Key Takeaways
- 162 files released from the FBI, DoD, NASA and State Department — the first complete UAP case files ever made public
- Over 400 incidents documented, spanning the 1940s to 2026, with 24 videos totalling 41 minutes
- Apollo mission reports include Buzz Aldrin describing unexplained lights and Apollo 17 crew seeing 'tumbling' bright particles
- FBI witness describes a metallic, wingless object that vanished after seconds over a US test site
- No evidence of extraterrestrial contact — but the Pentagon says most files haven't been analysed yet
📑 Table of Contents
- What Is PURSUE?
- The Numbers: What's in This First Release
- Apollo Astronauts Saw Things They Couldn't Explain
- FBI Witness Reports: Metallic Objects Over US Test Sites
- Military Infrared Footage From Five Continents
- The 1940s Cases: UFO Reports Before Anyone Called Them UFOs
- What's Not in the Files
- What Happens Next
On 8 May 2026, the US Department of War did something no government has ever done before: it published complete, unredacted UAP case files for anyone to read. No clearance required. No FOIA request needed. Just a government website — war.gov/UFO — and 162 files covering encounters that span eight decades.
This isn't a summary. It's not a press release with a few teaser images. For the first time, the American public can read the actual source documents — witness interviews, mission reports, infrared video, photographs and intelligence assessments — that have been sitting behind classification barriers for years.
We've gone through them. Here's what's actually in there.
What Is PURSUE?
The release falls under a programme with an acronym that sounds like it was designed by committee: PURSUE — the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters.
It's an interagency effort involving the Department of War, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Energy, NASA, the FBI and AARO (the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office). The initiative was triggered by a Truth Social post from President Trump on 19 February 2026, directing agencies to begin identifying and declassifying government files related to UAP.
The files are being released in tranches. This is Release 01. More batches will follow every few weeks as additional records are discovered and cleared for publication.
The Numbers: What's in This First Release
Release 01 contains 162 files from four agencies:
- FBI — witness interviews, infrared photographs, drone operator reports
- Department of War (DoD) — military infrared video footage, AARO incident reports
- NASA — Apollo mission debriefings, astronaut testimony, lunar photographs
- State Department — historical reports and overseas incident documentation
Between them, the files document more than 400 individual incidents from locations across the globe. The date range runs from the late 1940s all the way to early 2026.
The video content amounts to roughly 24 clips totalling 41 minutes, the vast majority captured by infrared sensors aboard US military platforms. Most show small, bright objects tracked against featureless backgrounds — the kind of footage that's difficult to interpret without context, which is exactly why the Pentagon is releasing the accompanying documentation alongside it.
Apollo Astronauts Saw Things They Couldn't Explain
Some of the most striking material in the release comes from NASA's own files — debriefings and mission reports from three Apollo flights.
Apollo 11 (July 1969): During the mission that put the first humans on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin reported seeing flashes of light inside the cabin while trying to sleep. He described them as "little flashes inside the cabin, spaced a couple of minutes apart." In a separate incident, Aldrin described seeing what appeared to be "a fairly bright light source" that the crew tentatively attributed to a possible laser.
Apollo 12 (November 1969): Astronaut Alan Bean reported "flashes of light" that he described as "sailing off into space." A photograph from the Apollo 12 landing site, included in the release, shows an area of interest above the lunar horizon containing unidentified phenomena.
Apollo 17 (December 1972): The final Apollo mission produced what may be the most vivid account. The crew reported seeing "very bright particles" that were "tumbling" and "rotating way out in the distance." Astronaut Harrison Schmitt — a geologist and the only scientist to walk on the Moon — said the phenomenon looked "like the Fourth of July." A photograph from the mission shows three dots in a triangular formation visible in the lunar sky.
These aren't anonymous tips from the public. They're formal debriefings from NASA astronauts — some of the most rigorously trained observers ever sent into space.
FBI Witness Reports: Metallic Objects Over US Test Sites
The FBI's contribution includes witness interviews conducted via FaceTime — a detail that feels jarringly modern against a backdrop of Cold War-era flying saucer reports.
One September 2023 report describes an FBI interview with a drone operator at a US test site. The witness, along with colleagues, observed a "bright light over the horizon" that turned out to be something far stranger on closer inspection.
The object was described as "a linear object with a super bright light on the east side." The light was described as "bright white and bright enough to see bands within the light." The object itself was "metallic/gray in colour" with no wings and no exhaust. It was smaller than a 737 but bigger than a drone — estimated at "one to two Blackhawk helicopters in length."
The object was at roughly 5,000 feet, moved from east to west, and then simply vanished after five to ten seconds. When the witnesses looked again, the sky was clear and the object was gone.
The document notes that redactions have been made to protect witness identities, government facility locations and sensitive information about military sites unrelated to UAP.
The FBI also contributed a series of infrared photographs from September and December 2025, captured over the western United States. These black-hot thermal images show unidentified objects tracked from helicopters and other platforms — some appearing as single objects, others showing clusters.
Military Infrared Footage From Five Continents
The bulk of the video material comes from the Department of War via AARO. The footage spans multiple combatant commands and dates from 2013 to 2026:
- Indo-Pacific Command (2024): A "football-shaped body" tracked near Japan via infrared sensor. The clip runs one minute and 39 seconds.
- Northern Command (2024): A 21-second infrared clip from a US military platform.
- Middle East (2013, 2022): Multiple incidents including an eight-pointed area of contrast captured via infrared and UAP reports from near the United Arab Emirates.
- Greece (October 2023): A military operator reported UAP flying straight above the ocean towards land.
- Africa (2025): UAP reported within African airspace by a US military operator.
- US Army, North America (2026): A UAP report filed by the US Army — one of the most recent incidents in the collection.
Most of the footage shows the same thing: a small, bright object tracked by infrared sensors against sky or ocean backgrounds. Without the accompanying reports, most clips would be impossible to interpret. That's precisely the point of releasing complete case files rather than isolated videos.
The 1940s Cases: UFO Reports Before Anyone Called Them UFOs
The collection includes reports from the very beginning of the modern UFO era.
A September 1948 report describes military crew members flying at 30,000 feet over the Netherlands who observed an unidentified aircraft exhibiting "sudden accelerations and then a climb." Within months, intelligence officials concluded it was a single propelled jet using "rocket assists with tremendous reserve power" — one of the few cases in the release that was actually resolved.
There's also a transcript from 1965 featuring astronaut Frank Borman during the Gemini 7 mission. About four and a half hours into the flight, Borman referred to a "bogey at 10 o'clock high." When Houston asked him to repeat, he described it as "hundreds of little particles going by to the left out about three or four miles."
These older cases are a reminder that people have been reporting strange things in the sky for as long as we've had the technology to get up there ourselves.
What's Not in the Files
Let's be direct about what this release doesn't contain.
There is no evidence of extraterrestrial contact. No recovered craft. No alien bodies. No confirmation of a government cover-up. The documents don't suggest the US government has had any interaction with beings from other planets or that it has any reason to believe such beings have visited Earth.
What the files do contain is a very large collection of incidents that the government has been unable to explain. That's what "unresolved" means in this context — not "alien," but "we don't know." The Pentagon has been explicit about this: these are cases where there wasn't enough data to make a definitive determination, or where the observed behaviour didn't match any known aircraft, drone or natural phenomenon.
The Pentagon has also been upfront about a significant caveat: while all files have been reviewed for security purposes, many of the materials have not yet been analysed for resolution. In other words, some of these cases might have perfectly ordinary explanations that simply haven't been investigated yet.
What Happens Next
This is Release 01. The Department of War has said it will continue posting new materials on a rolling basis, with new tranches every few weeks as records are discovered and declassified. The effort requires coordination between dozens of agencies and the review of tens of millions of records — many of which exist only on paper.
The Pentagon has explicitly invited private-sector analysis, information and expertise. That's an unusual step for a department that has historically been reluctant to acknowledge UAP reports at all, let alone share raw data with the public.
Whether this release represents genuine transparency or carefully managed disclosure is a question that will be debated for years. But for now, the files are there. Anyone can read them. And for the first time in history, the complete case files — not summaries, not press releases, but the actual documents — are available to anyone with an internet connection.
You can browse the full collection at war.gov/UFO.
