The DoD PURSUE Program — Declassified UAP Files Explained

What PURSUE Is and Why It Exists

PURSUE is not a standalone agency. It is the operational mechanism through which the Department of Defense fulfills its 2024 NDAA obligation to transfer and release UAP-related records to the public. The name reflects the program's mandate: to actively pursue disclosure of historically classified material relating to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, rather than waiting for FOIA requests or congressional subpoenas.

The program was established following the landmark 2023 House Oversight Committee UAP hearings, in which members of Congress from both parties publicly stated that they had been denied access to classified programs related to UAPs. The NDAA mandate went further than any prior UAP disclosure legislation by requiring the DoD to release records proactively — not merely make them available upon request — and to publish them through an official government channel accessible to the public without registration or credentials.

How PURSUE Releases Work

PURSUE releases are published via war.gov, the official Department of Defense publication portal. Each release consists of a batch of declassified documents — administrative files, incident reports, program summaries, and in some cases imagery — organized by release number (Release 01, Release 02, Release 03). Each document within a release is assigned an identifier in the format PURSUE-R[XX]-[number], which is how they are referenced throughout this archive.

Documents arrive in various states of declassification. Some are fully unredacted; others retain partial redactions for sources and methods, personnel identities, or currently classified technology references. The program does not guarantee that all records identified under the NDAA mandate have been released — it represents what the DoD has so far transferred and cleared for public release. Records from other agencies (FBI, NASA, State Department) follow separate transfer timelines through NARA RG 615 rather than through PURSUE directly.

What the Three Releases Contain

PURSUE Release 01 (announced in 2025) covered 63 files and represented the first significant batch of DoD operational UAP records to enter the public archive since the limited AARO imagery releases of 2023. The release included incident reports, case intake summaries, and a subset of radar data packages from encounters reported between 2014 and 2021.

PURSUE Release 02 added 160 files with notably broader scope — including early program records that predated AARO's establishment in 2022, administrative correspondence between DoD components, and several documents referencing sensor packages and data collection protocols. Release 02 introduced the first batch of documents explicitly referencing transmedium capability assessments.

PURSUE Release 03 (May 2026) added 64 files with a focus on sensor signature analysis and multi-domain encounter documentation. This release included the first PURSUE documents referencing corroborated space domain observations — incidents where ground-based, airborne, and space-based sensors simultaneously tracked the same object. The cumulative archive now covers over 280 files across three releases.

How Now Declassified Indexes PURSUE Files

Every PURSUE file indexed on this site is processed through an AI analysis pipeline that reads the full document text and assigns a tier classification based on evidential weight and disclosure significance:

Tier 1 (Major Disclosure) — Files that contain explicit evidence of unresolved anomalous capability, corroborated multi-sensor data, or direct reference to classified programs that have not been publicly acknowledged. These are the highest-priority files for researchers and journalists.

Tier 2 (Significant) — Files with relevant incident data, administrative context, or partial corroboration that contributes to the broader pattern record. Individually significant but not standalone disclosures.

Tier 3 (Supporting) — Administrative, routing, and procedural documents that establish context for higher-tier files. Important for understanding how the government internally handled UAP reporting but less immediately informative for incident-level analysis.

The tier classifications are editorial assessments by Now Declassified and are not part of the original government records. They are designed to help researchers prioritize which files to read first. Browse all PURSUE files at /pursue.