War.gov PURSUE Revisions
DETECTED 11 MAY 2026 18:04 UTC · AUTO-POLLER #2 + #3 · LAST AUDITED 14 JUN 2026
Looking for the war.gov UAP CSV?
The official data file was first published as uap-csv.csv and has since been renamed to uap-data.csv on war.gov's server. If you have the old link, it no longer works - war.gov itself returns a 404 for it.
Old URL (dead, returns 404): https://www.war.gov/Portals/1/Interactive/2026/UFO/uap-csv.csv
Current URL (live): https://www.war.gov/Portals/1/Interactive/2026/UFO/uap-data.csv
Both states verified directly against war.gov on 2026-06-16 (old path: HTTP 404; current path: HTTP 200, 366 KB).
We mirror the current file and SHA-256-verify every entry: browse all 294 files, pull structured data from the JSON API, or check any file against war.gov on the verify page. Below is the full log of every revision war.gov has made to the file.
TL;DR (plain English)
On May 11, 2026, war.gov reorganized how their UFO file list is labeled in the CSV they publish, but they did not add or remove any files. The visible count dropped from 161 rows to 158 rows because some PDFs that used to appear once in the list now appear two-to-four times under different titles. No PDFs were deleted, no videos were deleted, nothing new was uploaded. The longer explanation below covers the audit history (this page got the framing wrong twice before settling on the verified version) and the precise data behind every claim.
This page has been corrected twice. Earlier versions (published 2026-05-11, edited 2026-05-14 and again 2026-05-20) characterized war.gov's revision as including "5 true removals," "3 true additions," a "6 Arabian Gulf entries consolidated into Middle East" geographic change, and a "title reformat" in which country names moved into the Incident Location field.
A third audit on 2026-05-20, this one comparing URL sets directly between the May 8 manifest and the current war.gov CSV, found that those framings overstated the change. Verified by URL set comparison: zero PDFs were added, zero PDFs were removed, zero videos were added, zero videos were removed. The underlying file inventory is identical to May 8.
What actually changed: 9 PDFs that previously had one CSV row now have 2-4 CSV rows each (the same PDF cross-referenced from multiple incident-report rows), and 3 PDFs had their URL slugs changed (title unchanged). That accounts for the entire 161→158 row-count delta. Anything beyond those facts is interpretation, and we have removed earlier interpretive framings from this page. The full row-by-row diff is at /changes.
On May 11, 2026, the U.S. Department of War revised the canonical PURSUE UAP CSV at war.gov/UFO. Our automated poller (commits 48b257d + e22f7b9) detected two CSV hash changes within 75 minutes and opened GitHub issues #2 and #3. This page summarizes the verified diff. We do not speculate about war.gov's motivations.
1. What is verified
Comparing the May 8 manifest (snapshot SHA-256 596cc1881a) to the current war.gov CSV (SHA-256 0d7e9ba1d5) by URL set:
- 130 unique PDF URLs in both snapshots after accounting for the 3 URL slug changes. Zero PDFs added. Zero PDFs removed.
- 28 unique video DVIDS IDs in both snapshots. Zero videos added. Zero videos removed. The two sets are byte-identical.
- 9 PDF URLs now appear in 2-4 CSV rows each (12 extra rows total). On May 8 each PDF appeared in exactly one CSV row. The 12 extra rows account for the
+12half of the row-count math. - 3 PDFs had their URL slug changed on war.gov's storage, with no change in the file Title. We have not yet diffed the PDF bytes themselves; SHA-256 verification on those three is pending.
- Net row delta is fully accounted for: 161 May 8 rows - 16 video rows = 145 PDF rows. 145 - 130 PDFs = 15 historical multi-row PDFs on May 8. Current: 130 unique PDFs + 12 extra-row PDFs + 16 video rows = 158. The 161→158 difference balances cleanly.
2. What is NOT verified (and we are not asserting)
We previously published several characterizations of war.gov's intent that go beyond what the data supports. We have removed them. Examples of claims we are no longer making on this page:
- That war.gov "renamed" any entries. (The 28
DOW-UAP-PR##rows point to the same PDFs as 28 pre-existingDOW-UAP-D##rows. They are additional cross-reference rows, not renames. The underlying PDFs were already in PURSUE on May 8.) - That war.gov "consolidated Arabian Gulf into Middle East." (The Arabian Gulf PDFs are still in the corpus; some now have additional cross-reference rows with broader-theater titles.)
- That AARO "re-opened" the Middle East 2013 case. (PR38 may share its underlying PDF with an existing entry; we have not finished diffing.)
- That 5 entries were "removed" or 3 entries were "added." (No PDFs or videos were added or removed.)
Some of those characterizations may turn out to be true once we finish the byte-level PDF diff and the per-incident detail comparison. Until then, we are not asserting them.
3. What we are doing now
- Publishing the full diff table at /changes. Every multi-row PDF and every URL slug change is listed there with the underlying URLs, so any reader can re-run the comparison.
- SHA-256 verification on the 3 URL-renamed PDFs. If the file bytes are identical to May 8, the rename is purely cosmetic. If not, we will publish the byte diff.
- Preserving every May 8 detail page URL. URL stability is a deliberate editorial position; the 161 May 8 entries remain accessible at their original slugs even though some of them are now cross-referenced from multiple CSV rows on war.gov.
- Auto-poller continues running. Any future war.gov edit triggers a GitHub issue within 30 minutes during weekday business hours.
Change log for this page
- 2026-05-20 (third audit): Removed all interpretive framings ("renames," "consolidation," "reclassification," "title reformat"). Replaced with verified URL-set comparison. Created companion page /changes with the full data tables.
- 2026-05-20 (second audit): Removed incorrect "5 true removals" and "3 true additions" framing; introduced "title reformat" framing which the third audit also corrected.
- 2026-05-14: Original version published. Subsequently found to be incorrect on multiple substantive points.
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. Journalists who want raw commit hashes from the detector log can request them via the press kit contact.