Release report
Release 2: 51 military sensor videos, NASA astronaut audio and the green fireballs file
On May 22, 2026 the U.S. Department of War published the second release (Release 2) of the PURSUE program's declassified UFO files: 64 files, made up of 51 videos, 7 audio recordings and 6 documents.
Most of the release comes from a single source: the materials that AARO identified on a classified network after eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives asked, on March 6, 2026, for access to 51 potentially UAP-related records. The rest are NASA audio recordings from 1961 to 1972 and six documents, among them the 1948–1950 file on the green fireballs reported near Sandia and Los Alamos.
32 videos from the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility
AARO assesses that most of the 51 videos derive from infrared sensors aboard U.S. military platforms: 43 are infrared, 4 combine a full-motion video camera with an infrared sensor, 2 come from a full-motion video camera, 1 from an electro-optical and infrared sensor and 1 from a commercially available cellphone camera. Thirty-two place the platform in U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility; where they are dated, they span 2018 to 2022. Examples are PR050 (20 seconds, uploader title "4 UAP Formation Iran 26 Aug 2022 over water") and PR051 ("Syrian UAP instant acceleration").
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The titles were written by whoever uploaded each video to the classified network and are not AARO conclusions. AARO's own descriptions are limited to what the footage shows, mostly "areas of contrast" crossing the sensor's field of view and the operator zooming or panning, and they carry the warning that readers should not interpret them as a judgment on the event's nature or significance. AARO also clarifies that PR077 and PR078, and PR093 and PR095, are not duplicates even though each pair shows highly similar subject matter.
19 videos from other theaters and with no stated location
Six videos are placed in U.S. Northern Command's area of responsibility, among them PR068 (an "IIR" report on footage captured by a fifth-generation aircraft on January 20, 2023), PR070 (Eglin AFB aircrew, February 13, 2023) and PR073 (the vicinity of Columbus, Ohio). Two come from Africa Command (PR081, PR082), one from European Command (PR054) and others from the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the Indo-Pacific Command area. Two videos, PR065 and PR066, were recorded from a U.S. Coast Guard platform in the southeastern United States in April 2024; both titles describe the object as "TIC TAC IR hot". Three more (PR052, PR056, PR067) give no location.
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PR071 carries a title written by whoever uploaded the video: "USAF ANG F-16C (callsign [CALLSIGN]) Shoots Down UAP over Lake Huron with [Weapon System], 12 Feb 2023", that is, it asserts a shoot-down over Lake Huron. AARO's description neither confirms that shoot-down nor mentions the lake: it says only that, at the 20-second mark, the footage "appears to depict a kinetic interaction between two distinct areas of contrast, with the initial subject of the footage fragmenting in a radial displacement pattern that suggests a high-energy event". PR072 is the one clip not from a military sensor: a luminous phenomenon filmed with a commercial cellphone in Kazakhstan in February 2022, uploaded in April 2023 and, according to AARO, digitally altered before upload and presented as received.
7 NASA audio recordings, 1961–1972: fireflies, snowflakes and paint chips
Four Project Mercury excerpts record astronauts describing small luminous particles outside the capsule. In D010 Gordon Cooper, on Mercury-Atlas 9, refers to "John's fireflies", a term John Glenn used on Mercury-Atlas 6. In D012 Wally Schirra (Mercury-Atlas 8, October 3, 1962) describes "little white objects that tend to come from the capsule itself and drift off" and later calls them "particles" and "lathe shavings". In D013 Scott Carpenter (Mercury-Atlas 7, May 24, 1962) says the white particles "look exactly like snowflakes". D011, also from Cooper's flight, includes his description of orbital sunrise.
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D009 is an Apollo 17 excerpt from December 7, 1972, in which the crew reports bright, "jagged" and "angular" fragments near the spacecraft and the separated Saturn S-IVB stage; the crew themselves speculate they are paint chips or ice chips. D008 is an Apollo 12 medical debriefing about flashes of light. The seventh file, D014, is not a sighting: it is the recovery of Mercury-Redstone 4 in 1961, where the team discusses a dye pack that did not activate.
Six documents: the green fireballs, Los Alamos, Pantex, the CIA and ODNI
The largest is DOW-UAP-D017, 116 pages from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and the U.S. Air Force. According to the official description it contains 209 sightings of "green orbs", "discs" and "fireballs" near Sandia, New Mexico, between 1948 and 1950, together with investigations of residual copper powder found where some were reported; a few of those investigations became the basis for Project Grudge. The file includes the May 25, 1950 summary memo of the Kirtland AFB Office of Special Investigations and an August 1949 report by Dr. Lincoln LaPaz on dust collected after a fireball passed near Socorro, New Mexico on July 24, 1949. These are the events known as the green fireballs.
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Three Department of Energy files complete the New Mexico thread: DOE-UAP-D001, two pages from a Pantex incident report in which the radar-tower photograph is redacted and the Sandia National Labs enhanced images are blurred; DOE-UAP-D002, the correspondence of Los Alamos physicist James Tuck, which includes a recollection of green lights over Los Alamos between 1948 and 1951 and a 1970 letter citing Edward Condon's book; and DOE-UAP-D003, a 1986 invitation to a talk titled "Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFOs?".
The other two are a CIA information report on the Sary Shagan weapons range in the USSR whose item 14 describes a luminous green object seen in summer 1973, with concentric circles and no sound (CIA-UAP-D001), and a first-hand account by a currently serving senior intelligence official of a late-2025 helicopter mission in which "glowing orbs" were seen (ODNI-UAP-D001). The latter was corrected on May 26, 2026: "map-of-the-earth" should read "nap-of-the-earth".
How to read this release: AARO identified the videos on a classified network, and it warns that many of these materials lack a substantiated chain of custody. Its descriptions are informational only and are not a conclusion on what the footage shows; titles such as "Shoots Down UAP" or "USO" were written by uploaders. Publication does not mean the Pentagon confirms anything extraordinary. The official record notes that PR057A and PR057B are the same material titled differently by two uploaders, and several videos give no date or location. This site's summaries are AI-generated from the documents and reviewed under the policy on the methodology page.
