The government's declassified UAP files arrive from war.gov as a long list of PDFs and video links. UFO Papers catalogs that collection so it can actually be searched: every file mapped by region, releases graphed over time, filters for agency, reported shape, and location. A 1949 Army staff study and a February 2026 FBI interview end up three clicks apart instead of buried in separate release batches.
We call the archive PURSUE. That's our name for the collection, not a government program. The files themselves are the government's own declassified UAP records.
Right now the archive holds 294 declassified U.S. government files, split across 175 PDFs, 84 videos, 24 images, and 11 audio recordings. They run from late-1940s Army "flying saucer" studies to FBI witness statements filed as recently as 2026. These are files about reports, investigations, and analyses. They confirm nothing on their own, and where a document leaves a question open, we leave it open too. Below are ten of the files worth opening first, picked for what they show about how the government has documented anomalous observations over nearly eight decades, each summarized strictly by what the record states.
How We Chose These Files
The archive sorts by agency, document type, sighting characteristics, and release batch. The Department of War holds the largest share with 143 files, then the FBI (86), NASA (33), the CIA (19), and the Department of State (7). Smaller sets come from the Department of Energy, the intelligence community, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Geographically the records cluster in the United States (82) and the CENTCOM/Middle East region (69), with a solid block tied to space and orbit (17).
The ten below cover that spread: five agencies, eight decades, staff studies to infrared sensor video, discs and luminous phenomena to orbs and the Tic-Tac label. Consider it a guided walk through the collection rather than a strict ranking.
10. The 1949 U.S. Army "Flying Saucer" Evaluation Study (DOW-UAP-D084)
The official record starts here, or close to it. DOW-UAP-D084 is an Evaluation Study of the Phenomenon (Flying Saucers), prepared in 1949 at the request of the Plans and Operations Division of the General Staff, U.S. Army. The stated purpose was narrow: determine whether the origin of the reports could be traced to natural phenomena or the activities of a foreign power. A staff study, routed through a planning and operations channel, treating "flying saucer" reports as something worth structured evaluation, catches the moment the military first tried to make sense of a wave of reports in the language of its day. The early disc-era material continues under disc and saucer sightings.
9. The Armed Forces Special Weapons Program File (DOW-UAP-D017)
DOW-UAP-D017 runs 116 pages. The documentation comes from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Program (AFSWP), the direct post-World War II successor to the Manhattan Project, and from the U.S. Air Force, and covers a series of sightings and investigations at Sandia, New Mexico, from 1948 to 1950. The file contains 209 sightings of "green orbs," "discs," and "fireballs" reported near the military base. Witnesses reported the objects maneuvering, flying out of sight, disappearing, or exploding. The documents also include results of contemporary investigations into residual copper powder found in some areas where sightings were reported, and a few of those investigations became the basis for Project Grudge, whose reports from other military installations are included in the same collection. Two years of logged unknowns near one base, compiled by the Manhattan Project's successor office. The file claims nothing beyond what its pages hold.
8. A CIA HUMINT Report From the USSR (CIA-UAP-D001)
From the Army to the intelligence community. CIA-UAP-D001 is a CIA intelligence information report dated December 20, 1973, describing human intelligence gathering inside the USSR, part of the program's second release. The report characterizes its own content as informational rather than finally evaluated intelligence. In section 14, the source describes an incident from the summer of 1973: an airborne, luminous, bright-green object, concentric circles forming around it over several minutes, then dissipation. No sound attended the observation. The source offered no opinion on the nature of the phenomenon and could provide no further detail. Anomalous luminous observations were being collected and filed through HUMINT channels inside the Soviet Union, and the paperwork survived to be released. The rest of the agency's material sits under CIA UAP files.
7. Apollo 17: The Last Crewed Lunar Landing (NASA-UAP-D002)
NASA contributes 33 files, and the Apollo transcripts anchor them. NASA-UAP-D002 is an excerpt from the Apollo 17 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription, December 1972, the sixth mission to land astronauts on the lunar surface. The excerpt highlights three periods in which astronauts reported observing unidentified phenomena: nine minutes on the first day, three hours on the second, six minutes on the third. The second-day stretch belongs to Mission Commander Eugene Cernan, who described streaks, an intense flashing light he compared to a train headlight, and then several flashing, rotating phenomena he assessed as corresponding to physical objects in space rather than a purely optical effect. Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt reported similar observations and again pointed at the separated S-IVB rocket stage. The observations and the crew's own working explanations sit in the same preserved exchange. The full set lives under NASA Apollo UAP files.
6. Apollo 12 and Anomalous Lunar Observations (NASA-UAP-D001)
Three years earlier, NASA-UAP-D001 does the same for Apollo 12, November 1969, the second mission to land astronauts on the Moon. The excerpt flags two periods. In the first, Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean described particles and flashes of light "sailing off in space" through the onboard alignment optical telescope, characterizing them as "escaping the Moon." In the second, Mission Commander Pete Conrad described floating debris outside the lunar module, illuminated by the module's tracking light, and assessed that the light had burnt out when he could no longer see the debris. Contemporaneous observation and on-the-spot explanation, both preserved in the communications log. The two Apollo excerpts belong to the archive's 17 space and orbit cases, and read together they give a feel for how the transcripts handle unidentified phenomena as a class.
5. The Colorado Springs Analysis From an AARO Partner (ICA-UAP-D001)
Jump forward to the modern oversight era. ICA-UAP-D001 is an intelligence analysis produced by an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Intelligence Community partner, written to account for a 2022 incident involving an airborne object near Colorado Springs, Colorado. U.S. military service members reported the incident to AARO in 2023. It's the archive's lone IC Agency document, which alone makes it stand out. Observers characterized the object as resembling an "angular, non-symmetrical potato," and the IC partner assessed, with low confidence, that the phenomenon was attributable to sunlight backscattering, where sunlight reflecting from mountain snow cover illuminated the underside of low-altitude clouds. That low-confidence assessment feeds AARO's consideration of the incident, which remains unresolved as of June 2026. Read it next to the FBI's own Colorado Springs record below. Two different parts of the government, an analytic office's partner and a law-enforcement agency, generated records about the same place and period.
4. The FBI's First-Hand Colorado Springs Narrative (FBI-UAP-D002)
The FBI is the second-largest contributor with 86 files. FBI-UAP-D002 is an FD-1057, the form the Bureau uses to record investigative activity, and it holds a first-hand narrative description of a UAP reported near Colorado Springs in 2022, partially redacted. One detail rewards attention: the interviewee provided the statement to FBI special agents to aid in producing a digital artistic interpretation of the incident. A witness account, taken through routine investigative machinery, for the purpose of drawing the thing. The redactions mark where the released version holds detail back. Set beside ICA-UAP-D001, this file puts the witness-level and analytic-level records of the same city and year side by side. The Bureau's full set is under FBI UAP files.
3. The FBI's 2026 Northeastern Orb File (FBI-UAP-D009)
Among the freshest entries in the collection, FBI-UAP-D009 is an FD-302, the form the Bureau uses to memorialize interviews. This one records a February 2026 interview with a U.S. person who described incidents potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena in the northeastern United States. The sighting itself carries only a 2026 date in the archive. Per the release, the subject matter described in FBI-UAP-D009 and FBI-UAP-D010, and depicted in the video footage catalogued as FBI-UAP-PR004, corresponds to reports originating from the same general area. Corresponds is the release's word, and the relationship goes no further than that in the record. Orbs account for six derived sightings in the archive, and this cluster of written and video records from one region marks the newest end of the documentary trail, weeks old rather than decades.
2. The Coast Guard "Tic-Tac" Infrared Videos (UFOP-160 and UFOP-161)
Two cases carry the Tic-Tac label. UFOP-160 and UFOP-161 are U.S. Coast Guard C-144 infrared sensor videos recorded in 2024 over the Southeastern United States, 38 and 48 seconds of footage, uploaded to a classified network in June 2024. They surfaced through the March 2026 records request in which eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives sought access to 51 potentially UAP-related records, many of which AARO notes lack a substantiated chain of custody. AARO assesses both videos as likely derived from an infrared sensor aboard a Coast Guard platform. One point deserves care. "Tic-Tac" comes from the uploader-defined video titles, not from any analytic conclusion, and the accompanying descriptions warn that nothing in them should be read as an analytical judgment about the events' validity, nature, or significance. What the descriptions themselves record, in flat sensor language, is an area of contrast entering and leaving the field of view while the sensor pans. Raw sensor media, reaching the public through a congressional request, filed alongside an explicit refusal to conclude anything. More of the footage is collected under Pentagon and military UAP videos.
1. The Harare Airport Report and Its Preserved Disagreement (CIA-UAP-017)
At the top of the list is CIA-UAP-017, a never-before-released CIA report on a UFO sighting at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe in July 2008, filed under the title "Placement on High Alert Due to Perceived Aggressive Foreign Posturing." The release summarizes the disagreement in a single sentence: individuals debated if the sighting was an advanced reconnaissance device of a foreign government or of extraterrestrial origins. That one sentence spans the full width of the question, foreign hardware at one end and extraterrestrial origin at the other, recorded inside the same CIA report about the same object over the same airport. Few single files in the archive compress the whole subject that tightly, which is why it heads the list.
What These Ten Files Have in Common
Read together, they trace an arc. It opens with mid-century Army staff studies wrestling with "flying saucers," passes through Cold War intelligence reporting and Apollo-era space documentation, and lands on form-driven FBI witness statements and dedicated analytic products. The vocabulary shifts every couple of decades, saucers to unidentified phenomena to UAP, while the underlying activity holds steady: across eras, the U.S. government has generated records about anomalous observations and the effort to understand them.
Any single file is interesting on its own. The collection's weight is cumulative, in the geography, the document types, and the way one agency's report turns up beside another's account of the same city and year, and that only becomes visible reading the files side by side.