AARO Tracks Genuine UAP by Radar Signature and Infrared. The Pentagon Released Eyewitness Sketches.

The third batch of Pentagon UAP files, released June 12, includes a government-commissioned sketch of a "potato"-shaped object that hovered over the Cheyenne Mountains in 2022 before disappearing. A former U.S. Army intelligence officer and four members of his unit were the witnesses. The case is still open.

The release contains 53 documents and 10 images from the CIA, FBI, NASA and the Department of Defense, along with six videos and three NASA audio recordings. The PURSUE initiative coordinates declassification across agencies following a presidential directive.

The material spans decades. A CIA file documents a disc-like object producing "beams" while hovering over Zimbabwe's Harare International Airport in 2008. Observers debated at the time whether it was an advanced reconnaissance device from a foreign government or something else. The incident put the facility on high alert. Six videos include orb sightings assessed by FBI investigators as reported by "highly credible" witnesses. A federal law enforcement agent's written account from an October 2023 sighting out West describes a circle of light "that looked like a swirly pattern of bright lava," followed by three red lights peeling away in formation. A 1949 letter to J. Edgar Hoover, from a reverend describing converging light beams over the Cascade Mountains and forwarded by Hoover to the Pentagon, rounds out the historical record.

An intelligence partner assessed the Colorado Springs sighting at "low confidence" as possibly sunlight backscattering off snow. The case remains unresolved.

What the releases don't contain may be more informative. AARO maintains a published technical profile for what it considers genuinely anomalous UAP: objects roughly 1 to 4 meters in diameter, specific radar signatures in defined frequency bands, no detectable thermal exhaust. Radar signatures and infrared measurements are instrument-derived, not witness-derived. None of these files contain that kind of data. The better-quality readings behind AARO's own definitions appear to still be classified. The PURSUE releases are not it.

Seventy-seven years of files. Zero resolutions. The potato stays unexplained, and the instrument data that might change that isn't in these releases.

Read the full story at Newsweek, June 12, 2026

Hot Take: AARO's published technical profile for genuine UAP is specific enough to have required better data than anything the Pentagon has released. The files are the alibi: proof of transparency without the disclosure.