War.gov PURSUE Revisions
DETECTED 11 MAY 2026 18:04 UTC · AUTO-POLLER #2 + #3
On May 11, 2026, the U.S. Department of War quietly revised the canonical PURSUE UAP file list at war.gov/UFO. Our automated war.gov poller (commits 48b257d + e22f7b9 on this repo) detected two CSV hash changes within 75 minutes and opened GitHub issues #2 and #3 with the deltas. This page documents what changed.
Why this matters. The May 8 original release contained 161 files. As of May 11 the canonical list is 158. The 161 detail pages on this site remain accessible at their original URLs - we have not deleted them, because the underlying file content is unchanged and our SHA-256 verification manifest still matches war.gov's CDN-hosted files for the renamed entries. A full canonical re-sync to the new DOW-UAP-PR## naming is in progress.
1. Renames (cosmetic) — 28 files
War.gov added a DOW-UAP-PR## prefix to 28 file titles. The underlying files (PDF/MP4 bytes), source URLs, and SHA-256 hashes appear unchanged. We have kept the original slugs to preserve URL stability and inbound backlinks.
Examples
| Before May 11 | After May 11 |
|---|---|
| Unresolved UAP Report, Iraq, May 2022 | DOW-UAP-PR21, Unresolved UAP Report, Iraq, May 2022 |
| Unresolved UAP Report, Syria, July 2022 | DOW-UAP-PR22, Unresolved UAP Report, Syria, July 2022 |
| Unresolved UAP Report, Greece, January 2024 | DOW-UAP-PR28, Unresolved UAP Report, Greece, January 2024 |
| Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, May 2022 | DOW-UAP-PR19, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, May 2022 |
| DOW-UAP-D23, Mission Report, UAE, October 2023 | DOW-UAP-PR26, Unresolved UAP Report, UAE, October 2023 |
2. Reclassifications — 2 substantive changes
Two entries appear to have had their analytical status changed by AARO between May 8 and May 11:
| Before May 11 | After May 11 | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Resolved as an Aircraft, Middle East 2013 | DOW-UAP-PR38, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2013 | Re-opened (was resolved, now unresolved) |
| Unresolved UAP Report, Gulf of Oman, June 2024 | DOW-UAP-PR29, Unresolved UAP Report, United Arab Emirates, June 2024 | Geographic re-attribution |
The Middle East 2013 reclassification is the more journalistically interesting one - AARO appears to have re-opened a previously closed case.
3. Geographic consolidation — 6 "Arabian Gulf" entries → "Middle East" entries
All six 2020 entries previously labeled "Arabian Gulf 2020" were removed. The new CSV contains seven new "Middle East 2020" entries (DOW-UAP-PR37, PR39, PR40, PR41, PR42, PR44, PR45). The most parsimonious read is that war.gov consolidated "Arabian Gulf" under the broader "Middle East" geographic label and added one additional entry.
4. True removals — 5 files
Five entries have no corresponding new entry in the May 11 CSV and appear to have been removed from PURSUE:
- Unresolved UAP Report, Djibouti, 2025
- Unresolved UAP Report, Southern United States, 2020
- Unresolved UAP Report, East China Sea, 2024
- Unresolved UAP Report, Japan, 2023
- Unresolved UAP Report, Indo-PACOM, 2024
The Pacific theater (Japan, East China Sea, Indo-PACOM 2024) lost three entries; the Southern United States and Djibouti lost one each. No public explanation has been given for the removals. The original 161-file May 8 release on this site preserves these entries at their original URLs.
5. True additions — 3 new files
After accounting for renames and the Arabian Gulf→Middle East consolidation, three substantively new entries appear in the May 11 CSV:
- DOW-UAP-PR20, Unresolved UAP Report, Kuwait, May 2022 (PDF) - first Kuwait-located entry in PURSUE
- DOW-UAP-PR43, Unresolved UAP Report, Africa, 2025 (Video) - first Africa-located entry, AFRICOM theater
- DOW-UAP-PR47, Unresolved UAP Report, INDOPACOM, 2023 (Video) - new Pacific entry (offsets one of the Indo-PACOM removals)
What we're doing about it
1. This page. Full transparency about the diff.
2. Preserving the original 161 URLs. Bookmarks, citations, and inbound backlinks continue to resolve. The "May 8 original release" snapshot is preserved.
3. Canonical re-sync in progress. The 3 truly-new files (Kuwait, Africa, INDOPACOM 2023) will be added to the manifest with stub metadata in the next release. The 5 truly-removed files will be marked with a withdrawn_by_wargov flag rather than deleted, so the historical record remains queryable.
4. Auto-poller is live. Any future war.gov edit triggers a GitHub issue within 30 minutes during weekday business hours. The change log will continue.
How to verify this page yourself
The fresh canonical CSV is at war.gov/Portals/1/Interactive/2026/UFO/uap-csv.csv (war.gov edge rate-limits non-browser fetches; you may need to visit war.gov/UFO/ first to warm a session). Diff it against our files.json snapshot of the May 8 release. The two GitHub commits that detected the change are 48b257d and e22f7b9 on the public repo at FongShuiLabs/pursueufotracker.