PURSUE · Second release

Of the 50 videos AARO located on a classified network while responding to a FOIA request from eight members of Congress for 51 potentially UAP-related records, 21 already have their own case in this corpus for some distinctive trait (a title matching the description, an explicit digital-alteration admission, a technical AARO comment). These remaining 27 do not: each is an area of contrast an infrared sensor tracks, loses, and regains, with a title assigned by whoever uploaded the file to the classified network —not by AARO— and lacking the substantiated chain of custody that Release 01's operational reports do have. They are catalogued here together so that none remains entirely invisible on the site.

A 10-minute-48-second clip —the longest in the 50-video Release 02 batch— turns out, per AARO's own visual description, to be a compilation of three successive versions of the same footage, separated by on-screen captions the uploader inserted. The first, at 8x speed, carries the caption 'possible changes of shape, stabilized and enhanced, 38 seconds.' The other two are the same shot at original speed, one processed and one unedited. AARO's instrumental description, however, does not mention any shape change in any of the three versions — only an area of contrast that stays centered while the sensor cycles contrast modes and quality degrades.

An 8-minute-16-second clip —notably longer than most videos in this batch, typically seconds to a couple of minutes— circulates under the title 'UAP USO Formation [CALLSIGN] (Mission),' suggesting an unidentified submerged object in formation. AARO's official visual description does show four areas of contrast crossing the frame together at the start, but warns the video was digitally altered before being uploaded to the classified network, with multiple internal cuts, and that its final five seconds are likely a repeat of an earlier segment rather than a chronological continuation. Part of the 50-video Release 02 batch (FOIA/classified-network origin).

A mere 20-second clip circulates under the title '4 UAP Formation Iran 26 Aug 2022 over water' — suggesting a four-object formation off Iran. AARO, however, only assesses as 'likely' that the footage comes from a sensor within CENTCOM's area of responsibility in 2022, without confirming Iran as the specific location. The official visual description does support the title's core claim: four areas of contrast cross the frame together within about three seconds, followed by a fifth entering separately. Part of the 50-video Release 02 batch (FOIA/classified-network origin).

A nearly four-minute clip circulates under the title 'Spherical UAP Erratic movement [CALLSIGN] (Mission) 2022' — but AARO itself, in the file's official visual description, notes something the title doesn't: 'digital alterations to the video footage significantly influence the area of contrast's apparent performance characteristics.' In other words, the agency itself attributes much of what the title calls 'erratic movement' to the video's editing, not the object. It is part of the 50-video Release 02 batch (FOIA/classified-network origin; see [[reeves-foia-classified-network-2023]]).

A 47-second clip circulates under the title 'Spherical UAP over AFG in and out of clouds 23 Nov 2020' — a label assigned, per AARO itself, by whoever uploaded the file to a classified network in June 2024, not by the Department of War. It is part of the same 50-video batch AARO located while responding to a 2026 FOIA request for 51 UAP-related records with no substantiated chain of custody. A detail the title omits but the official record does note: the video 'was digitally altered prior to its upload to the classified network' — it includes black title cards reading 'zoomed in' and 'sharpened, zoomed, motion tracked, contrast enhanced, slow to 60% speed' before cutting to 'original video,' meaning a third party's edit of the raw footage, not unprocessed sensor recording.

A four-minute clip carries the title '29 October 2020 [CALLSIGN] (Mission) observes 3 fast moving UAP' — but the Department of War did not assign that title: it is the label of whoever uploaded the file to a classified network in October 2020, part of the same 50-video batch AARO located while responding to a FOIA request from eight members of Congress for 51 UAP-related records with no substantiated chain of custody. AARO's own timestamped visual description records only TWO simultaneous areas of contrast on screen —not three— for about 15 seconds around the clip's midpoint, and much of the rest is footage with no visible content while the sensor cycles its zoom. It was released in PURSUE's second drop.

Four files titled 'obj 2,' 'vid 0,' 'vid 1' and 'vid 2,' reportedly from April 12, 2021, total nearly nineteen minutes of footage — but the Department of War did not assign those titles: per AARO itself, they are labels from whoever uploaded the files to a classified network in 2024, part of the same 50-video batch located while responding to a 2026 FOIA request for 51 UAP-related records with no substantiated chain of custody. AARO's own timestamped visual description does not confirm nineteen minutes of continuous observation of a single object: in two of the four clips ('vid 0' and 'vid 2'), most of their roughly four-and-a-half-minute duration is described with no visible area of contrast at all, the object reported only in sub-minute fragments. They were released in PURSUE's second drop.

Two infrared sensor clips, reportedly from April 24, 2024 near Tyndall Air Force Base (Florida), are part of the batch of 50 videos AARO located on a classified network while responding to a FOIA request from eight members of Congress for 51 potentially UAP-related records — a batch AARO itself notes lacks a substantiated chain of custody. The title 'USCG C-144 Tyndall UAP TIC TAC IR hot' that names this case was NOT assigned by the Department of War, but by whoever uploaded the file to the classified network: AARO only assesses it as 'likely' that the sensor belonged to a Coast Guard platform in the Southeastern United States in 2024. AARO's own visual description, more modest than the title, records an 'area of contrast' the sensor manages to track in one clip and loses in the other — not the stable capsule silhouette the title suggests.

Three Department of Energy documents declassified in PURSUE Release 02 (May 22, 2026) share a thread: sustained interest in UAP within the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex. DOE-UAP-D001 is a 'Pantex Unidentified Object Incident Report' (marked UCNI) about the country's sole nuclear-weapons assembly/disassembly plant, with an image captured from a ground surveillance radar tower and enhanced by Sandia National Labs. DOE-UAP-D002 is 1970s correspondence of Los Alamos physicist James L. Tuck (Manhattan Project; later controlled fusion) about anomalous phenomena, ball lightning and the Condon Report. DOE-UAP-D003 is a 1986 invitation from the Pajarito Astronomers of Los Alamos to a talk by physicist Dr. John Warren (LANL) titled 'Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFO's?'. Their value is institutional context —they document decades of attention to the phenomenon inside the nuclear apparatus, not that the objects were anomalous.

In late summer 1973, at Site 7 of the Sary Shagan weapons testing range —the Soviet anti-ballistic-missile and directed-energy proving ground near Lake Balkhash—, a worker at the facility observed to the west, at about 70° elevation, a sharp green circular object. Within 10-15 seconds the circle widened and several concentric green circles formed around the mass; the color faded within minutes, with no sound or explosion, under a clear sky. The account reached the West as a CIA HUMINT report (CONFIDENTIAL) and resurfaced declassified in the second release of the PURSUE system (May 22, 2026). The signature —an expanding concentric green cloud— is consistent with a Soviet high-altitude test (chemical release or rocket plume) as much as with an optical-atmospheric phenomenon.

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.

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.

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).

On presidential order, an F-16 shot down an octagonal object with no observable propulsion over Lake Huron with an AIM-9X missile: the first documented kinetic shootdown of an unidentified object over US territory, acknowledged in the PURSUE R02 release.

Between 1948 and 1950, 209 sightings of green spheres were logged over the Albuquerque–Los Alamos nuclear corridor, investigated under military sponsorship and acknowledged by AARO in the PURSUE R02 release: the first documented wave over US nuclear infrastructure.