949 Los Alamos conference of physicists (including Manhattan Project veterans) who failed to explain the area’s “green-fireballs,” rejecting the meteor hypothesis; a 1948 Project Sign document compiling 100 sightings from 1947-48, tying the wave to wartime “foo fighter” reports and the 1947 roswell-incident; additional apollo-14/apollo-17 NASA debriefing material.
  • Cross-release assessment: The Debrief’s micah-hanks judges that none of the four PURSUE releases to date show clear evidence of unknown craft exhibiting advanced technology.
  • Release 05 signal: Parnell confirmed DoW “and our agency partners are actively working on the next release of UAP files,” expected “in the coming weeks.” As of July 20, 2026, no Release 05 has published.

Reception: AI-enhanced “floating brain” virality (July 12, 2026)

An AI-enhanced version of the 2020 Atlantic “floating brain” clip (see above) circulated widely online the weekend of July 11–12; per Forbes reporting (cited secondhand by EarthSky), the enhanced footage appeared to “shape-shift” and “perform a sharp high-speed maneuver.” This contradicts the underlying Range Fouler Debrief (standardized Navy reporting form), which states the object “didn’t maneuver or change direction and traveled with the wind” — favoring a deflated-balloon explanation consistent with online joke theories. A case study in how AI enhancement of official UAP footage can produce viral readings that outrun the underlying prosaic sensor data. (src-floating-brain-ai-viral-2026-07)

Release 05 (August 7, 2026)

Published 28 days after Release 04, the second consecutive 28-day gap (Release 03→04 was also 28 days), suggesting the cadence has stabilized after earlier variable intervals. DoW primary confirmation via spokesman sean-parnell (src-dow-pursue-release-05-2026-08 — again a minimal statement, omitting file counts and traffic figures); detailed incident coverage via CBS News (src-cbs-pursue-release-05-2026-08).

  • Contents: 41 files (docs, images, videos) from the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, State Department, and Executive Office of the President, spanning 1950-2026.
  • September 2021 Gulf of Oman AC-130J encounter: Special Operations forces aboard an AC-130J gunship filmed ~25 “cold orb” UAPs (250-1300 MPH, varying formations, some apparently reacting to the aircraft’s main-cannon fire) during a live-fire exercise. Unresolved by aaro.
  • 2002 Bagram, Afghanistan triangle: A military pilot’s 2024 FBI interview describes a silent, ~500-foot equilateral-triangle object crossing overhead at 4:30 AM, corroborated by a second pilot (“did you see that?”).
  • Recurring transatlantic lights: The same pilot reported roughly 10 sightings of pulsing high-altitude white lights on transatlantic routes starting October 2023.
  • 2025 CENTCOM-area object: An unresolved clip over a populated Middle East city.
  • 2026 western-U.S. “black-hot” objects: A U.S. Government Special Agent photographed two slow-moving IR-dark objects traveling together for 5-10 minutes after an RF detection report.
  • Eight FBI Form 302 witness interviews, most paired with FBI artist renderings.
  • Release 06 signal: DoW “and our agency partners” are again “actively working on the next release of UAP files.”

Open Questions

  • Whether subsequent tranches contain genuinely new material vs. recycled FOIA holdings.
  • Whether the “Reporting” element of the PURSUE acronym ever takes the form of a public intake mechanism, or remains release-only.
  • Whether the fbi-case-file-62-hq-83894-heavy Release 01 is a sample or a full first-tranche emphasis.

NDA-Waiver Intake Channel (July 2026)

Per donald-trump’s July 21, 2026 directive, PURSUE (alongside aaro) now also functions as a designated channel where former employees/contractors with relevant UAP information can meet cleared officials and have prior NDAs abrogated — a response to the June 9, 2026 immunity/NDA-waiver push by Reps. eric-burlison and anna-paulina-luna. Officials stressed this is not a declassification directive. The next PURSUE tranche (Release 05) was signaled “very soon.” (src-trump-uap-nda-waiver-directive-2026-07)

August 1, 2026 — ODNI implementation memo: odni issued preliminary implementation guidance (ES 2026-00818, signed by Principal Deputy DNI aaron-lukas) formally routing NDA-waived disclosures to PURSUE for review and declassification, and directing all Intelligence Community members to designate a PURSUE point of contact within 30 days. Publicly released by Rep. eric-burlison. (src-odni-nda-waiver-memo-2026-07)

Sources (primary)

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