PURSUE Release 06: A First Look at War.gov’s Sixth UFO File Drop
The Department of War published PURSUE Release 06 on September 18, 2026, the sixth batch of declassified and historical Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena files posted to War.gov/UFO.
This is a first look, not a full analysis. The goal here is simple: tell you what is actually in the batch and which files deserve a closer read before the news cycle moves on.
We have indexed all 75 records from this release. Fifty-nine are PDFs, fifteen are videos, and one is an audio recording. By record count it is the largest batch since the program opened in May.
What’s in Release 06
Two source agencies appear in this batch, and one of them is new to the program.
| Agency | Records | What they cover |
|---|---|---|
| Department of War | 67 | The 37 AAWSAP Defense Intelligence Reference Documents, the AAWSAP contract file, the 1952 Tremonton case file and film, a 1952 Ruppelt lecture transcript and audio, and 2022-2025 mission reports and sensor videos |
| Local Law Enforcement | 8 | Colorado UAP reports from October 2023 to January 2024: four police-file transcripts, each paired with its case video |
The mix is unlike any earlier batch. Releases 01 through 05 were federal all the way down: DOW, FBI, NASA, CIA, State, Energy. Release 06 is the first time a non-federal source, a local law enforcement agency, hands records into the program. The eight Colorado records are small files, but the channel they open is the story: police-file UAP reports now feed the same archive as CENTCOM sensor video.
The other difference is depth over breadth. Instead of scattering across agencies, this batch goes deep on exactly two threads: the AAWSAP contract era of 2008-2011, and a single famous 1952 case, with a layer of modern unresolved reports on top.
The AAWSAP Studies, With Fewer Redactions Than Before
The headline block is the 37 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents produced under AAWSAP, the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program run for the Defense Intelligence Agency. These are the studies that made this release newsworthy before anything else did: warp drives and extra dimensions, traversable wormholes and negative energy, antigravity for aerospace applications, invisibility cloaking, negative mass propulsion.
Most of these titles have been public since 2018-2019, when the DIA released the DIRDs under FOIA. What is new here is the state of the text. The PURSUE versions carry materially fewer redactions: producing-office names and contract references that were masked in the FOIA copies are present in these. For researchers who care about provenance, who wrote which study and under which task order, that is the real content of this release.
Two contextual points keep getting lost in coverage, so they belong here. First, a DIRD is a literature review, not a lab result: each one surveys the state of a field and asks whether an effect is worth funding. A study of warp-drive physics is a statement that someone wanted to know what the physics literature says, not that anyone built one. Second, the program’s own paper trail is in the same batch: the Statement of Objectives, the solicitation, and five contract modifications tracing how the program was scoped, awarded, and extended. Read together with the DIRDs, you can see both what the program bought and what it actually was: a contracted survey of exotic-propulsion literature, run between 2008 and 2011.
One DIRD deserves its own read and has not gotten one yet: D128, on anomalous acute and subacute field effects on human biological tissues. It is the only study in the set about people rather than propulsion, and it is the document behind the “injuries linked to UAP encounters” line in this release’s press coverage.
Tremonton, 1952: A Case File Rebuilt From Every Angle
The second block reconstructs one case in unusual depth. On July 2, 1952, Navy Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse, a photographic specialist with over a thousand hours of aerial photography experience, filmed twelve to fourteen reflective objects near Tremonton, Utah with a handheld 16mm camera. The batch carries the Project Blue Book case file, the photo file, Newhouse’s own personnel record, the period’s broader Flying Discs file, and, separately, the digitization of the original 16mm film itself.
The case file’s own arc is worth stating plainly. Early assessments considered birds, balloons, and a mirage, and identified nothing. Later assessments grew confident the objects were seabirds reflecting sunlight, citing similar films. The file also records why that conclusion could never be nailed down: without fixed reference points, the film cannot yield distance, size, or speed. The Navy’s 1953 analysis of the film, released in PURSUE Release 05 as DOW-UAP-D098, reached the same wall from the photogrammetric side. AARO’s comment in the new file flags one more thing: the archive’s own records disagree on film format, mixing references to 35mm with the documented original 16mm Kodachrome.
Alongside the case sits something rarer. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt ran Project Blue Book in 1952, the year of the Tremonton film and the year the Washington radar sightings put UFOs on the front page. Release 06 carries the transcript of a talk he gave in March 1952 and the audio of the same presentation, roughly 65 minutes of the man who defined how the Air Force talked about UFOs, in his own voice. For the program’s institutional history, that audio is the single most distinctive artifact in the batch.
The Modern Layer and the First Police Files
The remaining modern records are consistent with what earlier releases established. Mission reports from Iraq 2022 and the Middle East through 2025 arrive with redactions, alongside fifteen sensor videos: a Yellow Sea and East China Sea group from 2023, and Middle East clips from 2022 and 2025, all officially unresolved. We have indexed each video with its official DVIDS source.
The eight Colorado records are the genuinely new thing. Four law enforcement transcripts, October 2023 through January 2024, each cross-referenced against its case video, filed by a local agency rather than a federal one. The reports themselves are modest. What they signal is that PURSUE’s collection net now reaches below the federal level, which is either broadening or overreach depending on your read, but is on the record either way.
Explore This Release
The full Release 06 set is browsable in the Document Database, and every record carries a source-status label in the Evidence Explorer explaining what kind of evidence it is: official source, public rendition, witness testimony, or an officially unresolved case.
If you are trying to place this release in context rather than read it in isolation:
- The Release Comparator breaks down what changed between Release 06 and every prior tranche, agency mix and file types side by side.
- Archive Statistics has the full running count across all releases, now 323 records, with a citation block and a CSV download of the complete catalog.
- The Sighting Map plots every locatable record from this batch, from Tremonton to the Yellow Sea, alongside the rest of the archive.
- The Video Browser has all fifteen new videos plus the Ruppelt recording in one filterable view.
Common Questions About PURSUE Release 06
How many files are in PURSUE Release 06?
Our index counts 75 records: 59 PDFs, 15 videos, and 1 audio recording. Early press coverage described the batch as 71 records, 67 Pentagon plus 4 from Colorado law enforcement. The official PURSUE database itself lists 75: the Colorado contribution is 8 records, 4 transcripts and 4 videos, and the press count appears to have grouped each transcript with its video.
What agencies are represented in Release 06?
Department of War and, for the first time in the program, a local law enforcement agency from Colorado. DOW contributes 89 percent of the batch, dominated by the AAWSAP paper trail and the 1952 historical block.
What is the most historically significant file in Release 06?
Two candidates, and they are different kinds of significant. The Tremonton case file is the deepest single-case reconstruction the program has released. The Ruppelt 1952 audio is the only recording in the entire archive of the person who ran Blue Book, in his own voice, in the field’s most consequential year.
Is Release 06 the last PURSUE batch?
No. The Department of War has said files will continue to post on a rolling basis, consistent with Releases 01 through 05. No date has been given for a seventh batch.
What to Watch Next
This first look covers what is in the batch. The deeper reads worth doing, in order: the DIRD on human biological effects, which the press coverage leaned on without quoting; the AAWSAP contract file, which would let us publish a clean timeline of how the program was built and extended; and the Tremonton film against its two contradictory analyses, now that the case file, the photo file, the Navy analysis, and the digitized film are all finally in one place.
The honest summary is this: Release 06 adds 75 records and two firsts, the first non-federal source and the first audible voice from Blue Book. It does not resolve Tremonton or anything else. It puts the least-redacted version of the AAWSAP literature on the record, and gives researchers the raw material to write the program’s real history themselves.
Flynn Lin is the founder and editor of UFO Declassified. You can reach him at contact@ufo-declassified.com for corrections, tips, or questions about any record on this site. Read more about the PURSUE archive, the Release 04 first look, or browse the Release 06 document set.