The PURSUE Releases: A UAP Document Portal, Launched on a Statutory Clock.

What PURSUE is, in a paragraph.

The Public Unclassified Records on Sightings and Unidentified Encounters (PURSUE) portal is a Department of Defense document repository for unclassified and partially redacted UAP-related records, launched in May 2026 in compliance with the document-disclosure requirements of Section 1687 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, Public Law 118-31, signed December 22, 2023. The portal is hosted on the AARO public domain and operated by AARO with NARA participation in the records-accession workflow. Its initial release tranche, posted between May 6 and May 18, 2026, contains roughly 2,400 individual records: declassified internal memoranda and after-action reports drawn from the archives of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP, 2007–2012); the UAP Task Force (UAPTF, 2020–2022); the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG, 2021–2022); and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO, July 2022 onward). The tranche also includes responsive FOIA productions from prior years (re-released through PURSUE for searchability), partial transcripts of selected witness interviews conducted under AARO's secure reporting mechanism, and a category labelled "Field Sensor Material" comprising radar plots, FLIR captures, and pilot reports drawn from the 144-incident dataset originally collated for the June 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment. The portal exists because the FY2024 NDAA, in a heavily watered-down form of an amendment originally introduced in July 2023 by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds, required the Executive Branch to establish a UAP records repository on a timeline ending in 2026, to apply a presumption-of-disclosure standard analogous to (but weaker than) the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, and to permit narrowly drawn agency-head withholdings. The most-discussed elements of the Schumer-Rounds original — including the federal-government Eminent Domain provision over recovered "non-human-origin" technological and biological evidence held by private entities, and a more aggressive presumption-of-disclosure regime modeled directly on the JFK Act — were stripped from the bill in the December 2023 conference committee. What survived was a portal-and-records requirement that has now been implemented. The pace at which records are being added, the size of the redactions in those records that have been added, and the relationship between PURSUE and the parallel classified UAP investigations being conducted by AARO and by the congressional intelligence committees are all under active criticism and oversight as of May 2026.

The documented record.

The statutory basis

The FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Joseph R. Biden on December 22, 2023 as Public Law 118-31, includes at Section 1687 ("Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records") a requirement that the Archivist of the United States and the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence, establish a process for the public release of UAP-related records. Verified The provision required the establishment of a publicly accessible repository within thirty months of enactment — a deadline that fell in mid-2026 and that the May 2026 PURSUE launch met with a margin of weeks. The statutory text establishes a presumption that UAP records "shall be publicly disclosed" but permits an agency-head exemption regime, with judicial review available through the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit [1].

The Schumer-Rounds original

The provision that became Section 1687 originated as the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, introduced as an amendment to the FY2024 NDAA by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) on July 13, 2023. Verified The original text, modeled directly on the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (Public Law 102-526), contained four elements that distinguished it from what eventually passed [2][3]:

• An independent UAP Records Review Board, modeled on the Assassination Records Review Board, with subpoena power over executive-branch records and a presidential-appointment confirmation structure.
• A strong presumption-of-disclosure standard with narrowly drawn exemptions, defaulting to release after twenty-five years.
• An Eminent Domain provision under which the federal government would have asserted statutory ownership of any "technologies of unknown origin" and any "biological evidence of non-human intelligence" held by private parties.
• A requirement that classified intelligence-community holdings of UAP-related material be inventoried and disclosed to the Review Board.

Each of these four elements was substantially narrowed or removed in the December 2023 conference committee, principally on objections from House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers, and intelligence-community oversight chairs, and in the face of executive-branch opposition channeled through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense. The Eminent Domain provision was removed in full. The Review Board structure was replaced with the agency-led portal-and-records process that PURSUE now implements [3][4]. Senator Rounds, in floor remarks on December 14, 2023, characterized the result as "a step, not the step we had asked for"; Senator Schumer's statement on December 15 described the outcome as "the beginning of a process" [2]. Claimed

AARO under successive directors

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office was established on July 20, 2022 by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, succeeding the AOIMSG that had itself succeeded the UAP Task Force. Verified Its first director was Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, a longtime intelligence-community scientist drawn from the Defense Intelligence Agency, who held the role from July 2022 to December 2023. Kirkpatrick's tenure produced the office's Volume I Historical Report in March 2024, the most institutionally substantive single document of the modern era [5]. Kirkpatrick was succeeded by an acting director, Tim Phillips, in January 2024, and by Jon Kosloski, a National Security Agency scientist, as permanent director from August 2024. Kosloski's tenure has overseen the design, build, and launch of PURSUE in coordination with NARA's information services directorate [6].

The May 2026 launch tranche

The PURSUE portal launched publicly on May 6, 2026 at aaro.mil/pursue with an initial tranche of approximately 2,400 records. Verified The release was structured in five categories [7]:

• AATIP archive material: internal memoranda, contract-related correspondence, and analytical products generated by the Defense Intelligence Agency's AATIP office between 2007 and 2012. Approximately 420 records.
• UAPTF and AOIMSG products: short-lived predecessor offices' analytical and operational records, 2020–2022. Approximately 280 records.
• AARO analytical products: declassified case summaries, sensor analyses, and trend assessments produced 2022–2026. Approximately 800 records.
• FOIA re-releases: previously released material from the CIA, NSA, FBI, Air Force, Navy, and DIA, re-hosted on PURSUE for unified search. Approximately 600 records.
• Field sensor material: redacted radar plots, FLIR clips, gun-camera footage, and pilot-report forms. Approximately 300 records.

Of the 2,400 records in the launch tranche, AARO described 1,860 as released in full or with only routine name-redaction; approximately 540 are released with substantive redactions citing national-security exemptions under Section 1687(c). The portal's search interface supports text query, date range, agency-of-origin filter, and incident-identifier filter; documents are PDF-format with OCR layers for full-text search [7]. Verified

Specific items of substantive interest in the launch tranche

The launch tranche includes several documents whose substance has been the subject of subsequent press attention. Verified Among them [7][8]:

• The 2008–2009 AATIP contract-deliverable inventory, including the so-called Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs) on advanced propulsion, gravitational wave manipulation, and metamaterials prepared under the contract with Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. Most DIRDs were previously released by other means; PURSUE consolidates them.
• Approximately 70 AARO case summaries for incidents drawn from the 144-incident ODNI dataset, with conventional explanations now attached to 51 of them (commercial aircraft, balloons, drone traffic, and atmospheric phenomena) and a smaller residual of "unresolved" cases.
• A redacted set of materials related to the November 14, 2004 USS Nimitz encounter (covered in our Nimitz Tic-Tac file), including AARO's tabular cross-reference of radar tracks, visual reports, and FLIR1 metadata.
• Internal memoranda relating to AARO's review of the David Grusch allegations (covered in our Grusch testimony file), including the office's intake of the ICIG-routed disclosures and a partially redacted memorandum on AARO's institutional response.

The press and external response

Initial press coverage in the week of the launch was mixed. Verified The New York Times, in coverage by reporters who had also worked the December 2017 AATIP disclosure, characterized PURSUE as "a substantial archival event, an incomplete one"; The Washington Post emphasized the gap between the records released and the Schumer-Rounds original; The Debrief and other UAP-specialist outlets focused on individual documents within the tranche [8][9]. Senator Rounds issued a statement on May 7, 2026 calling the launch "a beginning that must not become an ending" and indicating intent to introduce a follow-on bill in the FY2027 NDAA cycle. The Coalition for Transparency on UAP, a private advocacy group, posted a parallel mirror of the launch tranche on its own servers within forty-eight hours of release [10].

The relationship to AARO's classified investigations

PURSUE does not encompass the totality of AARO's work. Verified The office retains a substantial classified caseload, including the ongoing review of approximately 1,800 incident reports collected since the office's 2022 establishment, the AARO Volume II Historical Report (described as pending as of May 2026), and the office's secure reporting mechanism for current and former U.S. government personnel. The records that PURSUE releases are records that have completed declassification review; the records under active classified analysis are not within the portal's scope and the timeline for their eventual review is undefined in the statute [1][5].

The contending readings.

Reading: PURSUE is an institutional success

Argument: a publicly searchable DoD repository of UAP records did not exist before May 2026 and now does. The portal complies with the statute, includes thousands of records that would otherwise have required individual FOIA requests, and constitutes a credible step in the longer institutional process of UAP transparency. AARO under Kosloski has executed what the statute required on the statutory timeline. Claimed

Limits: The argument is correct on its own terms but does not address whether the institutional process delivers on the substantive question. A portal can be a real institutional product and at the same time be a substantively narrow one. The two judgments are not in contradiction.

Reading: PURSUE is institutional minimalism

Argument: the substance of what was released through PURSUE is what AARO and ODNI were prepared to release. The portal is a compliance product, not a disclosure product. The original Schumer-Rounds amendment would have required institutional action against agency-head preference; what passed in the NDAA accommodates agency-head preference. The result is a portal that releases what the agencies were already prepared to release, packaged for searchability. Claimed

Limits: This reading is also correct on its own terms. It is, however, the reading that the Schumer-Rounds sponsors themselves have endorsed in floor remarks; the framing is not a fringe reading but the one the bill's authors hold. Whether the difference between what was sought and what was achieved is "substantial" or "fatal" is the political question now in play in the FY2027 NDAA cycle.

Reading: PURSUE conceals more than it reveals

Argument: the records released are records that were never substantively secret; the records that matter are the ones held in classified compartments that PURSUE does not access. The 540 records released with substantive redactions are released in a form that prevents independent analysis; the records not released at all are unknown in number and content. Advanced by some former-official witnesses including David Grusch and by parts of the UAP advocacy community. Claimed

Limits: The reading requires an underlying claim about the existence and content of records being concealed. That underlying claim is precisely what the institutional dispute is about, and AARO's Volume I Historical Report (March 2024) found "no verifiable evidence" of such concealed material. The two positions are not reconciled by the launch of PURSUE; PURSUE is consistent with both readings on the surviving public evidence.

Reading: PURSUE is one element of a longer process

Argument: the FY2024 NDAA framework, the May 2026 launch, and the prospective FY2027 follow-on legislation should be read together as a multi-year institutional process whose pace is the pace of the underlying disputes. Pursuing UAP disclosure through an executive-branch portal is one mode; congressional inquiry through hearings is another; FOIA litigation is a third; the press is a fourth. PURSUE adds a mode without replacing any. Claimed

Limits: The reading is descriptively accurate but normatively thin. It declines to evaluate the process, which is what the political dispute requires.

The unanswered questions.

The classified compartments

The intelligence-community holdings of UAP-related material that were never reviewed under FOIA, never previously declassified, and never within the scope of AARO's unclassified records workflow remain unaddressed by PURSUE. Disputed Whether such holdings are substantial, marginal, or non-existent is the central evidentiary question of the modern UAP institutional dispute, and the question that PURSUE does not answer. AARO under Kirkpatrick stated, in the March 2024 Volume I report, that no verifiable evidence of concealed UAP-related programs had been identified by the office's review; David Grusch and other witnesses have asserted the contrary [5][11]. The PURSUE launch does not adjudicate this question.

The pre-AATIP material

Records from the Project BLUE BOOK era (1952–1969, covered in our Project Blue Book file) and from earlier military UAP-related programs (Sign, Grudge, Twinkle) are largely held at NARA and have been publicly available for decades. Unverified The PURSUE portal indicates an intention to include cross-references to these older holdings but has not, in the launch tranche, comprehensively done so. Whether the eventual PURSUE archive will become a unified repository spanning the full institutional history of U.S. government UAP work, or will remain principally a vehicle for AATIP-era and later material, is undefined.

The non-DoD records

UAP-related records held by the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Energy are not within PURSUE's institutional scope. Unverified The FAA's Domestic Events Network logs, the NASA UAP Independent Study Team's 2023 final report, and the various NOAA and DoE radar and atmospheric-physics products all represent material of UAP-research relevance not included in PURSUE's May 2026 tranche. Whether they will be brought into the portal's scope under the existing statutory framework is unclear [1][12].

The "non-human origin" question

The Schumer-Rounds original Eminent Domain provision presupposed the existence of "technologies of unknown origin" and "biological evidence of non-human intelligence" held by private parties. Disputed The provision's removal from the FY2024 NDAA does not adjudicate whether such material exists; it adjudicates only whether the federal government will assert statutory ownership of it under the disclosure regime. The substantive question — whether the United States or its private contractors hold material of non-human origin — remains the central disputed substantive claim of the modern UAP discourse and is not advanced or retracted by the PURSUE launch [2][11].

The FY2027 follow-on

Senator Rounds's stated intent to introduce follow-on legislation in the FY2027 NDAA cycle, and the parallel work in the House by representatives including Tim Burchett, Eric Burlison, and Anna Paulina Luna, has not yet produced legislative text as of May 2026. Unverified Whether the FY2027 cycle will see a revival of the stripped Schumer-Rounds elements, a narrower technical-correction bill, or no significant UAP legislation at all is undetermined [2][10].

Primary material.

The accessible primary record on PURSUE and the surrounding statutory framework is held at:

• The PURSUE portal itself (aaro.mil/pursue) hosts the launch tranche and is intended as the primary public access point.
• The U.S. Congress legislative tracking systems (congress.gov, govinfo.gov) host the full text of the FY2024 NDAA (P.L. 118-31), the floor records of the December 2023 conference proceedings, and the introduced text of the original Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Act amendment.
• The AARO public website (aaro.mil) hosts the Volume I Historical Report (March 2024), AARO's monthly public updates, and the office's secure reporting mechanism documentation.
• The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (odni.gov) hosts the June 25, 2021 Preliminary Assessment on UAP and the annual UAP assessments published thereafter.
• The Coalition for Transparency on UAP (transparency-uap.org) maintains a mirror of the PURSUE launch tranche together with annotated analyses by independent researchers.

Critical individual documents include: Section 1687 of the FY2024 NDAA; the July 13, 2023 introduced text of the Schumer-Rounds amendment; AARO's Volume I Historical Report (March 2024); the May 6, 2026 AARO PURSUE launch announcement; and the May 7, 2026 statement of Senator Rounds.

The sequence.

1. December 16, 2017 The New York Times publishes "Glowing Auras and Black Money," disclosing AATIP. The modern UAP era begins.
2. June 25, 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment on UAP delivered to Congress; the 144-incident dataset is the analytical baseline for everything that follows.
3. November 2021 AOIMSG established at DoD.
4. July 20, 2022 AARO established under Deputy Secretary Hicks; Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick named director.
5. July 26, 2023 David Grusch, Commander David Fravor, and Ryan Graves testify before the House Oversight subcommittee.
6. July 13, 2023 Senator Schumer and Senator Rounds introduce the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 as an amendment to the FY2024 NDAA.
7. November–December 2023 Conference committee removes the Review Board structure, Eminent Domain provision, and aggressive disclosure presumption. Portal-and-records requirement survives.
8. December 14–15, 2023 Floor remarks by Senators Rounds and Schumer characterize the result as partial.
9. December 22, 2023 President Biden signs the FY2024 NDAA, P.L. 118-31, including Section 1687.
10. January 2024 Sean Kirkpatrick departs AARO; Tim Phillips named acting director.
11. March 2024 AARO Volume I Historical Report released.
12. August 2024 Jon Kosloski named permanent AARO director.
13. 2024–2026 AARO designs and builds the PURSUE portal in coordination with NARA.
14. May 6, 2026 PURSUE portal launches publicly at aaro.mil/pursue with initial tranche of approximately 2,400 records.
15. May 7–18, 2026 Press coverage and external response; Coalition for Transparency on UAP mirrors the tranche; Senator Rounds calls for follow-on legislation in the FY2027 cycle.

Cases on this archive that connect.

The Nimitz Tic-Tac (File 010) — the most thoroughly multi-sensor-documented modern UAP encounter and the case whose materials are reflected in part within PURSUE's launch tranche.

GIMBAL and GOFAST videos (File 056) — the 2015 USS Theodore Roosevelt encounters that supplied two of the three videos publicly released in 2017–2018 and the supporting records now consolidated through PURSUE.

Grusch testimony (File 053) — the July 2023 sworn allegations of a non-AARO concealed UAP program. The PURSUE launch does not adjudicate Grusch's claims; it makes their institutional context more legible.

The Roswell incident (File 004) — the pre-Blue Book originating case of U.S. military UAP-adjacent material. PURSUE does not, as of May 2026, include Roswell-era records, though future tranches may.

Project Blue Book (File 047) — the 1952–1969 Air Force investigative program whose records remain at NARA outside PURSUE's current scope.

More related files coming as the archive grows. Planned: the AARO Volume II Historical Report when released; the FY2027 NDAA UAP provisions if and when enacted; standalone files on AATIP, the UAP Task Force, and the NASA UAP Independent Study Team report.

Full bibliography.

1. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, Public Law 118-31, Section 1687 (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records), signed December 22, 2023. Text at govinfo.gov.
2. Schumer, Charles E. and Rounds, Mike, "UAP Disclosure Act of 2023," introduced text as amendment to the FY2024 NDAA, July 13, 2023. Text at congress.gov.
3. President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-526, October 26, 1992. The statutory template for the Schumer-Rounds original.
4. Conference Report to Accompany H.R. 2670, Joint Explanatory Statement, House and Senate Armed Services Committees, December 6, 2023. Records the removal of Schumer-Rounds elements.
5. All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume I, Department of Defense, March 8, 2024.
6. Department of Defense, AARO leadership transitions: press releases on Kirkpatrick departure (December 2023), Phillips appointment (January 2024), and Kosloski appointment (August 2024).
7. All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, PURSUE portal launch announcement and accompanying documentation, May 6, 2026. aaro.mil/pursue.
8. Cooper, Helene and Blumenthal, Ralph, "Pentagon Opens Public UAP Records Portal Under 2024 Law," The New York Times, May 7, 2026.
9. The Debrief and partner UAP-specialist coverage of the PURSUE launch, May 6–18, 2026, compiled.
10. Coalition for Transparency on UAP, mirror archive and annotated analyses of the PURSUE launch tranche, transparency-uap.org, May 2026.
11. Grusch, David, sworn deposition to the Intelligence Community Inspector General and subsequent testimony to the House Oversight subcommittee, July 26, 2023.
12. NASA, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team Report, September 14, 2023.
13. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, June 25, 2021, and subsequent annual assessments.
14. Rounds, Mike, statement on PURSUE launch, May 7, 2026; Schumer, Charles E., statement of December 15, 2023. Both via senate.gov press release archives.
15. Kean, Leslie, Blumenthal, Ralph, and Cooper, Helene, The New York Times, "Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program," December 16, 2017. Background context.