Breaking: Pentagon Releases 162 Declassified UFO Files — What’s Inside the PURSUE Portal
By TheUFOTimes Editorial · May 16, 2026 · Government Files
On May 8, 2026, the United States government took the most significant step toward UFO transparency in its history. At the direction of President Donald Trump, the Department of Defense launched PURSUE — the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters — a dedicated public portal at war.gov/ufo, and released the first batch of 162 declassified files covering unidentified anomalous phenomena dating from 1944 to 2026.
The release includes 120 PDF documents, 28 videos, and 14 images drawn from multiple federal agencies — among them the FBI, NASA, the Department of Defense, and the State Department. Pentagon officials described the contents as "unresolved cases" — incidents for which no definitive determination could be made with available evidence. The government stated that more files would follow in rolling releases over the coming weeks.
For those who have followed this subject closely, the significance of the moment cannot be overstated. This is not a leak, a Freedom of Information Act trickle, or an unofficial acknowledgment. This is the U.S. government, under executive order, opening its classified archive to the public and inviting citizens to evaluate the evidence directly.
What Trump’s Executive Order Triggered
The release traces back to an executive order Trump signed in early 2026 directing a multiagency effort to find, review, identify, declassify, and publicly release unresolved UAP-related records across the federal government. The order created the PURSUE framework and set deadlines for agencies to submit their files for review. The May 8 release was the first output of that process.
The decision to publish through a dedicated government portal — war.gov/ufo — rather than burying files in agency document repositories is itself notable. It signals an intent for public engagement, not bureaucratic compliance. The portal is designed to accept additional releases as they are cleared, turning it into a living archive of the government's UAP record.
Apollo Missions: Anomalies from the Moon
Among the most striking contents are files relating to Apollo missions 11, 12, and 17. In a 1969 post-flight debriefing following Apollo 11, astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported seeing "little flashes inside the cabin, spaced a couple of minutes apart" while attempting to sleep during the return journey. In a separate account, Aldrin described observing "what appeared to be a fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser."
These are not new claims — Aldrin has spoken publicly about anomalous observations during the Apollo missions on multiple occasions. But their appearance in officially declassified government records gives them a weight that informal accounts do not carry. The question of what else was observed during the lunar missions, and what has remained classified, now sits in the public record in a way it never did before.
FBI Witness Interviews and Recent Incidents
The files also include more recent material. One document details an FBI interview with a drone pilot who, in September 2023, reported observing a "linear object" with a light bright enough to "see bands within the light" during a flight operation. The object was visible for five to ten seconds before the light extinguished and the object vanished. The FBI interview is notable both for its recency and for the mundane, precise language of the account — the kind of involuntary detail that characterises credible witness testimony.
The inclusion of FBI-sourced material alongside NASA and DoD files underscores the breadth of agencies that have been quietly logging UAP encounters for decades, even as official policy maintained there was nothing significant to report.
The Context: From Grusch to PURSUE
The PURSUE release does not exist in a vacuum. It follows David Grusch's 2023 congressional testimony — in which the former intelligence officer alleged under oath that the U.S. government has maintained a secret program to recover and reverse-engineer non-human craft — and the subsequent establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. It follows the Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Amendment, which passed the Senate before being stripped from final legislation under pressure from unnamed agencies. It follows years of congressional pressure, journalistic investigation, and public demand for answers.
The 162 files released on May 8 are described as unresolved cases. They are not, officially, evidence of extraterrestrial life. But the act of releasing them — of acknowledging that these incidents occurred, that they were documented, that they could not be explained, and that the public has a right to evaluate them — represents a fundamental shift in the government's posture toward this subject.
Whether the rolling releases that follow will include more dramatic material — the craft recovery programs Grusch described, the materials allegedly held in black-budget programs — remains to be seen. What is no longer in question is that the U.S. government has been keeping records of unexplained aerial phenomena for over eighty years, and has now, for the first time, begun to open them.
“The files are available to the public at war.gov/ufo. Read them yourself. The government has finally invited you to.”
Recommended Reading
Related: David Grusch — The Whistleblower Who Testified Under Oath · AARO: The Pentagon’s UAP Office · The Schumer UAP Disclosure Amendment