PURSUE

PURSUE, the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, is the U.S. Department of War's program for publishing declassified UAP records at war.gov/UFO. Launched May 8, 2026 under a February 19, 2026 directive from President Trump, it is the largest proactive U.S. government UFO records release ever undertaken.

The directive followed years of congressional pressure, the stripped-down UAP Disclosure Act's records requirements, and the declassification politics of the second Trump administration. The president's announcement promised release of files on UAP, UFOs, and "alien and extraterrestrial life." Secretary of War Pete Hegseth branded the release as unprecedented transparency, with declared support from ODNI, NASA, FBI, DOE, and AARO.

Release 01 published 162 records: 120 PDFs, 28 videos, and 14 images from the Department of War, FBI, NASA, and State Department, spanning 1944 to 2026. Every record is, by policy, an unresolved case; resolved cases continue through AARO's separate reporting. Additional tranches are promised every few weeks. Notable contents include the Western US Event (Record #162), the September 2023 test-site ellipsoid package, a fuller FBI case file 62-HQ-83894, the Army's first UAP video submission, and an active investigation into an Apollo 17 photograph. The Department states no redactions conceal information about the nature of any reported encounter.

Hegseth is the public face; AARO provides the records infrastructure; the presidential directive supplies the authority.

Active and rolling as of September 2026, with subsequent tranches following Release 01.

Skeptics, led by former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick, caution that no alien-interview document exists to find and that curated astronaut transcripts repackage long-public material under a UAP frame. Advocates welcome the releases while noting the conspicuous absences: nothing from CIA, NSA, NRO, DIA, or DOE, and nothing touching alleged crash retrievals. Whether PURSUE is disclosure or its management is the era's central argument, and Congress's demands for specific withheld videos continue through it.