What is PURSUE?
PURSUE — acronym for Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters — is an American government program launched at the request of Donald Trump, operated by the Department of War (formerly Department of Defense). Its official goal: to locate, review, declassify and publish UAP-related documents held by U.S. federal agencies.
The files are accessible on the government website war.gov/UFO, created specifically for this initiative. The site publishes documents as they are reviewed and declassified.
The PURSUE program was officially launched on May 8, 2026 by the US War Department. The documents are available for public access at war.gov/UFO.
What the first 161 files contain
The first batch, released on May 8, 2026, includes 161 files covering a period from 1944-1945 to recent years. The documents fall into several categories:
- Internal military reports on unidentified sightings
- Witness interviews — pilots, intelligence officers, law enforcement
- Memos and interagency communications
- Photographs and videos of military sensors
- Transcripts of space missions (Apollo program)
The videos and photographs show objects filmed over multiple geographic areas: the United States, Greece, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, and other regions over several decades.
A second batch of 64 files was released on May 22, 2026, notably including the account of a US intelligence officer describing a sighting in 2025 that left him, in his words, "virtually speechless".
The most notable incidents of PURSUE files
Among the hundreds of cases documented in the published files, several attract attention due to their nature or the profile of the witnesses.
Orbs above ground, western United States (2023-2024). The Pentagon calls this file one of the "most disturbing" in its possession. A U.S. intelligence agent, during a helicopter mission, describes observing a "super-hot" orb stationary on the ground, moving about 20 miles at high speed, before being joined by four or five additional orbs turning on and off. This testimony is the subject of an interview published in the PURSUE files.
Greece. A video included in the files shows an object making 90-degree turns — a feature frequently cited in UAP reports to denote aerodynamically atypical behavior.
Iraq (2024). Military surveillance footage records an object crossing the sensor field at very high speed during an operation in progress.
Syria. Two orange-colored semi-transparent areas appear for two seconds on a sensor video.
The War Department called the record of orbs observed in the American West "among the most compelling accounts" in its possession — without specifying the origin of the object or formulating a conclusion.
The origin of the objects filmed in these sequences has not been attributed to any source identified in the published documents. No conclusion is made on their nature.
The Apollo astronauts in the declassified archives
The PURSUE files include transcripts and photographs related to the Apollo missions, previously preserved in classified or partially accessible archives.
The documents concern in particular:
- Apollo 11: Buzz Aldrin describes the presence of a sizable object near the lunar module, as well as a "pretty bright light source" that the crew envisioned as a laser.
- Apollo 17: A photograph shows "three points in a triangular formation" in the lower right portion of the frame, in the lunar sky.
These documents are released by the U.S. Government as part of the UAP Historical Records. No official interpretation accompanies the photographs or transcriptions.
The nature of the objects or phenomena described by the Apollo astronauts remains without an established official explanation. The transcripts constitute testimony of high credibility, not evidence of abnormal phenomena.
The recognized limits of this first publication
Several experts and former intelligence officials have expressed reservations about the real scope of this publication.
Christopher Mellon, former assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, summed up the central problem: “Data alone is not disclosed. Releasing raw files without context may confuse more than clarify." — raw data without context produces more confusion than clarity.
Admiral Tim Gallaudet pointed out the absence of technical metadata associated with the videos: without raw sensor data, precise timestamps and recording parameters, it is impossible to properly validate or analyze the sequences.
Grant Lavac, a specialist analyst, noted that a significant portion of the published documents were already publicly available, or had already circulated via previous FOIA requests.
Subsequent releases, announced as "very soon" by the Trump administration, could include more recent documents and technical metadata allowing for more rigorous analysis.
What the US government officially says
The War Department and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) have maintained a consistent position since the office's creation in 2022:
To date, AARO has not discovered any evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial beings, extraterrestrial activity, or technology of non-human origin in any of the cases examined. No resolved cases have been attributed to foreign adversary activity (Russia, China, etc.).
This position does not mean that all of the reports are explainable. The AARO maintains a “case meriting further analysis” category for cases that do not receive a satisfactory conventional explanation.
What VIDEO UFO remembers
PURSUE represents the first systematic, institutional release of UAP files in the United States. The quantity of documents put online is unprecedented. The analytical quality of this first wave, on the other hand, is limited by the absence of metadata and interpretive context.
The most interesting incidents — the orbs of the American West, the Greek sequences, the Apollo testimonies — deserve a careful reading of the source documents, not a quick interpretation based on headlines. VIDEO OVNI will continue to follow the next batches of publications and to distinguish, in each file, what is confirmed from what remains hypothetical.
Sources used
- war.gov/UFO — Official PURSUE website, US Department of War
- Wikipedia — United States UAP files (documentary summary)
- NBC News — Pentagon releases declassified UFO files
- CBS News — Pentagon releases more UFO files
- DefenseScoop — “Data alone is not disclosed”: reactions from the UAP community
- ABC News — Pentagon begins releasing unresolved UFO files
- Official release — Department of War UAP files release
Track video analytics
VIDEO OVNI publishes documentary analyzes on UAPs. Follow us on TikTok for the next files.
Follow VIDEO UFO on TikTok