What It Is
PURSUE = Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. The Trump administration’s interagency program for reviewing, declassifying, and publicly releasing federal UAP records.
Launch
May 8, 2026. First tranche posted at war.gov/UFO.
Composition of First Release
162 files: 120 PDFs, 28 videos, 14 image files. Official carousel highlights 17 public image assets.
Participating Agencies
- Department of War (formerly Department of Defense, including the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO))
- White House
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
- Department of Energy
- NASA
- FBI
Stated Mission
Per Pentagon language: find, review, identify, declassify, and publicly release “unresolved UAP-related records and historical documents in the federal government’s possession.” Trump positions this against prior administrations that “sought to discredit or dissuade the American people.”
Cadence
Rolling release. New tranches every few weeks “as agencies locate, review, and declassify records.” Anna Paulina Luna’s 46-video whistleblower batch is expected in a later tranche.
Notable Cases in Tranche One
- Apollo 17 (Dec 1972) lunar-surface photo with three dots in a triangular formation, government’s preliminary analysis suggesting “potentially a physical object.”
- Apollo 12 (1969) photographs with unidentified phenomena.
- INDOPACOM 2024 football-shaped object near Japan.
- September 2023 bronze metallic ellipsoid with eyewitness corroboration and FBI lab graphics overlay.
- Greece 2023 90-degree-turn object.
- Syria October 2024 semi-transparent orange areas.
- Mediterranean triangular metallic UAP at 25,000 ft.
- Western US 2023 federal-officer “Eye of Sauron” orb.
- Tajikistan 1994 commercial pilot 40-minute encounter.
- Gemini VII (Dec 1965) Borman/Lovell unidentified object.
- 1947 Roswell FBI memo describing a hexagonal disc suspended from a balloon.
- 1999 New Year’s Eve FBI photos of objects alongside US aircraft.
Pentagon’s Caveat
“No evidence that any government investigation into UAPs has confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life.” All sensor cases in the release are formally “unresolved,” meaning the government has not made a definitive determination. Per AARO’s 2024 historical record review, no prior cases have shown evidence of extraterrestrial origin.
Strategic Significance
- Political: Trump’s signature transparency play after JFK / MLK / RFK file releases. Hosting via the rebranded war.gov ties the new “Department of War” identity to the most viral declassification of the year.
- Evidentiary: AARO’s “data problem” framing remains intact. None of the released cases meet the standard Tyson called for (a physical specimen). The Apollo 17 re-analysis is the most likely case to break out.
- Cultural: Football-shaped object near Japan is the dominant viral image. Eye-of-Sauron orb the dominant viral quote.
Sources
- CBS News coverage
- Fox News coverage
- Stars and Stripes coverage
- New Space Economy — what ‘unresolved’ means
- Mirror, football-UAP framing
- Washington Times coverage
- Tyson — anticlimactic prediction
Connected Entities / Concepts
- Department of War — Host agency.
- AARO — Technical office providing case analysis.
- Pete Hegseth — Secretary of War, public face of release.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson — Pre-release skeptic frame.
- UAP disclosure (concept) — Broader concept.
Open Questions
- Will the Apollo 17 re-analysis produce anything stronger than “potentially a physical object”?
- Does the rolling cadence produce diminishing returns or a buildup to the whistleblower video tranche?
- Does any single case in the entire program eventually reach the evidentiary tier needed to settle the question?