PURSUE UFO Files Release 06

PURSUE UFO Files Release 06 was the sixth tranche of government UFO files published under the PURSUE program, posted by the Department of War to its WAR.GOV/UFO portal on Friday, September 18, 2026. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the sixth release of "declassified and historical" UAP files and said the next was in progress. It came six weeks after the previous tranche, the longest gap in the series, and like earlier releases it was presented as unresolved cases the government could not explain.

Counts shifted with portal updates: CBS News tallied 71 files on release day and EarthSky 72, after a police transcript was added, but both agree on 15 videos and one audio recording, with the rest documents. Sixty-seven came from the Department of War and the rest from Colorado police, a first for the series. The centerpiece was 37 research papers from the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, the Defense Intelligence Agency's 2008-2012 study of future aerospace threats, on topics from warp drives to reported injuries "to human observers by anomalous advanced aerospace systems." CBS News said all 37 were already public but now showed some withheld details, and the department said they are "best understood as reference and synthesis products." Historical files included the Project Blue Book record on the 1952 Tremonton, Utah, film, which later Air Force assessments increasingly attributed to seabirds, and a recording of Edward J. Ruppelt's 1952 briefing saying about 20 percent of some 800 cases remained unexplained. Modern files included military infrared clips from the Middle East and Yellow Sea and four police cellphone videos of a "silent" light, which AARO cautioned phone autofocus can distort.

Coverage centered on the papers and the Ruppelt tape, which NewsNation said Rep. Eric Burlison had pressed MIT Lincoln Laboratory to release. CBS News and EarthSky reported the tranche alongside the department's September 14 legal waiver, letting current and former personnel and contractors share UAP-related defense information with PURSUE representatives despite nondisclosure agreements; The Debrief noted that it declassifies nothing. Astrophysicist Avi Loeb hoped a memo from deputy national intelligence director Aaron Lukas would widen the data available, while Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp argued the bigger story was thousands of pages of government UFO research reportedly delivered to the DIA and still unpublished.

Release 06 followed Release 05, whose 41 files on August 7 drew on the FBI, CIA and State Department as well as the military; this tranche narrowed the sources to the Department of War and Colorado police. Its modern sensor clips remain listed as unresolved; the tranche's lasting value is archival: the AAWSAP research papers with previously withheld details, Ruppelt's recorded briefing, and the Tremonton film paired with the Blue Book file that traces the Air Force's turn toward a seabird explanation.