Last Updated on 12 hours ago by TodayWhy Editorial
Two weeks after the historic first drop on May 8, 2026, the U.S. Department of War delivered on its promise of a rolling release. On May 22, 2026, the Pentagon published the second tranche of PURSUE files — and this time, the emphasis was almost entirely on video.
Where Tranche 1 was wide: 162 files spanning eight decades, covering everything from Roswell-era FBI memos to Apollo mission transcripts, Tranche 2 goes deep. Fifty-one infrared sensor recordings. Seven NASA audio clips that have never been heard by the public. And at its center: a first-person written account from a currently serving senior U.S. intelligence officer describing one hour of UAP encounters that left him and his colleagues unable to speak.
TodayWhy breaks down every significant case in the second release — what the video shows, what AARO says about it, and why some of these cases are harder to dismiss than most.
Looking for the full PURSUE overview? Read our complete 2026 UAP Disclosure guide →
What’s in Tranche 2 — by the numbers
The second release consists of 64 files total:
- 51 sensor videos — designated DOW-UAP-PR050 through DOW-UAP-PR099 (with some gaps and sub-designations)
- 7 audio recordings — NASA crew mission audio, never previously released
- 6 PDF documents — including two standout items: a senior intelligence officer’s first-person narrative, and historical records from Sandia Base
Unlike Tranche 1 — which drew almost entirely from the Department of War and FBI — Tranche 2 is the first multi-agency drop under PURSUE. The CIA, ODNI, NASA, and the Department of Energy all contributed records alongside the Department of War. That interagency breadth is itself significant: it confirms that UAP monitoring was not siloed within a single branch of the military.
The videos span from 2017 to 2024, with geographic coverage ranging from the skies over CENTCOM operations (Iraq, Syria, Iran) to U.S. domestic airspace (Ohio, the Southeast, NORTHCOM). Most were recorded by FLIR (Forward-Looking InfRared) sensors aboard military aircraft.
How FLIR Video Works — and Why It Matters
Before diving into specific cases, it helps to understand what you’re actually looking at in these videos.
FLIR cameras detect heat, not visible light. The sensor translates temperature differences into black-and-white imagery: hot objects appear bright white (“white hot” mode) or pitch black (“black hot” mode), depending on how the system is configured. Aircraft engines, exhaust plumes, and warm atmospheric disturbances all register.
The result: most UAP in these videos appear as small, bright or dark specks moving across a monochrome background. They often look indistinct or blurry — not because the camera is low-quality, but because the object itself may be small, far away, or radiating at a temperature close to the surrounding air.
This matters for interpretation. Objects that appear to move dramatically in FLIR footage sometimes do so because the camera is tracking and gimbal-panning rapidly, not because the object itself is performing unusual maneuvers. AARO is careful to note this in many of its assessments. The cases that remain genuinely unexplained are the ones where sensor lock is solid, altitude and heading data are recorded, and the movement still defies conventional explanation.
Video DOW-UAP-PR050, “4 UAP Formation Iran 26 Aug 2022 over water”
The Five Standout Cases
PR050: Four UAPs in Formation — Iran, August 26, 2022
- Official ID: DOW-UAP-PR050
- Location: CENTCOM area of responsibility, over water near Iran
- Duration: 20 seconds
An infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform captures four distinct areas of contrast moving in coordinated formation over the ocean. What makes this video unusual is not any single object’s behavior but the apparent coordination between them. The four objects move together — and then, toward the end of the clip, a fifth object enters the frame from the upper-left corner.
AARO has not offered a conventional explanation for this case. Formation flight by balloons or birds is not impossible, but the consistency of spacing and direction in this footage has attracted significant analyst attention. The video became one of the most widely shared clips from the entire Tranche 2 release.
PR051: Instant Acceleration — Syria/Jordan Border, 2021
- Official ID: DOW-UAP-PR051
- Location: CENTCOM, near the Jordan-Syria border
- Sensor platform: MQ-9 Reaper drone
- Duration: Approximately 10 seconds
This is arguably the most technically significant video in the entire Tranche 2 release. An MQ-9 Reaper drone — a platform designed for precision targeting — acquires a weapons-quality sensor lock on an object near the Jordan-Syria border. The object holds relatively still for several seconds while the drone maintains lock.
Then it moves.
Video DOW-UAP-PR051, “Syrian UAP instant acceleration”
The object exhibits what the accompanying report describes as “instant acceleration” — a near-instantaneous change in velocity accompanied by an abrupt change of direction. The acceleration is so sudden that it falls outside the performance envelope of any known aircraft, including experimental platforms. Analysts and observers who reviewed the footage publicly noted that the object’s behavior was “one of the most striking” in any officially released UAP video.
Because this was captured on a targeting sensor — not a passive surveillance camera — the telemetry context is more reliable than in many other FLIR cases. The object’s sudden departure is not attributable to gimbal pan or sensor artifact.
PR071: The Lake Huron Shootdown — February 12, 2023
- Official ID: DOW-UAP-PR071
- Location: Over Lake Huron, Michigan (NORTHCOM)
- Platform: USAF Air National Guard F-16C
- Duration: Approx. 1 minute
This is the only video in the PURSUE archive that documents a direct military engagement with a UAP — the moment a weapon was deployed and the object was destroyed.
On February 12, 2023, an Air National Guard F-16C pilot intercepted an octagonal or balloon-like object over Lake Huron, Michigan. The pilot fired, and the video captures the object fragmenting on impact. Debris was recovered from the lake after the engagement.
The Lake Huron shootdown occurred during a period of heightened U.S. airspace sensitivity following the Chinese spy balloon incident in early February 2023, when a large surveillance balloon traversed the continental United States before being downed off the coast of South Carolina. In the days that followed, U.S. and Canadian authorities shot down several other unidentified objects over North American airspace — including over the Yukon and Lake Huron.
At the time, U.S. officials were careful not to characterize these objects as extraterrestrial, and that position has not changed. What the Lake Huron video does confirm is that the military was actively engaging objects it could not identify — and that this policy has now been officially documented.
Video DOW-UAP-PR071:
PR073: The Object That “Disappears” — Columbus, Ohio, November 2022
- Official ID: DOW-UAP-PR073
- Location: Vicinity of Columbus, Ohio (NORTHCOM)
- Duration: Approx. 1 minute 12 seconds
AARO’s assessment of this video notes that it was uploaded to a classified network in March 2023 after being recorded in November 2022. The object in the footage appears indistinct in classic FLIR style — a small bright shape against a dark background.
What draws attention is the object’s behavior at the end of the clip: it appears to tilt sideways and then vanish. It does not simply fly out of frame. It tilts — and disappears.
AARO has not provided a definitive conventional explanation for this case. The “tilting disc” behavior is one of the oldest recurring descriptions in UAP literature, with reports going back to the original wave of “flying saucer” sightings in the late 1940s. Whether this is coincidence or a pattern worth investigating remains an open question.
Video: DOW-UAP-PR073
PR086: East Coast Encounter — December 2019
- Official ID: DOW-UAP-PR086
- Location: East Coast of the United States
- Duration: Short clip
The most recent historical gap filled by Tranche 2. PURSUE case PR086 documents a UAP incident off the East Coast in December 2019. The published still shows a sensor view of water with a targeting crosshair over an unidentified object. Full video and accompanying documents were released alongside the still image.
Video DOW-UAP-PR086:
ODNI-UAP-D001: The Intelligence Officer’s Account
- Official ID: ODNI-UAP-D001
- Classification at time of writing: Declassified
- Agency: Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- Date of incident: Late 2025
This is the centerpiece of Tranche 2 — and arguably the most remarkable document in either PURSUE release.
A currently serving senior official within the U.S. Intelligence Community submitted a first-person written narrative, formally designated as a USPER (U.S. Person) account, describing a series of UAP encounters that he witnessed from a U.S. military helicopter in late 2025. The account runs several pages and includes the following:
The initial encounter. The officer and his colleagues were aboard a U.S. military helicopter when they observed two oval, orange-with-white-center orbs hovering just above the aircraft’s rotor disk. The orbs were stationary. No sound was detected.
The swarm. The two orbs were joined by a larger group of smaller orbs that assembled into a triangular formation pattern around the helicopter.
The scramble. Fighter jets were scrambled in response. The orbs then disengaged from the helicopter and began trailing the responding fighter jets — the UAPs appeared to react to the military response.
The officer’s written conclusion: “We were virtually speechless after these observations.”
The account is significant for several reasons beyond its dramatic content. It was submitted through official government reporting channels and published by ODNI itself — not leaked, not anonymously sourced, not secondhand. It involves a person currently holding a security clearance describing events in operational language. And it was deemed sufficiently credible to be included as the leading document in the Pentagon’s second official disclosure release.
AARO has not offered an explanation for this case.
DOW-UAP-D017: 209 Sightings at Sandia Base, 1948–1950
- Official ID: DOW-UAP-D017
- Source: Armed Forces Special Weapons Program (AFSWP)
- Period covered: 1948–1950
This historical document details 209 separate UAP sightings reported near Sandia Base in New Mexico — a highly classified installation operated by the Armed Forces Special Weapons Program, the agency responsible for the custody, assembly, and deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in the immediate post-war period.
The reported objects include:
- Green orbs (the “green fireball” phenomenon that was extensively investigated by Project Blue Book)
- Discs of various sizes and speeds
- Fireballs with unusual trajectories
The concentration of UAP sightings near nuclear weapons storage and research facilities is one of the oldest and most consistently documented patterns in the entire history of the subject. Sandia Base is not an isolated case — similar clustering appears in the FBI files from Tranche 1 (which specifically mention Oak Ridge nuclear facility overflights) and in documents from other countries’ archives. Whether this represents sensor density, deliberate surveillance, or something else remains a genuinely open question among serious researchers.
The NASA Audio Recordings
Tranche 2 includes seven audio recordings from NASA crewed missions — the first time audio of this kind has been publicly released under PURSUE.
The most substantive is an Apollo 12 Medical Debriefing Tape from November 1969 (NASA-UAP-D008), in which crew members describe unexplained light phenomena they witnessed during the mission. This audio complements the photographic materials from Apollo 12 released in Tranche 1, in which astronaut Alan Bean described flashes of light “sailing off into space.”
The other six audio files cover additional NASA missions and remain under active review.
The CIA’s 1973 USSR Intelligence Report
One of the less-publicized documents in Tranche 2 is a 1973 CIA intelligence report concerning UAP observations inside the Soviet Union. This represents one of the few cases where declassified U.S. government records directly address Soviet encounters with unidentified phenomena — a historically significant dimension that extends the UAP question beyond U.S. airspace.
The full contents of this report remain partially redacted, but its existence in the PURSUE release confirms that U.S. intelligence agencies were actively monitoring and filing reports on UAP observations by adversary nations during the Cold War.
What AARO Says About This Batch
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office assessed the Tranche 2 videos with the same framework it applies to all cases: the default assumption is a conventional explanation — balloon, drone, bird, atmospheric phenomenon, sensor artifact — until the data rules it out.
By that standard, AARO attributes many of the 51 videos to prosaic causes. The office has consistently stated that across all UAP reports it has reviewed, the majority resolve to ordinary explanations. Its historical baseline is that only around 5–10% of cases remain genuinely unresolved after thorough analysis.
However, several cases in this release — particularly PR050, PR051, and ODNI-UAP-D001 — have not received a conventional determination from AARO as of the time of this writing. The office has stated that analysis of newly released materials is ongoing.
Full Video Index — All 51 Recordings
The complete list of videos released in Tranche 2, by ID, region, and year:
| ID | Region | Year |
|---|---|---|
| PR050 | CENTCOM (Iran area) | 2022 |
| PR051 | CENTCOM (Syria/Jordan) | 2021 |
| PR052 | Unknown | 2024 |
| PR053 | CENTCOM | 2022 |
| PR054 | EUCOM | 2022 |
| PR055 | CENTCOM | 2020 |
| PR056 | Unknown | 2024 |
| PR057A | Yellow Sea | 2023 |
| PR058 | INDOPACOM | 2024 |
| PR059 | CENTCOM | 2020 |
| PR060 | CENTCOM | 2021 |
| PR061 | CENTCOM | 2021 |
| PR062 | CENTCOM | 2021 |
| PR063 | CENTCOM | 2021 |
| PR064 | CENTCOM | 2017 |
| PR065 | Southeastern U.S. | 2024 |
| PR066 | Southeastern U.S. | 2024 |
| PR067 | Unknown | 2022 |
| PR068 | NORTHCOM | 2023 |
| PR069 | NORTHCOM | 2022 |
| PR070 | Southeastern U.S. | 2023 |
| PR071 | NORTHCOM (Lake Huron) | 2023 |
| PR072 | Kazakhstan | 2022 |
| PR073 | Midwestern U.S. (Columbus, OH) | 2022 |
| PR074 | CENTCOM | 2022 |
| PR075 | East China Sea | 2021 |
| PR076–PR099 | Various | 2019–2024 |
All videos are publicly accessible at war.gov/UFO under the Release 02 filter.
Key Takeaways
- Tranche 2 (May 22, 2026) adds 64 files to the PURSUE archive: 51 sensor videos, 7 NASA audio recordings, and 6 PDF documents.
- It is the first multi-agency release, with contributions from CIA, ODNI, NASA, and DOE alongside the Department of War.
- The standout video cases are PR050 (four-UAP formation near Iran), PR051 (MQ-9 Reaper acquires targeting lock on object that then accelerates instantly), and PR071 (F-16C shootdown over Lake Huron with debris recovery).
- The centerpiece document, ODNI-UAP-D001, is a first-person account by a serving senior intelligence officer describing an hour of encounters with orange orbs that trailed fighter jets — ending with the officer’s admission that he and his colleagues were “virtually speechless.”
- DOW-UAP-D017 documents 209 UAP sightings at a nuclear weapons base in New Mexico between 1948 and 1950.
- AARO attributes most videos to conventional explanations. Several — including PR050, PR051, and ODNI-UAP-D001 — remain officially unexplained.
- All files are at war.gov/UFO. A third tranche is confirmed to be in development.
FAQ
Q: When was the second batch of Pentagon UFO files released? A: May 22, 2026 — exactly 14 days after the first release on May 8, 2026.
Q: How many videos are in the second batch? A: 51 infrared and sensor videos, designated DOW-UAP-PR050 through PR099 (with some gaps). Plus 7 NASA audio recordings and 6 PDF documents, for 64 files total.
Q: What is ODNI-UAP-D001? A: The most significant document in Tranche 2. A first-person written account by a currently serving senior U.S. intelligence officer describing a one-hour, multi-witness encounter with orange UAP orbs from a military helicopter in late 2025. The officer’s conclusion: “We were virtually speechless after these observations.”
Q: What happened at Lake Huron in 2023? A: An Air National Guard F-16C shot down an unidentified octagonal object over Lake Huron on February 12, 2023. The engagement was filmed and is included in Tranche 2 as DOW-UAP-PR071. Debris was recovered. This is the only documented military engagement with a UAP currently in the PURSUE archive.
Q: What is the Syrian UAP instant acceleration video? A: DOW-UAP-PR051. An MQ-9 Reaper drone acquires a targeting-quality sensor lock on an unidentified object near the Jordan-Syria border in 2021. The object then performs what the report describes as “instant acceleration” — a velocity change so abrupt and fast it falls outside any known aircraft’s performance envelope.
Q: Are there more releases coming? A: Yes. The Pentagon has confirmed a third tranche is in development. Materials will continue to be posted at war.gov/UFO on a rolling basis.
Published: [DATE]. Sources: U.S. Department of War (war.gov/UFO), Disclosure Archives (disclosurearchives.com), EarthSky, CBS News, Hollywood Reporter, Internet UFO Database (iufodb.com), UFO Files Watch (ufofileswatch.com).
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