PURSUE UFO Files Release 03

PURSUE UFO Files Release 03 was the third tranche of government UFO files published under the PURSUE program, cleared for release on June 12, 2026, and posted by the Department of War to its war.gov UFO portal. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced it as the third release of "declassified and historical" files, five weeks after the portal opened on May 8. Like the rest of the archive, its files were presented as unresolved cases, meaning the government "is unable to make a definitive determination" about what was observed.

The release held 72 files: 53 documents, 10 images, six videos and three audio recordings. The FBI supplied 29, the CIA 18, the Department of War 12 and NASA 11, plus one each from an unnamed intelligence agency and the wider U.S. government. Four videos were civilian iPhone recordings of orbs filmed from 2021 to 2025 in one northeastern area, by witnesses the FBI rated credible or highly credible. The other two videos and all 10 images were FBI artist recreations of a two-day October 2023 sighting by federal agents near a sensitive national security site in the West. An All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office update kept that case unresolved; according to AP, it listed military exercises with flares and developmental U.S. technology as plausible but not conclusive explanations. An intelligence analysis attributed a February 2022 "potato"-shaped object reported by five soldiers near Colorado Springs, with low confidence, to sunlight backscattered off snow onto low clouds, although the men insisted the day was cloudless, AP reported. Older records include the CIA's 1953 Robertson Panel report recommending a policy of "debunking," a never-before-released 2008 CIA report of a disc-like object over Harare's airport, and Mercury, Gemini and Apollo crew debriefings. Fourteen CIA files had been public before, most more heavily redacted.

Parnell said WAR.GOV/UFO had drawn more than 1.7 billion hits since launch and that agencies were "actively working on the next release." The White House shared the backyard "Northeastern Orb Sighting" clip online. Coverage by AP, Reuters, NBC News and Newsweek centered on the orbs, the "potato" and Zimbabwe; AP wrote that the files lacked "the kind of blockbuster revelation" Trump had teased. Writing in The Debrief, Micah Hanks called most of the new data "underwhelming" and said the backyard clip showed objects resembling "sky lanterns."

Release 03 followed Release 02 on May 22 and brought the archive to 294 files; Release 04 added 40 more on July 10. Every earlier video in the series had come from the Department of War; all six here came from the FBI, and the release paired modern cases with official analyses offering conventional explanations while leaving them open. Its lasting value is the case record on Colorado Springs, the 2023 western sighting and the northeastern orbs, plus less redacted copies of Cold War CIA reports; the release itself resolved none of them.