UFO files release 2, May 22, 2026

The second batch of government UFO files, published on May 22, 2026. Mostly video, including the object shot down over Lake Huron in 2023.

The short answer

Release 2 of the UFO files came out on May 22, 2026, two weeks after the first. The Department of War published it at war.gov/UFO. CBS News counted 64 files, 51 of them videos. The Pentagon warned that many of the materials lack a substantiated chain of custody, and nothing in the release says any object was non-human.

The department said war.gov/UFO had passed one billion hits worldwide since its launch on May 8. Every release also sits in the Disclosure Ledger, and the program is set out on the PURSUE files page.

Release 2 at a glance

Date: May 22, 2026
Released by: The Department of War, in a statement from chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.
Where: war.gov/UFO, filed as Release 02
Files: 64 files, according to CBS News: 6 PDF documents, 7 audio files and 51 videos. The department’s release page gives download sizes, not a file count.
Download size: Documents 70.1 MB, videos 5.6 GB, as listed on war.gov/UFO
Program: PURSUE, the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters

What the department said

Sean Parnell’s statement was short. It confirmed the second release, said more files would follow on a rolling basis, and said war.gov/UFO had received more than one billion hits worldwide since May 8, 2026. It said the department and its partners were already working on a third release.

The most important caveat came with the files themselves. CBS News reported the Pentagon’s note that many of the materials “lack a substantiated chain-of-custody.” For many clips, the government cannot fully document where the footage came from or who handled it.

Department of War statement (source, opens in a new tab)war.gov/UFO (source, opens in a new tab)

What was in release 2

These are the files news outlets singled out on the day. They are a sample, not the whole batch, and the descriptions are the outlets’ summaries of the records.

Video of the object a fighter jet shot down over Lake Huron on February 12, 2023 (CBS News).
A 2022 video that shows several spherical objects going in and out of the water near a submarine, with no location listed (CBS News).
Historical sighting accounts from Sandia Base, 1948 to 1950, and files from the PANTEX nuclear weapons facility (CBS News).
NASA audio from the Mercury-Atlas 9 mission on May 15, 1963, which refers to objects described as “fireflies.” NASA attributed them to frozen condensation coming off the spacecraft (CBS News).
Recordings of NASA astronauts on Apollo and Mercury missions describing what they saw in space (CBS News).

cbsnews.com (source, opens in a new tab)

Exhibit · Release 2 claim checked

The claim, checked

The line about this release that travels furthest, set against what the record supports.

PARTLY
“The Pentagon released video of a UFO being shot down.”
What the record shows
The video is real, and the object was shot down. An F-16C brought it down over Lake Huron on February 12, 2023. What the claim leaves out is what came after: CBS News noted that later reports suggested it may have been a balloon run by a hobbyist group. The release coverage we read gives no confirmed recovery and no official identification. It was an unidentified object that was shot down, not a craft shown to be anything unusual.
cbsnews.com (source, opens in a new tab)

Reading release 2

This release is mostly video, which makes it easy to share and hard to judge. A clip without a documented source cannot tell you where the camera was, what sensor recorded it or what else was in the sky.

The NASA “fireflies” show how a strange report can already have an answer. NASA put them down to ice coming off the spacecraft. When a file carries its own explanation, read it before you read the comments.

What it does not show

It does not show where many of its clips came from: the Pentagon said many lack a substantiated chain of custody. It does not identify the Lake Huron object as anything other than unidentified. For the claims made about all six releases together, read did the UFO files confirm aliens?

Sources

File counts are news tallies, credited to the outlet that made them. The department’s own pages were read through a mirror of its release text and a copy of war.gov/UFO, because war.gov blocked direct requests.

The other releases

PURSUE has published six releases so far. The next one came out on June 12, 2026. The one before came out on May 8, 2026.

← Release 1, May 8, 2026 All PURSUE releases Release 3, June 12, 2026 →

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