The Pentagon is now officially the Department of War. The renaming from Department of Defense is not cosmetic. PURSUE launched on war.gov. The Secretary of War signed the release. The name change signals a posture shift that has direct implications for how the UAP file release is being framed — and who controls it.
Four of the most senior officials in the US government issued statements when PURSUE launched on May 8, 2026. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. DNI Tulsi Gabbard. FBI Director Kash Patel. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. Here is exactly what each said — and what it signals.
Release 01 at war.gov/ufo includes archival imagery from the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon — December 1972. The official PURSUE caption: “The yellow box contains an enlarged area of the original photo in which three lights are visible above the lunar terrain.” This is the first time the US government has officially included Apollo-era imagery in a UAP declassification release.
On February 19, 2026, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social directing the Secretary of War and all relevant departments to begin releasing government UAP files. Eighty days later, PURSUE launched with 161 files. The full text of the directive is in the PURSUE portal. GOD BLESS AMERICA.
On May 8, 2026 the Department of War launched PURSUE — Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. war.gov/ufo is now live: 161 declassified files, rolling releases, no clearance required. The most significant government UAP transparency action in history. Full breakdown of what it contains and how it works.
The PURSUE portal launched with a slideshow of 16 declassified UAP images and videos. Infrared footage from the western US in 2025. A football-shaped object near Japan. UAP over Greece, UAE, Africa and the Middle East. A composite sketch from the southeastern US. Apollo 17 lunar imagery with three lights above the surface. Here is every image catalogued.
PURSUE Release 01 includes multiple sections of FBI case file 62-HQ-83894 — the FBI’s master UAP investigation file. Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and Serials 130 and 153 are now publicly released as PDFs. The 62 prefix identifies this as a national security investigation run by FBI Headquarters. This is the Bureau’s primary UAP dossier.
The Library and Archives Canada UAP database held 9,830 sighting reports from 1947 to 1995, digitised and searchable. The collectionscanada.gc.ca URL that hosted it has been dead for years. Here is what the database contained, how it was built, and what the decommissioning means for public access to Canada’s national UAP record.
Library and Archives Canada held a searchable online database of 9,830 UFO sighting reports submitted to National Defence from 1947 to 1995. The database is now decommissioned — the old URL is dead. Behind it was Project Magnet, a secret government research programme run by Transport Canada engineer Wilbert B. Smith, who built a UAP detection station at Shirley’s Bay, Ontario.
Wilbert B. Smith was a senior engineer with Transport Canada. In 1950 he submitted a classified memo stating UAP were “the most classified subject in the US government.” He received official approval to run Project Magnet, built a detector station at Shirley’s Bay Ontario, and recorded anomalous readings. His conclusion: UAP were real and non-human.
In July 1952, Winston Churchill wrote an official memo asking: ‘What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?’ The memo is in the UK National Archives at Kew, catalogue reference PREM 11/855. The Prime Minister demanded an official answer.
Britain maintained an official UFO investigation programme from the early 1950s through November 2009. The MoD UFO Desk received sighting reports from the public and military, investigated incidents of defence significance, and issued formal responses to Parliamentary Questions. Then they closed it. Here is the full record.
The UK National Archives holds UFO-related records across the DEFE, AIR, FCO and BJ series — covering 1950 to 2002 online, 1950 to 1995 physically at Kew. Tranches of DEFE 24 and DEFE 31 files were released annually from 2008 to 2013. Here is the complete guide to what survives, what you can access, and what was destroyed.
Until 1967, UK Ministry of Defence policy was to destroy all UFO files at five-yearly intervals. Systematic destruction from 1947 to 1967. Two decades of sighting reports, correspondence, analysis and official policy documents are gone. What was in them — and why did the MoD keep destroying them?
The UK National Archives released Ministry of Defence UFO files in six tranches from 2008 to 2013. The final tranche in June 2013 covered the closure of the MoD UFO Desk in November 2009. Until 1967 the MoD destroyed all UFO files every five years. What survives is a fraction of what was collected. Here is every series, every tranche, and how to access them.
Library and Archives Canada held 9,830 UFO sighting reports from 1947 to 1995. The database is now offline. But it documented Project Magnet — the world’s first government-funded UAP research program — led by Wilbert Smith, whose 1950 classified memo stated flying saucers were real and the investigation was classified higher than the H-bomb.
Trump ran as the anti-deep state candidate. His White House calls itself the most transparent administration in history. By July 2025, Liberation Times had documented a clear pattern: drone incursions downplayed, Epstein list buried, UFO promises slow to materialise. Then PURSUE launched in May 2026.
A letter from J. Robert Oppenheimer to Eleanor Roosevelt, with draft response, sits in the Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Papers at the FDR Presidential Library. Catalog ID 503146257. The subject is not described in the public catalog entry. It is filed under UAP records. Oppenheimer directed the Manhattan Project and held the highest security clearances in the US government.
The New York Times called it AATIP. Luis Elizondo called it something else. The DIA funded something different again. The Black Vault’s John Greenewald spent years untangling the deliberate confusion between AATIP and AAWSAP — two programs that overlapped, contradicted each other publicly, and may have been deliberately conflated to obscure what was actually being funded.
In January 2025, Liberation Times mapped the UAP disclosure trajectory under the incoming Trump administration. Ratcliffe as CIA Director. Rubio at State. Waltz as NSA. RFK Jr at Health. Elizondo and Grusch with White House access. Eight months later PURSUE launched. How accurate was the prediction?
