HISTORICAL UAP FILE RELEASE
On May 8, 2026, the U.S. Department of War published the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) — 161 declassified documents drawn from FBI vault holdings, U.S. Army Air Forces incident files, and historical UAP records spanning 1947 through the present.
Combined with the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) public document set, the corpus represents the largest single batch of declassified U.S. government UFO material ever released. Every case below was extracted from those primary-source files.
Notable visuals from the corpus
Hand-curated artifacts pulled from the underlying PDFs — annotated aeronautical charts, 1947 newspaper clippings, FBI sensor photographs, and ORNL specimen analysis.
Browse by Era
The corpus is concentrated in the first wave of saucer reports (1947–1952) and the Cold War Blue Book era (1953–1969), reflecting the periods most heavily documented in the FBI vault files. Modern AARO and ODNI cases form a smaller but distinct cluster.
Pre-Modern (pre-1900)
3 cases- Moscow, Russia UFO Sighting (17th century) — FBI Files — Moscow, Russia
- H.M.S. Caroline UFO Sighting (May 25, 1893) — FBI Files — H.M.S. Caroline
- Lubbock, Texas UFO Sighting, 1897 — FBI Files — Lubbock, Texas
Early Aviation (1900-1939)
13 cases- 1910 UAP Sighting — FBI Files — Unknown location
- Houston, Texas UFO Sighting, 1915 — FBI Files — Houston, Texas
- Helendale, California UFO Sighting (December 27, 1918) — FBI Files — Helendale, California
- Chicago, Illinois UFO Sighting (May 20, 1919) — FBI Files — Chicago, Illinois
- + 9 more
Foo Fighters Era (1940-1946)
60 cases- 1940 UAP Sighting — AARO Records — Unknown location
- 1940 UAP Sighting — AARO Records (D196P32) — unknown location
- Roswell UFO Crash, late 1940s — FBI File — Unknown location
- 1940 UAP Sighting — AARO Records (D213P10) — Unknown location
- + 56 more
First Saucer Wave (1947-1952)
1,044 cases- Agate Beach, Oregon UFO Sighting (August 7, 1947) — FBI Files — Agate Beach, Oregon
- Air Nea Green River, Utah UAP Encounter, 1947 — USAAF Box 7 #102 — Air Nea Green River, Utah
- Airdrome Operations UAP Encounter, 1947 — USAAF Box 7 #30 — Airdrome Operations, Lockbourne
- Alaska UFO Sighting (September 1947) — USAF Files — Alaska
- + 1040 more
Cold War / Blue Book Era (1953-1969)
417 cases- Bowie, Maryland UFO Sighting (March 9, 1953) — FBI Files — Bowie, Maryland
- Bowie, Maryland UFO Sighting (March 9, 1953) — FBI Files (D7P133) — Bowie, Maryland
- Circleville, Ohio UFO Sighting (July 9, 1953) — FBI Files — Circleville, Ohio
- Circleville, Ohio UFO Sighting (June 1953) — FBI Files — Circleville, Ohio
- + 413 more
Modern Wave (1970-1989)
51 cases- 1970 UAP Sighting — AARO Records — Unknown location
- 1970 UAP Sighting — AARO Records (D213P28) — Unknown location
- 1970 UAP Sighting — AARO Records (D214P28) — Unknown location
- Apollo 17, 1972 — Moon
- + 47 more
Post-Cold War (1990-2016)
104 cases- United States, Russia UFO Sighting (1990s) — AARO Records (D213P29) — United States, Russia
- United States, Russia UFO Sighting (1990s) — AARO Records — United States, Russia
- United States, Russia UFO Sighting (in the 1990s) — AARO Records — United States, Russia
- Roswell UFO Crash, January 1948 — FBI File — Unknown location
- + 100 more
AATIP/UAPTF Era (2017-2021)
54 cases- 2017 UAP Sighting — AARO Records — Unknown location
- Wright Patterson AFB UFO Sighting (01 MAR 2017) — AARO Records — Wright Patterson AFB
- Mt. Etna, Italy UFO Sighting, 2018 — AARO Records — Mt. Etna, Italy
- Wright Patterson AFB UFO Sighting (10 DEC 2018) — AARO Records — Wright Patterson AFB
- + 50 more
AARO Disclosure Era (2022-present)
152 cases- Cimarron, New Mexico UFO Sighting (October 9, 2022) — AARO Records — Cimarron, New Mexico
- Gallup, New Mexico UFO Sighting (October 9, 2022) — AARO Records — Gallup, New Mexico
- Middle East UFO Sighting, 2022 — AARO Records — Middle East
- Iraq Military UAP Encounter (December 2022) — Mission Report — Iraq
- + 148 more
Browse by Source Agency
Each case is tagged with the federal agency that filed or holds the primary-source document. The FBI dominates the historical record; AARO and ODNI dominate the modern.
Browse by Type of Case
Each case is classified by the dominant evidentiary mode of the report — whether the witness saw the object, whether radar tracked it, whether photographs survive, and whether physical traces or pilot encounters are involved.
Visual Sighting
1,330 casesDisc / Saucer Sighting
204 casesPilot / Aviation Sighting
87 casesEntity Sighting
85 casesPhotographic / Video Evidence
85 casesRadar Track
60 casesPhotographic Evidence
39 casesMilitary Installation
32 casesPilot Encounter
20 casesUnresolved Incident
14 casesAirship / Cigar Object
7 casesTriangle Object
5 casesOrb / Sphere
4 casesGovernment Report
4 casesMass Sighting
2 casesHigh-Witness Cases
Cases in the corpus with the largest documented witness counts — including the 2026 AARO consolidated report (1,800+ cumulative cases) and major mass-witness events from earlier waves.
Idaho UFO Sighting (July 4) — FBI Files
A first saucer wave case from Idaho. On Independence Day, approximately 260 people in Idaho reported seeing the flying objects.
200+ witnesses
FBI UAP Sensor Imagery: 32 Government-System Captures Submitted to AARO (2024)
Between 2024 and 2025, the Federal Bureau of Investigation submitted thirty-two still images of unidentified anomalous phenomena to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Each was derived from a U.S. government sensor system, redacted before submission, and accompanied by a brief AARO-issued narrative description. The dates and locations of the underlying events have not been disclosed.
32+ witnessesSource Documents
The full PDF archive lives at the U.S. Department of War's UFO disclosure portal and at AARO. The 4,118 underlying pages have been OCR'd, indexed, and embedded for full-text and semantic search; every case below links to the primary-source PDF on the originating agency website.