America's first public UFO file portal logged 1.7 billion views in six weeks. But Congress has a separate list of 46 specific military videos - including F-16 footage of a UAP shootdown - that it says the Pentagon is withholding.
On a winter day in February 2023, a U.S. military F-16 over Lake Huron, Michigan fired a missile at an airborne object its radar operators could not identify. The object - described in official reports as octagonal - was shot out of the sky. That encounter was filmed by military sensors.
Congress says it has not seen that video.
The Lake Huron footage is one of 46 specific UAP recordings that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, formally demanded from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a letter dated March 31, 2026. The deadline she set was April 14. That date passed more than two months ago. The videos have not been released.
When President Trump launched the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters - PURSUE, for short - on May 8, 2026, the government posted declassified UFO files on a public portal (war.gov/UFO) without requiring a Freedom of Information request. Anyone could access them.
Three batches of files arrived in rapid succession: May 8, May 22, and June 12. The program’s founding directive promised further releases “on a rolling basis as they are discovered and declassified, with tranches posted every few weeks.”
The public response was extraordinary. According to the Department of War, the portal logged 1.7 billion page views in six weeks. The three releases together covered hundreds of documented UAP cases spanning 1944 to 2025 - military incident reports, FBI case files, Apollo astronaut debriefings, Cold War sightings near nuclear installations, and a 2022 incident in which four objects flew in synchronized formation over Iran with no visible propulsion.
The third release, on June 12, documented 209 sightings of “green orbs,” “discs,” and “fireballs” near military facilities, and included an October 2024 case in which a “plasma-like sphere” hovered above water for approximately 45 minutes - filmed by a federal law enforcement officer who reportedly radioed to a colleague: “Are you seeing this?”
But PURSUE has been silent since June 12. As of early July 2026, no fourth tranche has appeared.
While PURSUE drew billions of views, Luna’s task force was pursuing a separate thread.
Following a September 2025 congressional hearing at which military whistleblowers testified that AARO - the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon’s dedicated UAP investigation unit, established in 2022 - possessed significant video evidence not made public, Luna sent her March 31 letter to Hegseth.
According to the House Oversight Committee, the 46 requested files span multiple military branches and locations. They include: the F-16 engagement over Lake Huron; UAP formation events captured over restricted airspace near Iran and the Persian Gulf; recordings by MQ-9 drone operators of unexplained objects over domestic U.S. military installations; and incidents near commercial airports and over the East China Sea.
These are not historical Cold War records. The majority of the 46 cases are from 2021 to 2025 - the same period AARO was actively collecting and investigating reports.
The Pentagon acknowledged receiving the letter, saying it was working with other agencies to review and consolidate the material before any public release, citing national security concerns. No response came by April 14. Luna wrote in a follow-up statement: “No one from the Pentagon had responded until we reached out, and it appears that someone did not pass the letter to the appropriate authorities. How convenient.”
The gap between the PURSUE releases and what Congress is asking for points to a structural tension in the disclosure effort.
The released files document what military personnel and federal agents reported - raw sightings, sensor captures, and incident accounts. What they do not include is AARO’s own analytical conclusions: what the office actually thinks is causing these events, what investigations found, and whether any specific cases have been resolved. The 46 videos Luna requested are precisely the kind of primary sensor evidence that would allow independent researchers and the public to evaluate specific incidents directly.
Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence who was among the first officials to publicly advocate for congressional UAP investigation, has observed that “data alone is not disclosure. Releasing raw files without context may confuse more than clarify.”
The three PURSUE tranches together represent the most transparent release of official UAP records in U.S. history. The government deserves credit for posting them. But according to Congress, the files the public most needs to evaluate the most significant recent cases are not on the portal. The deadline to release them was April 14. It passed without a response.
What happens next is a congressional decision.
AARO's annual report on unidentified phenomena, missing for months, arrived this week. Of 319 new sightings, the office resolved 114 - balloons, satellites, birds, one rocket and a single jetpack - while a shortage of sensor data left most cases open.
It is the only maritime case in the Pentagon's newest UAP report, which logged 319 sightings in a year and could resolve only about a third. AARO says the Virginia encounter is still unexplained.
The Pentagon's fourth PURSUE release dropped July 10 - 40 newly declassified files including a lockdown at America's nuclear warhead factory, a star-shaped object tracked over the Yellow Sea, and a 1949 meeting of atomic scientists stumped by mystery lights.
