The Pentagon released 162 UAP files under PURSUE. None confirm alien life.

The first batch dropped May 8, 2026: 162 declassified records of videos, photos, and decades of sightings. A second batch of 64 files followed. Nothing in them proves extraterrestrial life.

The Department of War (the Pentagon) opened 162 declassified files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena to the public on May 8, 2026. It was the first release under a new system created by a Trump executive order and named PURSUE, for the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. A second batch of 64 files followed about two weeks later. Both went up on a public portal at war.gov that anyone can read.

The files go back decades. They include forward-looking infrared videos, photographs, eyewitness testimony, and incident reports, from Cold War accounts of rotating saucers to recent sightings of metallic objects hanging in mid-air. President Trump's order framed the effort as the most transparent the federal government has ever been about the subject.

What the files do not contain is proof of alien life. NPR, CBS News, and NBC News all reviewed the release and reported the same thing: striking material, no confirmation that anything in it is extraterrestrial. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who published his own analysis of the second batch, landed in the same place.

Some of the loudest descriptions of the release never came from the files. Posts on Instagram claimed the videos showed orbs chasing fighter jets and objects accelerating at impossible speeds. No news outlet that examined the records found that, and the official files do not describe it. The 162-file count is real, though. It spread on social media first, but NPR put the first batch at "more than 160 records" and CBS News confirmed the exact number.

For now the release is what the government says it is. A large stack of once-classified material, handed to the public, that documents the phenomenon without explaining it.