PURSUE UFO Files Release 04

PURSUE UFO Files Release 04 was the fourth tranche of government UFO files published under the PURSUE program, posted to the Department of War's UFO portal on July 10, 2026. It added 40 files: 14 documents, 19 infrared sensor videos, four audio recordings and three photographs, drawn from the Department of War, NASA, the Department of Energy, the CIA and the FBI. It followed releases on May 8, May 22 and June 12, and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said agencies were already preparing the next one, which arrived on August 7.

Most of the documents came from the first decades of official UFO study. They include a 1948 Project Sign progress report covering 100 sightings from 1947 and 1948, and two versions of an Air Intelligence Division study, "Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States," which concluded that "some object has been seen" but could not be identified, and advised treating any foreign origin as Soviet. The 1949 version recounts the January 7, 1948 death of a National Guard pilot, the Thomas Mantell case, noting the presumption that he suffered anoxia and quoting his last radio description of an object "of tremendous size." Other files cover the 1966-1967 Air Force committee that recommended a university study of UFO reports, a 1954-1955 file on the saucer-shaped Avro Project Y2 aircraft and an unexplained 1955 radar-visual report near Newfoundland, and CIA memoranda on a 1955 sighting by Senator Richard Russell's party from a train in the Soviet Union, which the memo concluded could "probably be explained as steep climbing aircraft or missiles."

Two Department of Energy files drew the most attention because they concern nuclear sites. One is the transcript of a 1949 conference at Los Alamos on the "green fireballs" reported near the laboratory; the scientists reached no consensus, with meteors the leading hypothesis, although meteor expert Lincoln LaPaz said nothing like them had been seen in meteorite falls. The other is a 2015 report from the Pantex nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, Texas. It says ground radar detected an unknown object moving at 10 to 15 mph on September 1, 2015, that security officers followed it for several miles, heard no sound and saw no propulsion, and that video was sent to Sandia National Laboratories and the evidence to the FBI. Security forces responded under the plant's plan for unmanned aerial systems, and the report called the object non-threatening. Two pages had appeared in more redacted form in Release 02.

The videos, filed by Indo-Pacific, Central and Northern Commands, the Navy and the Air Force, span 1996 to 2025. A 2024 South China Sea clip shows an elongated infrared contrast resolving into a line of several, and a 2025 Yellow Sea clip tracks a shape resembling a six-pointed star. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office described each without analytical judgment, noted that some clips were digitally altered before they reached investigators, and said in one case that infrared auto-gain can make an object flicker. One range-fouler debrief described its object as resembling a "large, somewhat deformed balloon." NASA contributed three 1996 Space Shuttle Columbia photographs of an object whose apparent tumbling NASA called consistent with a free-floating object, and Apollo 14 and 17 debriefings about light flashes now attributed to cosmic rays striking the retina.

Reaction split along familiar lines. Television host Phil McGraw said he received early access and promoted the Los Alamos and Pantex files as part of a long pattern over nuclear sites. Astrophysicist Avi Loeb told NewsNation some images were puzzling but the shuttle photographs probably showed space trash, and journalist Ross Coulthart called the tranche "more of the same," saying the best imagery was still being withheld. Release 04's lasting value is its primary records on nuclear-site reports, early Air Force analysis and military sensor footage; the release itself drew no new conclusion about any case, and the modern videos remain listed as unresolved.