US Government UAP File Releases: The PURSUE Tranches
Every tranche of declassified UAP files released by the US Department of War under PURSUE so far: what each batch contains, where the counts come from, and what the records do and do not show.
Since May 2026 the United States government has been publishing its UFO files in batches. The programme is called PURSUE — the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters — it is run by the Department of War with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and everything it releases lands at war.gov/ufo. Seven tranches have appeared so far, the first on 8 May 2026 and the latest on 23 October 2026, with the Department promising more on a rolling basis as records are found and declassified.
The tranches are worth reading carefully, and worth being sceptical about in the right way. They are genuine declassified records from real agencies — FBI field reports, CIA memoranda, military sensor footage, NASA crew audio — and they document a long history of official reporting that was not previously public. But the programme itself states that the archive holds unresolved cases: files where the government could make no definitive determination. A record being released is not a record being confirmed. What follows is what each batch contained, where the counts come from, and how PURSUE fits alongside the separate National Archives collection.
Official source: war.gov/ufo, the Department of War’s PURSUE portal.
What each tranche contains
7 tranches released so far, 478 files in total, newest last.
Release 01 — 8 May 2026 — 158 files
116 documents, 27 videos, 14 images, 1 audio file. Agencies: Department of State, Department of War, FBI, NASA. Incident dates: 1945–2026.
The opening batch, and by file count the largest of the seven: the first public look at the PURSUE corpus, running from wartime "foo fighter" reports to modern military encounters.
- The 1947 FBI "Flying Discs" memorandum — the Bureau’s earliest known file on the flying-disc reports of that summer.
- Gemini-era NASA material, among the first astronaut-associated records in the programme.
- Bulk Department of War reporting spanning eight decades.
Release 02 — 22 May 2026 — 64 files
6 documents, 51 military sensor videos, 7 NASA crew audio recordings. Agencies: Department of War, NASA. Incident dates: 1960s–2020s.
The video tranche. Two thirds of the batch is military sensor footage, making it the largest single release of UAP video the programme has produced.
- 51 military sensor videos — infrared and electro-optical gun-camera and pod footage.
- Seven NASA crew audio recordings from orbit.
- The "green fireballs" file, documenting the unexplained lights over New Mexico’s atomic installations in the late 1940s.
Release 03 — 12 June 2026 — 72 files
53 documents, 6 videos, 10 images, 3 audio recordings. Agencies: Central Intelligence Agency, Department of War, FBI, NASA. Incident dates: 1948–2025.
The tranche that brought the CIA into PURSUE for the first time, adding a large body of Cold War-era intelligence reporting to the archive.
- Eighteen historical CIA records, the agency’s first contribution to the programme.
- Modern FBI case files alongside NASA Gemini debriefing material.
- Records of the Robertson Panel, the CIA-convened committee that assessed UFO reports in 1953.
Release 04 — 10 July 2026 — 40 files
14 documents, 19 videos, 3 images, 4 audio recordings. Agencies: CIA, Department of Energy, Department of War, FBI, NASA. Incident dates: 1948–2025.
A mixed batch pairing the institutional history of Project Blue Book with a further set of military sensor videos.
- Project Blue Book and Robertson Panel records from the Air Force’s own investigation years.
- Los Alamos "green fireball" material, from the period when the laboratory was reporting unusual lights over the weapons labs.
- Nineteen further military sensor videos.
Release 05 — 7 August 2026 — 41 files
22 documents, 16 videos, 3 images. Agencies: Department of War, FBI. Incident dates: 1946–2025.
Heavy on naval footage and mid-century case files, including material from the Cold War’s earliest wave of reports.
- AC-130 gunship videos recorded over the Gulf of Oman.
- The 1946 Swedish "ghost rockets" — the wave of rocket-shaped object reports that preceded the modern subject by a year.
- The USS Gyatt incident of 1964 and FBI triangle-sighting files.
Release 06 — 18 September 2026 — 75 files
59 documents, 15 videos, 1 audio file. Agencies: Department of War, local law enforcement (Colorado). Incident dates: 1952–2025.
The most documentary tranche so far, and the first to include records submitted by local police rather than federal agencies.
- The complete AAWSAP contract file and its 37 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (2009–2011) — the DIA’s private study programme that ran behind the public one.
- The investigative file of the 1952 Tremonton film, the Utah airfield footage that Blue Book spent years arguing over.
- The programme’s first local-law-enforcement material: videos and reports from Colorado police departments.
Release 07 — 23 October 2026 — 28 files
28 documents, no video. Agencies: Department of War, Executive Office of the President, FBI, US Government. Incident dates: 1949–2026.
The smallest and most recent tranche, entirely documents, notable for carrying the programme’s first memo about a 2026 case.
- An AARO memorandum for the record (DOW-UAP-D176) describing a silent, dark triangular object reported in June 2026 near a US national security site in the western United States, alongside the FBI field report (FD-302) on the same account.
- Nine BAASS/AAWSAP contractor reports from 2008–2010, including material from the Utah ranch.
- Fourteen FBI sighting files from 1949–1957, four of them from Catalina Island.
How the counting works
The Department of War publishes no running total for PURSUE, so every figure you see quoted is somebody’s count. The numbers on this page are the ones generated independently by two trackers that read the war.gov database directly — UAP Browser and WARUFO — which agree tranche by tranche and sum to 478 files as of 1 November 2026.
Other published totals differ, for a reason worth knowing: batches get expanded after launch. Release 06 was reported as 71 files on the day it appeared and is now indexed at 75, after the Department added three transcripts. Release 01 has been tallied at both 158 and 161 by different sources at different times. Treat any precise total, including this one, as a snapshot of a moving archive rather than a fixed fact.
PURSUE is not the National Archives collection
PURSUE is not the National Archives collection, and the two should not be confused. Since the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (sections 1841–1843), the National Archives has run its own statutory UAP collection under Record Group 615, fed by agency declassification reviews under the normal archival process. PURSUE is a separate, executive-branch effort created by presidential direction in February 2026 and run by the Department of War with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The two can overlap — the same memorandum may surface in both — but neither indexes the other. A record can sit in the Archives without ever appearing in a tranche, and a tranche can duplicate material that was already public elsewhere. If you are researching a specific document, check both: war.gov/ufo for the PURSUE tranches and archives.gov for the statutory collection.
Frequently asked questions
What is PURSUE?
PURSUE — the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters — is a US government programme created by presidential direction in February 2026. It is run by the Department of War with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and its purpose is to find, review, declassify and publicly release federal records related to unidentified anomalous phenomena. Everything it publishes is hosted at war.gov/ufo.
Do the released files prove anything?
No, and the programme says so itself. The Department of War states that the materials it archives are unresolved cases, meaning the government was unable to make a definitive determination. Unresolved describes the state of the record, not the cause of what was reported. A released document can show that a sensor recorded something, that an office took a report seriously, or that a study programme existed — none of which on its own establishes what the object was. Much of the corpus carries mundane explanations attached, or too little data to check one way or the other.
How often are new tranches released?
On a rolling basis, with no fixed schedule and no advance notice. The Department of War says it will post new material every few weeks as records are discovered and declassified. Seven tranches had appeared as of 1 November 2026, between 8 May and 23 October.
How many files have been released in total?
Independent trackers reading the war.gov database count 478 files across the seven tranches as of 1 November 2026. The Department of War publishes no official total, and batches have been expanded after publication, so other published counts differ. See how the counting works above.