PURSUE is the searchable archive UFO Papers maintains of the government's declassified UAP files, organized by agency, reported shape, and location. Release 03 went live June 12, 2026. It adds 72 declassified files, and this batch leans hard on the CIA and the FBI, with some older War Department studies that push the government's interest in "flying saucers" back to the late 1940s. Below, the major files, what each one actually says, and where each sits in the archive.
Every file here gets summarized by what the record says and nothing more. These are government documents about reports, investigations, and analyses. Where a document leaves a question hanging, I leave it hanging too.
What Is in Release 03
Release 03 brings 72 files into a collection that now holds 294 declassified files across the first three releases. The earlier drops, Release 01 (May 8, 158 files) and Release 02 (May 22, 64 files), skewed toward War Department and early Cold War material. This one tilts toward intelligence and law-enforcement records. Heavy CIA and FBI presence, plus one analytical product from an Intelligence Community partner of AARO.
The files cover a wide span of decades and regions. A few are historical reviews from back when "flying saucer" was still the official term. Others are recent first-hand witness reports filed on standard FBI forms. Line them up and you can watch the government's handling of these reports change shape, from one-off Army studies into a structured multi-agency process.
A CIA Report on the Harare Airport Sighting (CIA-UAP-017)
CIA-UAP-017 is a never before released CIA report on a July 2008 UFO sighting at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe. It sits in the archive's CIA UAP files group under the title "Placement on High Alert Due to Perceived Aggressive Foreign Posturing," which is its own kind of detail.
On the substance, the release description gives exactly one sentence: individuals debated whether the sighting was an advanced reconnaissance device of a foreign government or of extraterrestrial origins. I am not going to stretch that sentence any further than it goes. What the file documents is a sighting next to an international airport, taken seriously enough to generate a CIA report, with the recorded explanations running from foreign hardware to extraterrestrial origins.
The full record is at CIA-UAP-017.
FBI First-Hand Reports: Colorado Springs and the Northeastern Orbs
Two records carry the law-enforcement side of Release 03, both filed under FBI UAP files, and both run on the Bureau's standard reporting forms.
FBI-UAP-D002 is an FD-1057, the form the FBI uses to record investigative activity. This one contains a first-hand narrative description of a UAP encounter reported near Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2022. Per the release description, the interviewee gave the statement to FBI special agents to aid in producing a digital artistic interpretation of the incident. Parts are redacted, which is normal for witness records that carry personally identifying information. The FD-1057 structure still keeps the account readable. What was seen, where, and the circumstances of the report. Colorado Springs matters here for a second reason: the same place shows up in a separate analytical record I get to below, so Release 03 ends up holding two very different document types describing activity in one area and one time frame.
FBI-UAP-D009 is an FD-302, the form FBI agents use to write up interviews. This one records a February 2026 interview with a U.S. person who described incidents potentially involving UAP in the northeastern United States. The sighting itself carries only a 2026 date in the archive; February dates the interview, not the event. The release description adds that the subject matter in FBI-UAP-D009 and FBI-UAP-D010, and the video footage in FBI-UAP-PR004, corresponds to reports originating from the same general area in the northeastern United States. That phrasing places the files in the same general locale and nothing tighter than that.
The archive tags FBI-UAP-D009 under the orb category, one of six orb-tagged cases in the collection, next to twelve tagged as spheres. Discs still dominate the named shapes, mostly on the strength of the older files.
Modern Analysis from an AARO IC Partner (ICA-UAP-D001)
Release 03 also carries ICA-UAP-D001, an analysis produced by an Intelligence Community partner of AARO, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Department of Defense office set up to pull the government's UAP reporting and analysis under one roof. To be precise about authorship: the assessment is the partner agency's work, contributing to AARO's consideration of the case. The archive lists the originating agency simply as "IC Agency."
The document covers a 2022 incident involving an airborne object near Colorado Springs, Colorado. Same setting as the FD-1057 narrative in FBI-UAP-D002. U.S. military service members reported the incident to AARO in 2023. The partner assessed, with low confidence, that the reported phenomenon, which observers characterized as resembling an "angular, non-symmetrical potato," was attributable to sunlight backscattering, where sunlight reflecting from mountain snow cover illuminated the underside of low-altitude clouds. The document is upfront that the assessment is low-confidence, and it notes the incident remains unresolved as of June 2026.
Reading ICA-UAP-D001 back to back with the FD-1057 gives you a first-hand field report and an analytical treatment of the same area and the same year, two ends of the current reporting process on one case.
A Look Back: The 1949 Army "Flying Saucer" Study (DOW-UAP-D084)
For how far that process has traveled, Release 03 includes DOW-UAP-D084, a Department of War "Flying Saucer" Evaluation Study from 1949, prepared at the request of the Plans & Operations Division of the General Staff, U.S. Army (P&O, GSUSA), to determine whether the origin of the phenomenon could be traced to natural causes or the activities of a foreign power. The archive tags it under disc and disk shaped reports, the dominant description of that early period; the rest of that group is collected under disc and saucer sightings.
It pairs with an earlier holding, DOW-UAP-D017, 116 pages from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Program (AFSWP), the direct post-World War II successor to the Manhattan Project, covering sightings and investigations in Sandia, New Mexico, from 1948-1950. That file, released in the second tranche, logs 209 sightings of "green orbs," "discs," and "fireballs" reported near the base, and a few of its investigations became the basis for Project Grudge. Between the two files, the Army was running formal saucer evaluations for the General Staff by 1949 while the Manhattan Project's successor agency was logging sightings by the hundreds near a weapons installation.
Set DOW-UAP-D084 against ICA-UAP-D001 and you have the span of Release 03: a 1949 Army evaluation of "flying saucers" on one end, a modern assessment from an AARO IC partner on the other, still open as of June 2026.
Why These Documents Matter Together
Read one at a time, each file is a single data point. Read together, Release 03 sketches the arc of how the U.S. government has engaged the UAP question:
- Historical evaluation. DOW-UAP-D084 (1949) and DOW-UAP-D017 (1948-1950) show early formal attempts inside the Army to assess "flying saucer" and disc reports.
- Intelligence reporting. CIA-UAP-017 (2008) shows an overseas airport sighting handled as an intelligence matter, with the recorded debate running between a foreign reconnaissance device and extraterrestrial origins.
- First-hand law-enforcement records. FBI-UAP-D002 (2022) and FBI-UAP-D009 (interview recorded February 2026) preserve contemporaneous witness accounts on standard Bureau forms, with the orb interview sitting alongside other reports and footage from the same general area.
- Modern centralized analysis. ICA-UAP-D001 records an AARO IC partner's low-confidence assessment, sunlight backscatter, for a 2022 Colorado Springs event that remains unresolved as of June 2026.
None of the five settles what the reported objects were. The documents record different agencies, across eight decades, describing and investigating the same broad phenomenon with the tools and the language of their day.
All 72 Release 03 files are listed under the latest PURSUE release, alongside the 222 files from the first two drops.