PURSUE Release 02: F-16 Shootdown, Submarine UAPs, and the Videos Congress Fought For

Two weeks after the first PURSUE release crashed the government’s servers and drew nearly 500 million hits in 48 hours, the Pentagon published Release 02 on May 22. This time, the material is harder to dismiss.

The second batch includes video of a U.S. Air Force fighter jet shooting down a UAP, footage taken near submarines, a five-minute clip of a Syrian UAP demonstrating instant acceleration, multiple spherical objects tracked over three continents, a senior intelligence officer’s firsthand orb report, Apollo 12 audio from the lunar surface, and a 116-page Cold War dossier cataloging 209 sightings near a nuclear weapons facility.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna announced the release: “Second UAP drop is up!” The White House itself posted one of the videos directly to social media – a first. War.gov/ufo has now received over 1 billion hits since launch. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed that a third release is already being prepared.

Lue Elizondo called it “a milestone in transparency and disclosure,” thanking the President and the congressional members – Luna, Burchett, and Burlison – who pushed for the files.

Here is what’s in Release 02, what it shows, and why it matters.

The Lake Huron Shootdown (February 2023)

The most significant video in the release is DOW-UAP-PR071: footage that appears to show a U.S. Air Force National Guard F-16C shooting down a UAP over Lake Huron with its weapon system on February 12, 2023.

This is the incident the public has been asking about since NORAD’s unprecedented series of shootdowns in early 2023, when the military destroyed three objects over North American airspace in a single week after the Chinese surveillance balloon incident. The government never provided footage of those shootdowns – until now.

The video shows the moment of weapons release and the object breaking apart. The Daily Mail described it as “the moment F-16 ‘blew apart UFO’ over Michigan.”

This is the first official video of the U.S. military destroying an unidentified object. It confirms what was only described in press conferences at the time: that the military engaged and destroyed objects it could not identify.

DOW-UAP-PR071: USAF ANG F-16C shoots down UAP over Lake Huron, February 12, 2023. Source: DVIDS / Department of War

Syrian UAP: Instant Acceleration (2021)

DOW-UAP-PR051 is a five-minute video titled “Syrian UAP instant acceleration”, recorded in 2021 in the CENTCOM area of responsibility. The footage shows an object exhibiting acceleration that is inconsistent with known aircraft or drone capabilities.

Five minutes of continuous tracking is unusually long for military sensor footage – most UAP clips in the public domain last under a minute. The duration suggests the object was in view long enough for operators to rule out common explanations in real time.

Watch on war.gov: DOW-UAP-PR051 – Syrian UAP instant acceleration

The Spheres

Multiple videos in Release 02 feature spherical UAPs – the shape that has become the most commonly reported by military personnel worldwide.

DOW-UAP-PR053 – “Cigar shaped or fast spherical UAP” (October 2022, CENTCOM): A UAP flying over a street in the Central Command area of responsibility. The designation suggests analysts couldn’t determine whether the object was elongated or spherical due to speed.

DOW-UAP-PR054 – “Spherical UAP erratic movement” (2022): Sensor footage tracking a sphere making what Mario Nawfal described as “wild, jerky maneuvers, darting in and out of frame while the sensor struggles to keep up.”

DOW-UAP-PR056 – Spherical UAP over Europe: Nearly four minutes of tracking a sphere exhibiting “super erratic and unnatural” movement patterns.

DOW-UAP-PR058 – Indo-Pacific Command UAP (June 2024): Uploaded to a classified network before being cleared for release.

DOW-UAP-PR059 – USCENTCOM UAP (June 2020).

DOW-UAP-PR086 – “UAP FROM DEC 2019 (EAST COAST)”: This is the video the White House posted directly to social media – the first time a sitting administration has distributed UAP footage through its own official accounts.

Watch on war.gov: DOW-UAP-PR054 – Spherical UAP erratic movement · DOW-UAP-PR056 – Spherical UAP over Europe

The volume of sphere footage is notable. Spherical objects now account for the majority of UAP reports from military sources. Their consistent appearance across theaters – CENTCOM, INDOPACOM, Europe, the U.S. East Coast – and over a span of years (2019–2024) makes them the most documented UAP morphology in the government’s declassified holdings.

Submarine-Proximate Footage and DOE Material

Rep. Luna flagged submarine-related footage in the release, posting: “Someone grab and post the Submarine UAP footage from DOW release.” Chris Sharp (Liberation Times) confirmed that the batch includes “multiple spherical UAPs near a submarine.”

Sharp also identified Department of Energy material in the release, including what he described as a disc-shaped object that “appears to be the one reported by Jeremy [Corbell] and George [Knapp] over the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier.”

The inclusion of DOE files is significant. The Department of Energy manages the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and national laboratories – facilities that have been at the center of UAP reporting since the 1940s. The first PURSUE release was dominated by DOW and NASA files; DOE material represents a new agency entering the declassification pipeline.

DOW-UAP-PR067: Multiple spherical UAP/USO near submarine, March 25, 2022 – objects observed going in and out of water. Source: DVIDS / Department of War

The Intelligence Officer and the Orbs (Late 2025)

Filed as ODNI-UAP-D001, this is a firsthand narrative from a senior U.S. intelligence community official who witnessed orange orbs during a helicopter flight in late 2025.

The officer described the objects as “oval-shaped, orange with a white or yellow center,” emitting “light in all directions.” After the initial sighting, the officer observed the same orbs appear over fighter jets that had scrambled nearby:

“I remarked to the pilots that it seemed the same orbs we had encountered were now ‘chasing’ the fighters. We also observed orange orbs flaring up and down around us for several minutes, forming a distinct triangle before vanishing.”

“After landing, I briefly spoke with them – mostly to express thanks. We were virtually speechless after these observations.”

The filing is notable for three reasons. First, it comes from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, not a military branch – meaning it was filed through the intelligence community’s own reporting chain. Second, the witness is described as a senior official, not a junior analyst or airman. Third, the behavior described – orbs that appear to respond to military aircraft and form geometric patterns – matches reports from multiple other encounters across different branches and theaters.

Apollo 12 Audio (December 1969)

The release includes audio from the Apollo 12 medical debriefing (NASA-UAP-D008), in which astronauts describe “streaks of lights” they observed while trying to sleep during the mission.

NASA’s assessment: the phenomenon was “internal to the astronauts’ vision rather than external light sources.” This follows the Apollo 12 lunar surface photos and Apollo 11 debriefing transcript released in the first batch.

The inclusion of NASA material that the agency itself has explained as non-anomalous is worth noting. It suggests the release process is prioritizing completeness over curation – everything that was flagged as potentially UAP-related is being published, regardless of whether the originating agency considered it resolved.

The Sandia Dossier (1948–1950)

DOW-UAP-D017 is a 116-page document detailing investigations at Sandia Base, New Mexico – then the nation’s primary nuclear weapons assembly facility – between 1948 and 1950.

The dossier catalogs 209 sightings of “green orbs,” “discs,” and “fireballs” reported near the base. Witnesses described objects “maneuvering, flying out of sight, disappearing, or exploding.” Investigators found residual copper powder at some sighting locations.

These investigations contributed to Project Grudge, the Air Force’s 1949 UFO inquiry that succeeded Project Sign. The Sandia sightings are well known in UFO research circles, but the full 116-page file – with its investigation details and physical evidence analysis – has never been publicly available in this form.

The concentration of sightings around a nuclear weapons facility echoes a pattern documented across decades: UAP activity disproportionately clusters near nuclear sites, carrier groups, and sensitive military installations.

What’s Missing

Chris Sharp pointed out the most glaring gap: “The American Taxpayer paid for a UAP office which refuses to provide any analysis to support the videos.”

Every video in Release 02 comes with a description of what the sensor captured – but no analytical conclusion about what the object was. AARO’s disclaimer is appended to each file: “Readers should not interpret any part of this description as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination.”

This means the government is publishing footage of objects it cannot explain – and explicitly declining to say what it thinks they are. The files are raw material without assessment.

Rep. Tim Burchett warned earlier this week that intelligence agencies may be seeding the releases with mundane footage (balloons, birds) to dilute the impact. Ross Coulthart questioned whether the government is “playing the public for fools.”

The tension is real: Release 02 contains genuinely extraordinary footage alongside material that may be unremarkable. Without AARO analysis, the public is left to sort signal from noise on its own.

What Comes Next

A third release is already being processed. The congressional UAP caucus – Luna, Burlison, and Burchett – continue pushing for the remaining videos from the original 46 requested. Burlison has now viewed 52 videos total and is demanding a 1952 film from MIT Lincoln Labs.

The PURSUE initiative has now published two tranches in two weeks. Whether the pace holds – and whether the government will eventually provide the analysis it’s so far withheld – will determine whether this becomes genuine transparency or an exercise in controlled information release.