The PURSUE UAP Files: What the 2026 Releases — and the “Mother Orb” Report — Actually Show.

The releases, in one paragraph.

On May 8, 2026, the U.S. Department of War launched a public portal at war.gov/ufo — the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, or PURSUE — and began posting declassified records on unidentified anomalous phenomena on a rolling basis at President Trump's direction. Verified Five batches have followed so far, on May 8, May 22, June 12, July 10, and August 7, 2026. The portal's reception is itself part of the story: it reportedly passed 1.7 billion hits in six weeks, making it one of the most-visited U.S. government sites on record [1][2].

What the third batch contains.

The June 12 release comprised 53 documents, 10 images, 6 videos, and 3 audio recordings, drawn from the CIA, the FBI, NASA, and the Pentagon. Verified Among the material, the Pentagon described an archive of 209 sightings of “green orbs,” “discs,” and “fireballs” reported near a single military facility — the kind of clustered, repeated observation that is genuinely difficult to dismiss and genuinely difficult to explain, which is exactly why it ends up in a file like this [1][3].

What the AARO report actually says.

The most-shared item is a report dated June 5, 2026 and signed by Dr. Jon Kosloski, director of the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). It describes an orange “mother orb” that appeared to launch smaller red orbs, observed by law-enforcement officers over two days in October 2023. Claimed That phrasing is the report's, describing what witnesses saw; it is not a finding about what the object was.

The figure worth holding onto is the other one in the same report: AARO states that roughly 40% of the cases it has reviewed lack a reasonable explanation and remain unresolved. Disputed Read carefully, that cuts both ways — it means about 60% were resolved, usually as drones, balloons, aircraft, or sensor artifacts, and that “unresolved” here means insufficient data, not confirmation of anything exotic. The honest summary is that the government is now publishing its own hard cases rather than burying them — not that it has confirmed what they are [1][4].

A science council, and a governance problem.

On June 17, 2026, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb announced he would lead a new UAP Science Advisory Council — a multidisciplinary group meant to give the government independent scientific guidance and help judge whether unresolved cases represent security threats or genuine discoveries. Verified At the same time, reporting describes a new governance board controlling the files under which even its own scientists are not cleared to see the underlying material — the kind of access bottleneck that has defined this subject for decades [2][5].

The political track is just as contested. After the UAP Disclosure Act was left out of the 2026 defense bill, whistleblowers rallied at the Capitol on June 9; former intelligence officer David Grusch has accused the Defense Intelligence Agency of obstructing oversight and, at a June Capitol Hill appearance, alleged the existence of “slush funds” worth billions operating outside normal congressional review, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has said lawmakers are seeking immunity for witnesses willing to testify about alleged recovered craft or biologics. The push has only intensified since: on June 25, 2026, a Disclosure Forum on Capitol Hill brought sitting members of Congress, scientists, and former national-security officials together on UAP transparency, and the NSA separately released more than 300 pages of formerly Top Secret “Umbra” records. Claimed Those are allegations, releases, and stated intentions, not established proof of anything non-human [2][6].

Update, July 2, 2026: The oversight fight now has a statutory hook. Verified The FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act, enacted December 18, 2025, embedded new UAP-reporting requirements that oblige AARO to fold NORAD and NORTHCOM intercept data into its congressional briefings retroactive to January 1, 2004 — meaning roughly two decades of military intercepts of unidentified objects in North American airspace are now supposed to be accounted for on the record. Unverified As of early July, the PURSUE portal stood at three public releases (May 8, May 22, and June 12), with a fourth batch still pending and the question of how completely the new NORAD/NORTHCOM reporting mandate is met left open [4][6].

Update, July 10, 2026: The fourth batch has now landed. Verified On July 10, the Department of War published PURSUE release four — 40 files, 19 of them videos — drawing on records that reach back to the 1940s, with Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell framing it as the next step in the rolling declassification. The material includes previously unseen fighter- and drone-camera footage from incidents between 2019 and 2025, NASA imagery from the 1996 STS-80 Space Shuttle Columbia mission showing a cone-shaped object, and an FBI digital rendering catalogued for a 2023 “Western US Event.” Claimed As with the earlier tranches, the striking-sounding cases arrive with the standing caveat: reviewers who examined the new files reported that none of the videos or documents clearly show craft of unknown origin or genuinely anomalous technology, and several objects are consistent with balloons or sensor artifacts — one Atlantic-Ocean object from 2020 is described in the file itself as a “large, somewhat deformed balloon.” Verified The pattern from the first three batches holds into the fourth: the government is publishing more of its hard cases, not resolving them [6][7].

What the files don't establish.

For all the volume, nothing released so far demonstrates non-human origin, and nothing confirms the central whistleblower claim — that the United States holds recovered craft or biological materials. Unverified Independent reviewers have reinforced the point: an astrophysicist who examined the released imagery described much of it as optical artifacts, fuzzy blobs, and light smears, with no sign of anything artificial or alien [3]. The PURSUE documents are reports, sightings, and analyses; the records that would actually settle the question, if they exist, are precisely the ones still described as compartmented and out of reach. What's new in 2026 is not an answer. It's that the government is finally showing its open cases — and that the public turned up 1.7 billion times to look.

Update, August 8, 2026: A fifth batch landed on August 7. Verified PURSUE release five adds 41 documents, images and videos, and the notable thing about it is the spread of origins: the records come not only from the Department of War but from the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, and the Executive Office of the President — a wider institutional net than the earlier tranches. The oldest file dates from 1950, the newest from this year. Identified contents include scanned memoranda from the 1950s, CIA notes from the 1960s, an artistic interpretation of a 2002 sighting in Afghanistan, and an artistic rendering based on a former Department of War employee’s 2023 report near Colorado Springs, Colorado, catalogued in the release as FBI-UAP-D026. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the department “and our agency partners are actively working on the next release of UAP files” [8][9].

One quality note belongs on this batch specifically. Disputed A meaningful share of what release five actually contains is artists’ renderings — drawings made from a witness’s description — rather than sensor data, camera footage, or instrument records. That is a step down in evidentiary weight from the fighter- and drone-camera material in the fourth batch, however striking the images look when they circulate. A rendering documents what somebody said they saw; it does not independently corroborate that anything was there. It is worth watching whether the rolling releases continue to shift in that direction, because a portal that publishes more illustration and less instrumentation is releasing more material while disclosing less [8][9].

Related case files.

• The AARO Historical Report — the Pentagon office's own review of U.S. UAP programs, and what it concluded.
• The Grusch Testimony — the 2023 whistleblower claims now driving the immunity fight.
• The Congressional UAP Hearings — how disclosure moved from fringe to the floor of Congress.
• The Gimbal & GoFast Videos — the Navy sensor footage that reopened the subject.
• AATIP — the program that preceded today's AARO.

Sources.

1. Wikipedia, "United States UFO files" (summary of PURSUE releases, batch contents, and the Kosloski report), en.wikipedia.org.
2. DefenseScoop, "New science advisory council forms to help US government 'resolve the UAP mystery,'" June 17, 2026.
3. NBC News, "Pentagon releases declassified UFO files including videos and photos held by the government for decades," 2026.
4. All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Congressional/Press Products, aaro.mil.
5. Disclosure Foundation, "Advisory Board Member Avi Loeb to Lead New UAP Science Advisory Council," June 2026.
6. U.S. Department of War, "Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters," war.gov/ufo.
7. U.S. Department of War / MilitarySpot, "DoW Releases Fourth Batch of UFO Files" (fourth PURSUE release, July 10, 2026: 40 files, 19 videos; STS-80 imagery; 2019–2025 incident footage); and The Debrief, "Pentagon Releases New Batch of UAP Videos and Historical Files, But Clarity Remains Elusive," July 2026.
8. U.S. Department of War, “Department of War Publishes Fifth Release of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Files on WAR.GOV/UFO,” August 7, 2026 (statement of Sean Parnell, Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs and Chief Pentagon Spokesman).
9. Reporting on the fifth PURSUE release, August 7, 2026: 41 documents, images and videos drawn from the Department of War, FBI, CIA, State Department and Executive Office of the President; records dated 1950 to 2026; the 2002 Afghanistan rendering and the 2023 Colorado Springs rendering (FBI-UAP-D026).