PURSUE · First release

In 2020, U.S. Central Command submitted a report to AARO consisting of one minute and three seconds of infrared footage over the Middle East, catalogued DOW-UAP-PR40. What's distinctive isn't the object itself —an area of contrast the sensor tracks as it brightens and gains distinctiveness against the background— but that the original reporter, not AARO or a later analyst, paused playback and drew a white line around the area of interest with the annotation 'U/I SMALL THERMAL SIGNATURE' directly onto the video, at the moment of reporting it.

In 2020, the U.S. Air Force submitted a report to AARO consisting of 58 seconds of infrared footage over the Middle East, with no witness description at all. The sensor tracks an area of contrast that 'gradually increases in distinctiveness' and then, after zooming in, 'increases in apparent size and distinctiveness.' AARO attached a technical comment rare in this corpus: that apparent growth is at least partly due to the platform itself closing the distance to the object — not the object growing or approaching on its own.

In 2023, an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform in the INDOPACOM area recorded nearly two uninterrupted minutes of three objects that, per AARO's official visual description, 'maintain a fixed position and orientation relative to one another' throughout the observation. Unlike most multi-object cases in the corpus —where objects typically appear and disappear, cross paths, or lose distinctiveness against the background— here the three contrast points remain stable relative to each other long enough that the analyst himself flagged it as a distinctive feature of the footage.

In 2024, an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform within Indo-Pacific Command's area of responsibility recorded 9 seconds of an object AARO describes with unusual geometric precision: 'a body resembling a football-shaped mass, with three radial projections — one oriented vertically, and two oriented downward at a 45-degree angle relative to the major axis of the main mass.' It is one of the most detailed and geometrically specific morphological descriptions in the corpus, but also one of the briefest: nine seconds of footage, with no mission report, no reporter statement, and no other contextual data.

In 2013, an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform within U.S. Central Command's (CENTCOM) area of responsibility recorded one minute and 46 seconds of a contrast pattern AARO describes as 'an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length.' The object leaves a visible trail as it moves and disappears from frame after an apparent cut in the footage, reappearing before finally exiting through the top left corner. The original reporter left no oral or written description of the observation — everything known comes from AARO's instrumental reading of the video, eleven years after the fact.

On September 20, 2024, during a weapons calibration over Ayn al-Asad Airbase in Iraq, a U.S. aircraft released an AGM-176 missile and held laser designation on the target until impact. In that interval —between release and detonation— an unidentified object crossed the sensor's field of view at high speed, generating an infrared lens flare on the MX-20 and MX-25 turrets indicating a significant heat source. The report records that no other aircraft had been reported in that airspace, and that the object's path 'appeared predetermined.' Archival note: the official file was distributed under a name reading 'East China Sea', but its content is entirely CENTCOM and Iraq.

On October 27 and 29, 2023, two separate missions flown out of Larissa Air Base each logged a small, circular object flying just above the surface of the sea. The first executed several ninety-degree turns at roughly 80 mph before dropping off the sensor feed; the second moved at about 30 mph heading toward land. Both operators used the same phrase to describe them —'seemingly circular, too small to make out details'— and both marked the intelligent-control box as 'no.' The two reports were declassified together in January 2026 under the same file.

On January 25, 2024, during an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission flown out of Larissa Air Base, the crew of a U.S. aircraft observed for two minutes an object flying at roughly 434 knots, which they described as a diamond with a straight, non-maneuvering 'probe' on its underside. The file's central detail is a negative one: the object appeared only on the short-wave infrared (SWIR) camera, and in no other sensor band. The report, declassified in October 2025 and released in the first PURSUE drop, formally catalogs it as a 'UAP Incident' while simultaneously recording the observer's assessment: benign.

Two U.S. State Department diplomatic cables declassified in the first PURSUE tranche (May 8, 2026) that share a series with the famous Mexico 2003 cable (#059UAP00013), but whose content barely touches the UAP phenomenon. #059UAP00011 (Tbilisi, Oct 2001) reports an airspace dispute: Georgia accused Russian aircraft of violating its airspace and bombing the Kodori Gorge, an accusation Russia denied. #059UAP00012 (Ashgabat, Nov 2004) describes, in an amused tone, how a Turkmen UFOlogist NGO had become a 'reliable partner' of the U.S. in civil-society building. A tier-B document-case: its interest is not a sighting but showing how a keyword-based declassification drags in diplomatic material only tangentially related to UAP.

Two USAF technical reports that PURSUE included in its first tranche (May 8, 2026) under the designations DOW-UAP-D48 and D49, but which are not sighting reports: one (1996) models unlikely space-booster failure modes with risk-calculation techniques; the other (2000) summarizes the launch history of Vandenberg AFB between 1958 and 2000. The corpus gathers them as rocketry reference material: the kind of document that explains why many 'UAP' reported near test ranges are in fact launches, reentries, fuel venting or booster failures. A tier-B document-case, valued as context for the mundane hypothesis, not as evidence of anomaly.

An FBI memorandum dated April 17, 1958 (field-office file 100-DE-18221, Serial 844), declassified in the first PURSUE tranche (May 8, 2026), records the report of a Detroit man who described a 'circular object with a crystal-type dome' and recommends forwarding the information 'to proper air force authorities'. It is a typical tier-B incident case from the flow of citizen sightings the FBI channeled to the Air Force: a single witness, a structured description but no instrumental corroboration, and the routine administrative referral. Its value is documentary —how a report was processed— more than probative.

Four U.S. Army/Air Force (AAF/USAF) files on the first 'flying disc' wave, declassified in the first PURSUE tranche (May 8, 2026): Air Materiel Command 'General' correspondence from 1946-47 and 1948, a November 1948 air-intelligence report (Netherlands) and the '319.1 Flying Discs 1949' file with incident reports filed under FSR 200-4 regulation, by military and Civil Aviation Authority witnesses. The set documents the institutional onset of the UFO problem —from the Twining memo (1947) to Project Grudge (1949)— in its administrative substrate. A tier-B document-case: a primary record of the process, not evidence of anomaly.

Three volumes (incidents 1-100, 101-172 and 173-233) of U.S. Air Force 'Incident Summaries' —the viewer embeds all three volumes (1-100, 101-172 and 173-233; the latter split into parts due to its size)—, declassified in the first PURSUE tranche (May 8, 2026). Each summary is organized around a standardized form —'Check-List: Unidentified Flying Objects'— with sighting data, and many include witness lists, statements and narrative reports. They are the bureaucratic artifact with which the USAF of Projects Sign (1948) and Grudge (1949) tabulated hundreds of flying-disc reports for systematic evaluation. A tier-B document-case: its value is to show the method —the recording-and-triage machinery that preceded Blue Book— more than any single incident; the bulk resolved into balloons, stars, aircraft and misidentifications.

The 'A series' is eight still images (A1–A8) the FBI submitted to AARO as a report of an unidentified anomalous phenomenon, declassified in the first PURSUE tranche (May 8, 2026). Unlike the B series —captured by a military system over the western United States in 2025—, the A series comes from a 'U.S. government system' and is published with no event date or location, with the original imagery altered by redactions before submission and no accompanying mission report; the operator stated they could not positively identify the object. It is a tier-B document-case: its value is to illustrate the limits of the release channel itself —context-free images are not, on their own, interpretable evidence— rather than to provide a probative piece.

Apollo 11's Technical Crew Debriefing (Jul 31, 1969), declassified in the first PURSUE tranche (May 8, 2026, designation NASA-UAP-D4), records observations by Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin during the translunar coast and the return: an object of noticeable size about a day from the Moon, 'little flashes' inside the cabin while trying to sleep, and a 'fairly bright light source' on the way back described as a 'possible laser'. May 2026 coverage amplified it as 'Apollo 11 UFOs', but the content points elsewhere: the object is most likely one of the rocket's own SLA adapter panels, and the flashes are the known cosmic-ray light-flash phenomenon. A tier-B case included for the solidity of its documentary provenance, not for anomaly.

Document 59_214434 (PURSUE Release 01) is a memorandum of July 18, 1963 from the National Aeronautics and Space Council —the White House's space advisory body, within the Executive Office of the President—, signed by Maxwell W. Hunter and addressed to Robert F. Packard of the State Department's Office of International Scientific Affairs. Titled 'Thoughts on the Space Alien Race Question', it reflects on the policy question of 'what to do if an alien intelligence is discovered in space', a topic that arose during the BNSP Task I deliberations. The author lays out the scientific shift —from believing life improbable to considering it probable among the stars—, discusses the Martian 'Canali' and Project Ozma, and speculates, with humor, about Martians mining the Moon and about 'hints' of life on the satellite. It is a rare record of how the U.S. executive apparatus thought about the contact contingency two decades before formal post-detection protocols.

File 62-HQ-83894 is the FBI's central 'flying discs' archive, opened in 1947 and fed through the 1970s with investigative reports, witness testimonies, press clippings and correspondence between the FBI and the Air Forces. PURSUE declassified its serials in the first release; this file embeds in its viewer a sample of Volume 1 (Sections 1-10, subfile SUB A and Serials 130, 153, 164, 220, 403, 438 and 449 (the heaviest sections were split into parts for the viewer)), investigative correspondence from the 1947 wave. The archive contains famous pieces —such as the 1950 Hottel memo on 'three saucers recovered', which the corpus treats separately— but its bulk is fieldwork that resolved most reports into balloons, hoaxes and misidentifications. Its value is institutional: it documents how the U.S. security apparatus processed the flying-disc panic, not that the discs were anomalous.

Document 341_110677 (PURSUE Release 01) contains Air Intelligence Information Report IR 193-55, signed on October 14, 1955 by U.S. air attaché Lt. Col. Thomas S. Ryan. It records the account of three 'highly reliable' U.S. observers who, traveling by rail through the Trans-Caucasus (between Aliaty and Adzhijabul, south of Baku) on October 4, 1955 at 19:10, saw two disc-shaped objects ascend almost vertically —with the outer surface revolving slowly to the right— to about 6,000 feet, at which point they sharply accelerated northward. The take-off area, 1-2 miles south of the line, showed two searchlight beams pointing almost vertically. The attaché assessed it as significant for the USAF's UFO project. What the document doesn't say —and a separate CIA memo (CIA-UAP-D020, declassified in PURSUE Release 04) does reveal— is the identity of those 'three observers': Senator Richard Russell, then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; his military aide, the same Lt. Col. E. U. Hathaway cited as the report's source; and interpreter Ruben Efron. The case stayed classified for thirty years.

Document DOS-UAP-D1, declassified in the first PURSUE release, is a diplomatic cable dated January 28, 1985 from the U.S. Embassy in Port Moresby to the Indo-Pacific Command (USCINCPAC). Papua New Guinea's intelligence service had asked the embassy about reports from the night of January 24: fast-moving objects with lights, contrails and noise. The report the NIO gave some credence to came from an Air Niugini pilot who, having just taken off from Wewak, detected by radar high-altitude, high-speed traffic over Angoram; ground witnesses reported contrails of one aircraft north-to-south at 19:00 and of six to eight aircraft south-to-north at 22:00. The embassy replied that it had no record of B-52 overflights or U.S. aircraft in PNG airspace that day, called the information 'very sketchy', and requested confirmation from USCINCPAC.

Document NASA-UAP-D7, declassified in the first PURSUE release, gathers excerpts from the technical debriefings of the three crews that occupied Skylab —the first U.S. space station— between 1973 and 1974. It records three kinds of observation: light flashes the astronauts saw with their eyes closed (the well-known cosmic-ray phosphene phenomenon), a bright reddish object the Skylab 3 crew tracked for 5-10 minutes and themselves described as 'obviously a satellite in a very similar orbit to our own', and flashing lights outside with relative motion that the Skylab 4 crew attributed to pieces of the station itself or other satellites. It is a documentary-transparency case: all three observations have a prosaic explanation acknowledged by the witnesses themselves.

A U.S. State Department diplomatic cable (document #059UAP00013, filed September 16, 2003) records that, on September 12, 2003, the Mexican Congress heard testimony on unidentified aerial phenomena as part of debate over a proposed 'Aerial Space Protection Law'. According to the cable, presenters showed 'two alleged alien corpses' and videos of Mexican pilots' encounters. The document itself notes the disagreement over the validity of the purported corpses, takes no analytical position, and the law did not pass. The cable resurfaced declassified in the first release of the PURSUE system (May 8, 2026): it is a diplomatic record of the event, not a verification of the claims, and it precedes Jaime Maussan's 2023 hearing by twenty years.

The VM6 plate from the Apollo 17 photographic archive (December 1972) shows, when the lower-right quadrant of the lunar sky is magnified, three luminous dots in a regular triangular formation. The photograph had circulated for decades in amateur catalogs, but the 2026 shift was institutional: within the Department of War's PURSUE release, AARO cataloged it as case NASA-UAP-VM6 and assessed it with unusually direct language —'potentially the result of a physical object in the scene'—, retrieving the original film for reanalysis. The skeptical explanations (ice, paint flaking, optical artifact) remain the most likely.

In December 1965, during the Gemini 7 mission, astronaut Frank Borman reported an unidentified object ('bogey') to Houston; with Jim Lovell he also described 'hundreds of little particles' and a 'brilliant body' against the black background of space. A document re-released by PURSUE in 2026 bears the handwritten note 'UFO Sighting by Borman'.

Over two days in October 2023, six federal agents (three two-person teams) observed near a sensitive national security site in the western U.S. an orange 'mother' orb that appeared for 1-2 seconds and released clusters of 2-4 red orbs. AARO published the report on 5 June 2026 (director Jon Kosloski): ~60% correlates with IR flares and radar; ~40% remains unexplained.

Between late 1944 and 1945, Allied pilots —chiefly of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron over the Rhine Valley, and also in the Pacific— reported bright lights and spheres that followed their aircraft, manoeuvred and vanished. They called them «foo fighters». They did not show on radar and never attacked; they were suspected to be an enemy secret weapon. It is the first modern military UAP phenomenon documented in official reports, predating Kenneth Arnold and Roswell — and a control case on «natural but unexplained» phenomena (plasma, St. Elmo's fire).

'Les OVNI et la Défense' (1999): report by COMETA, a committee of retired French generals and senior officers and aerospace experts (several linked to IHEDN). After reviewing cases with radar data and qualified witnesses, it concluded the extraterrestrial hypothesis is the most plausible for a residue of cases, and urged governments to prepare.

PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters) is the executive directive signed by the Trump administration in May 2026 ordering the newly renamed Department of War (formerly DoD) to execute an 'expeditious' interagency release of unresolved UAP records. The war.gov/ufo/ portal opened on May 8, 2026 and published in successive tranches: Release 1 (May 8), Release 2 (May 22), Release 3 (June 12), Release 4 (July 10) and Release 5 (August 7). By mid-June the portal had surpassed 1.7 billion accesses. The AARO assessment accompanying the third release (signed by its director Jon Kosloski, June 5) emphasizes 'plasma-like' orbs —including an orange 'mother orb' releasing smaller red orbs— and concedes that ~40% of cases remain unexplained. The fourth release (July 10, 2026) contributed 40 additional files (14 documents, 19 videos, 4 audio recordings, 3 images), including infrared video of a six-pointed object over the Yellow Sea captured by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in 2025, testimony from a military aviator with 28 years of service about a rectangular object with 'flight characteristics unlike anything I had seen' (Eastern US, 2019), documentation of an intrusion over the Pantex nuclear plant (Texas, September 2015), and a transcript of a Los Alamos conference (1949) where physicists attempted to explain the 'green fireballs' over the nuclear laboratory. It is the first U.S. federal UAP-release infrastructure with a direct presidential mandate and a stable public URL. The content remains more procedural than probative —orb videos, historical audio and declassified documents, without the conclusive piece that would settle the material question— but it is no longer an empty channel.

On January 27, 1994, Captain Edward Rhodes and two co-pilots of a Tajik Air Boeing 747 reported, at 41,000 feet over Kazakhstan, a luminous object that overtook them at greater speed and altitude and maneuvered for over 40 minutes in circles, corkscrews and 90° turns. The episode was documented in a U.S. State Department cable and appears among the declassified PURSUE files (2026).

Audio from the Apollo 12 post-mission medical debrief (1969), declassified in the second PURSUE tranche (May 22, 2026): astronauts Conrad, Gordon and Bean describe 'streaks/flashes of light' they saw while trying to sleep in deep space. Science explains it well as cosmic rays interacting with the retina — a case included for documentary transparency, not for anomaly.

September 2023, a U.S. military test site with airspace closed for LiDAR trials: a contractor with 15 years on military installations —who personally closed the airspace that day—, a drone pilot and other witnesses observe a bronze metallic ovaloid object (~40–60 m) that materializes from a bright light and vanishes instantly. FBI-rendered graphic and composite sketch; location officially redacted. Disclosed in the official PURSUE release (war.gov/ufo, May 2026).

On the weekends of 19 and 26 July 1952, controllers at Washington National and Andrews AFB tracked unidentified returns over the restricted airspace of the Capitol and the White House, visually confirmed by pilots and chased by F-94 fighters. The episode triggered the largest USAF press conference since the war and catalyzed the Robertson Panel.

The 'USPER Statement' is an FBI-302 interview with a currently serving senior U.S. intelligence-community official —identity protected under source rules— about a first-hand orb encounter at a sensitive Western US test installation in 2025. After searching by helicopter the area where orbs had previously been seen, the team found a 'super-hot' orb hovering over the ground that traveled 20 miles at a speed impossible for the pursuing helicopter; a 'swarm' of lights then appeared, and four or five orbs flared up and down over half an hour. The official saw it with the naked eye alongside two pilots on night vision; other pilots and ground observers with NVG also witnessed it, and ground personnel took photos through night-vision devices. Declassified in the first PURSUE release (FBI-302) and expanded in the second (ODNI-UAP-D001 narrative).

The first PURSUE drop released the Department of War's series of UAP operational reports: mission reports (MISREP), 'range fouler debriefs,' internal correspondence, and sensor footage covering five commands —CENTCOM (Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Syria, Iraq), INDOPACOM (East China Sea, Japan), EUCOM (Greece), AFRICOM, and the Department of the Army— between 2016 and 2026. It is not a single incident but the documentary set: each report tersely and mostly redactedly records that a crew reported an unidentified phenomenon. Its value lies in the pattern —reporting was sustained operational routine for nearly a decade across five theaters— not in resolving any particular sighting.