PURSUE Release 03 is out: CIA files, FBI orbs, and a 1949 flying saucer study

The third wave of government UAP files dropped June 12, 2026, and this time the most striking material is not video. It is paper.

The Department of War posted PURSUE Release 03 to its official portal, adding 72 new records: 53 PDFs, six videos, ten images, and three audio files. Total size: 826 MB of documents and 4.6 GB of video.

The agency list is wider than the first headline suggests: CIA, FBI, NASA, Department of War, one intelligence-community analysis, and one broader U.S. government correspondence file.

Where Release 02 leaned on clips, Release 03 draws its best hooks from declassified reports: a 1949 Army flying-saucer study, a CIA account from Zimbabwe, and an FBI file chain tied to a 2022 sighting near Cheyenne Mountain.

CIA report: Harare airport, 2008

The most immediately shareable new file is CIA-UAP-017.

It is a July 2008 CIA report from Zimbabwe titled Placement on High Alert Due to Perceived Aggressive Foreign Posturing. The file states that an unidentified object was reported hovering at high altitude over Harare International Airport on July 2, 2008.

The description is unusually specific for a government document. The object is described as disc-like, with a hollow center and rotating lights underneath. Beams were observed coming from the object. The report notes that people aware of the incident debated whether it was an advanced foreign reconnaissance device or something extraterrestrial.

The file is heavily redacted in places and marked as not finally evaluated. But it gives Release 03 something that viral clips often lack: a location, a date, a shape, an airport, and a documented decision-making response inside the same file.

Harare is the first Release 03 story worth a full follow-up.

1949: The Army's flying saucer problem

The historical headline is DOW-UAP-D084: US Army-Flying-Saucer-Study_1949.

The portal describes it as an evaluation study prepared for the Plans & Operations Divisions of the General Staff. The central question: were flying saucer reports the result of natural phenomena, or could they be traced to a foreign power?

That framing is not modern UAP language retrofitted onto an old folder. The document itself says 1949. The subject line says flying saucers.

The file matters because it places the Army version of the problem at the start of the modern UFO era, before AARO, before congressional hearings, before "UAP" became the preferred term. Officials were already asking whether the sightings were nature, foreign technology, or something that did not fit neatly into either category.

Colorado Springs: Witness, rendering, analysis

The FBI material around Colorado Springs is the strongest file chain in the release.

FBI-UAP-D002 is an FD-1057 tied to a 2022 UAP report near Cheyenne Mountain. A witness described a "potato"-shaped object with distinct edges, a creamy or whitish opalescent color, and irregular panels that appeared to shift in slow waves.

FBI-UAP-D003 is a released digital rendering built from that witness description. It shows the pale object over the mountain line. It is not raw camera evidence.

ICA-UAP-D001 adds the institutional second look. The intelligence-community analysis concludes the Cheyenne Mountain event was "possibly backscattering of sunlight," with low confidence. It also states no anomalous data or characteristics were recorded or assessed.

That chain — witness account, FBI rendering, IC analysis, low-confidence natural explanation — is a more useful public record than an isolated clip with no surrounding context.

FBI orb files: Northeast cluster

Release 03 also adds a cluster of orb-related files from the Northeast U.S.

The batch includes FBI FD-302 interview documents, multiple FD-1057 records, digital renderings, and videos with titles including Orbs Over the Pond, Triangle Orbs, and Red Orb Rotation. One associated DVIDS page states the October 2024 pond video was recorded on an iPhone, authenticated by a U.S. government partner, and released without digital alteration except for a crop to protect privacy.

That authentication language will get attention.

The orb files need to be read as a group. The FBI documents, DVIDS videos, and witness descriptions are part of the same small ecosystem, and pulling one frame out of context is the fastest way to miss what the set actually shows.

NASA and the older archive

NASA appears in this release with Gemini and Apollo debriefing material, an interview excerpt with astronaut Gordon Cooper, and several astronaut scientific and technical debriefings.

The CIA side adds older UFO files, Soviet science notes, British UFO activity reports, and sightings recorded in Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan.

Not every NASA file documents a dramatic UAP encounter. Some are historical spaceflight records now included in the PURSUE portal because they contain relevant sightings, interview excerpts, or archival references.

But their presence changes what Release 03 looks like at scale. This is not a file dump built around one object. It is a map of how UAP material has been distributed across agencies for decades.

What to pull first

The short-list for immediate follow-up:

• CIA-UAP-017 — Harare airport, disc-like object, rotating lights, high-alert response.
• DOW-UAP-D084 — 1949 Army flying saucer evaluation for the General Staff.
• FBI-UAP-D002 / D003 / ICA-UAP-D001 — the Cheyenne Mountain witness-rendering-analysis chain.
• FBI-UAP-PR003 / PR004 — the orb videos, pond footage, and DVIDS authentication language.

The bigger story in Release 03 is that PURSUE has moved from spectacle into archive texture. UFO and UAP search traffic will chase the most dramatic file names first. The trail is in the chains: what was reported, who handled it, what image was produced, and what analysis sat beside it.

That is where this batch starts to breathe.

Sources

• Department of War release statement, June 12, 2026: Department of War Publishes Third Release of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Files.
• Department of War PURSUE portal: WAR.GOV/UFO.
• Department of War Release 03 CSV: uap-data.csv?release=3.
• CIA-UAP-017: Placement on High Alert Due to Perceived Aggressive Foreign Posturing.
• DOW-UAP-D084: US Army-Flying-Saucer-Study_1949.
• FBI-UAP-D002: FD-1057, Unresolved UAP Report, Colorado Springs, 2022.
• FBI-UAP-D003: Digital Rendering, Unresolved UAP Report, Colorado Springs, 2022.
• ICA-UAP-D001: Analysis: Colorado Springs UAP Incident, 2022.
• DVIDS: FBI-UAP-PR003, “Orbs Over the Pond,” 2024.
• DVIDS: FBI-UAP-PR004, “Northeastern Orb Sighting,” 2025.