May 22, 2026: the 2nd tranche PURSUE — 64 UAP files, including 51 military videos

What was published on May 22, 2026

On May 22, 2026, fourteen days after the launch of the portal, the Department of War filed the second installment of the PURSUE program on WAR.GOV/UFO : 64 files, according to the official database — 51 videos, 6 PDF documents and 7 audio files. Source agencies: Department of War (52 items), NASA (7), Department of Energy (3), CIA (1) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI (1). With the 158 files from the first tranche on May 8, the public database then reached 222 documents.

What distinguishes this slice: it is the slice of videos. The 51 sequences come from military sensors - mainly on-board infrared - and cover real theaters of operations: Middle East (CENTCOM), Pacific (INDOPACOM), Africa (AFRICOM), Europe (EUCOM) and American territory (NORTHCOM), from 2017 to 2024.

File markers

Where the 51 videos came from — the story behind the lot

The origin of these videos is documented by the Department of War itself, and it is worth telling. The March 6, 2026, eight members of the House of Representatives officially request access to 51 records potentially linked to UAPs that the Department of War and the intelligence community were supposed to have. AARO — the Pentagon's anomaly analysis office — finds the collection... on a classified network. Two and a half months later, all 51 videos are public.

But the AARO accompanies each video with a crucial methodological precision: many of these files do not have a fully established chain of custody — we don't always know who recorded them, with what exact sensor, or through whose hands they passed. The titles themselves are those given by users who uploaded the files to the classified network, not official designations. This is a major limitation that every reader should keep in mind — and the fact that the Pentagon itself points it out is, in itself, good documentary practice.

The most notable videos of the lot

References and titles as they appear in the official database (call signs and weapon systems are redacted by the Pentagon, noted [CALLSIGN] and [Weapon System]):

The room DOW-UAP-PR071 is probably the most meaningful: it is attributed to the commitment of the February 12, 2023 over Lake Huron — one of the objects shot down by the American air force in the days following the Chinese balloon, an episode confirmed at the highest level at the time. Seeing the infrared sequence of this shooting appear in a public database of UAP files, three years after the fact, is exactly the kind of transparency that elected officials demanded. The room PR067, she touches on an even rarer subject: spherical objects filmed entering and leaving the water near a submarine — the category that the official literature calls "transmedium" and which the name UAP ("anomalous" rather than "aerial") has precisely been extended to cover.

The ODNI piece: the story of a senior intelligence official, late 2025

Only one document in this tranche comes from ODNI, and it is perhaps the most troubling of the lot. The room ODNI-UAP-D001 is a story written in the first person by a senior US intelligence official (in May 2026, specifies the base). In late 2025, this official was part of a team investigating unusual noises and UAP sightings around a sensitive US military installation, in the western United States.

From a helicopter, he describes observing “luminous orbs”, at close range as well as in the distance - and an apparently fast object, flying at ground level, which would have seemed split in two before accelerating in two different directions. A testimony is not proof, even if signed by a senior intelligence official: it is a declaration, dated and binding, whose value lies in the status of the witness and its precision. The fact that the ODNI publishes it under its own heading is, on the other hand, a fact – and a notable precedent.

Paper documents: Sandia, Pantex, Los Alamos — the shadow of nuclear power

The six PDFs in the tranche outline a historical constant: reports are concentrated around American nuclear sites.

Sandia, Pantex, Los Alamos: three names, the same geography – that of the American nuclear complex. The 209 reports from Sandia between 1948 and 1950 exactly extend the record of the Los Alamos Conference of 1949 published in the 4th installment: same years, same “green balls of fire”, same outdated investigators. Correlation is not causation — nuclear sites are also the most monitored places in the country, and therefore those where the most reports are reported. But the constant is documentary, not speculative.

NASA audios: Mercury, Apollo, and the lesson of “fireflies”

The seven audio files come from the NASA archives: Mercury missions (1961-1963), Apollo 12 (1969) and Apollo 17 (1972). The most famous is the extract from Mercury-Atlas 9 (May 15, 1963): at one hour and 41 minutes into the flight, pilot Gordon Cooper reported that he saw the “John’s Fireflies” — the “fireflies” described by John Glenn during his 1962 flight. NASA then established that these fireflies were… frozen condensation coming off the vessel, illuminated by the sun.

Why publish these audios in a UAP database, then? Because they perfectly illustrate the process: a strange phenomenon, reported by elite witnesses, documented, investigated — and finally explained. This is the complete journey that each case should be able to follow. Those that remain “unresolved” are those where this journey stopped en route due to lack of data.

What is not established — and the limits of this tranche

Three major limitations govern the reading of these 64 files. First, the chain of custody : the AARO itself says it, many of the 51 videos do not have a fully traced provenance. Then, the redaction : designators, platforms and weapon systems are hidden, limiting independent analysis. Finally, the nature of objects : no piece of the lot concludes anything — neither drone, nor balloon, nor sensor artifact, nor object of non-human origin. The conventional hypotheses all remain open for each sequence.

And it must be said clearly again: the Department of War specifies that nothing in these files shows any interaction with beings from other planets. Authentic military video of an unidentified object remains exactly that: authentic, and unidentified.

PURSUE timeline

This installment is the second of four published to date: May 8 (158 files, portal launch), May 22 (64 files — this folder), June 12 (72 files) et July 10 (40 files — our flagship file). Total base: 334 files. The Department of War announces publications “every few weeks.”