PURSUE Release 03: Department of War declassifies 72 more UAP files — the FBI's tranche

On 12 June 2026, the Department of War published the third release of declassified and historical Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena files under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) at war.gov/UFO. Per the portal's live database, the tranche comprises 72 files — 53 documents, 10 images, 6 videos, and 3 audio files — bringing the cumulative public corpus to 294 files released in 35 days. Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell's accompanying statement noted that the portal has received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since its May 8 launch and that the Department and its agency partners 'are actively working on the next release.'

Where Release 02 was built around AARO sensor videos, Release 03 is the FBI's tranche: 29 of the 72 files are Bureau records. The modern centerpiece is the 'Northeastern Orb' corpus — four U.S.-Government-authenticated eyewitness videos (2021-2025) and seven FBI investigative records documenting recurring orb phenomena in one sparsely populated area of the northeastern United States, including an FD-1057 in which two FBI special agents document their own first-hand UAP observation during a November 2024 site survey. The Bureau assesses the civilian reporting witnesses as 'highly credible.'

The release also places the first-person record of the Western US Event — the October 2023 multi-agent encounter near a sensitive national-security site that AARO has called 'among the most compelling within AARO's current holdings' — on the public record: five narrative statements from federal law-enforcement special agents, a notional incident map, ten FBI-prepared digital renderings, two digital video recreations, and an AARO analysis update confirming the case remains unresolved as of June 2026. A separate unresolved case from Colorado Springs (February 2022) pairs witness interviews describing a motionless, matte-white, 'bean-shaped' object with an Intelligence Community partner's low-confidence sunlight-backscatter hypothesis.

The historical record runs deep: the CIA's 1953 Scientific Advisory Panel (Robertson Panel) report — the foundational document of official UFO 'debunking' policy — appears in less-redacted form alongside the Department of War's own transmission copy to the Secretary of Defense; the U.S. Army's 1949 'Evaluation Study of the Phenomenon (Flying Saucers)' and two USAF case-analysis compilations fill out the early military record; 18 CIA files cover Cold-War sightings from Budapest to Baku to the Himalayas plus the complete U-2/OXCART program history; and NASA contributes eight Gemini-era crew-debriefing transcripts plus three audio files, including the November 1962 interview in which Walter Cronkite asks Gordon Cooper about UFOs and Cooper answers that 'a large number of exceptionally well-qualified people have seen objects' without 'a logical explanation.'