The 2023 Shootdown Files Are Absent From PURSUE's First Tranche

The Department of War released more than 160 files through its PURSUE portal on May 8, covering unidentified aerial phenomena from 1944 to the mid-2020s. The archive runs to roughly 4,157 pages and is hosted at war.gov/ufo.

The release skews historical. The tranche includes Apollo 17 photographs annotated with triangular formations in lunar imagery and FBI case file 62-HQ-83894, covering 1947 to 1968 with minor redactions. Sensor footage from Greece and Syria in 2024 rounds out the recent-era material. At least 100 of the files carry redactions. Researchers found most material was previously scattered across FOIA releases and AARO's public repository, consolidated here rather than newly disclosed.

The Gap the Archive Makes Visible

The three objects shot down over the United States and Canada in February 2023, described by NORAD at the time as unidentified, are not in the first tranche. U.S. authorities have not released imagery from any of the three incidents, despite prior pledges. Canada's case illustrates how disclosure decisions actually work: the Canadian Department of National Defence declassified its photograph on February 15, 2023, three days after the Yukon shootdown, then chose to withhold it, citing concern the image would "create more questions and confusion." CTV News obtained it through a Canadian FOIA request in September 2024, nineteen months later.

A video from a January 26, 2023, Air Force pilot encounter over the Gulf of Mexico was withheld on national security grounds, per documents obtained through FOIA by The War Zone. The pilot achieved radar lock on four separate objects before the radar malfunctioned within 4,000 feet of the first.

The archive's most operationally notable case underlines the pattern. PURSUE includes written reports of 2023 sightings of orange orbs by federal law enforcement personnel that "appeared to emit smaller reddish spheres," listed by AARO as among "the most compelling cases in its holdings due to the credibility of the witnesses." No imagery, sensor data, or analytical conclusions accompany the report.

What the Release Proves

Researcher John Greenewald Jr. of The Black Vault identified an internal contradiction in the release: PURSUE demonstrated the government can publish redacted UAP imagery. Prior FOIA disputes had cited that capability as difficult or legally sensitive.

The same record shows the Navy's 2020 release of the FLIR1, Gimbal, and GoFast videos was not voluntary. Greenewald filed a FOIA request in May 2019. The Navy posted the videos and closed that FOIA case the same day in April 2020, an appearance of proactive openness the documents contradict. Internal deliberations about that release (498 pages, 59 emails, 3 legal memos) remain withheld under internal-deliberation and personal-privacy exemptions.

Christopher Mellon, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, framed the architecture plainly: "The government is releasing evidence without releasing analysis."

The archive's inventory exposes the decision that preceded its publication: cases where AARO analysis is finalized and operational sensitivity has cooled appear in the files. The February 2023 objects, whose "unidentified" designation has never been formally resolved and whose surveillance context remains active, do not. Mellon's phrase describes not a failure of the program but its design.

A second PURSUE tranche is due roughly 30 days after the May 8 release. Under the UAP Disclosure Act, agencies that continue to withhold records must file a written, reviewable justification, a document that becomes public in its own right. If the February 2023 shootdown files are absent from the June tranche, those justifications are what to read next.