PURSUE Release 4 — 40 More Declassified UAP Files: NASA STS-80 1996, 1949 Los Alamos Green Fireballs, Project Sign 1948, "Tic Tac"-Like Western US 2020

On July 10, 2026, the U.S. Department of War published the fourth batch of declassified UAP records under the PURSUE program — 40 new files (19 videos, ~21 documents), pulling the public archive back to 1948 and pushing the total catalog to 334 records across four releases. Release 4 is structurally different from R03: less focused on a single triangulated case, more focused on filling historical gaps and adding modern sensor footage across multiple theaters.

What's in Release 4 at a glance

40 new files — 19 videos and ~21 supporting documents and images. Notable sources include the Department of War, NASA, and continuing federal-agency contributions. The complete file list is on war.gov/ufo.

The historical anchor — 1948 and 1949

Release 04 pulls the archive further into the Cold War origin era than any prior batch. Two files stand out:

• Project Sign, 1948 — the very first US military UAP investigation program's own document, containing 100 UAP reports from 1947–1948. Project Sign was the direct predecessor to Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. This document sits alongside the R03 US Army Flying-Saucer-Study (1949) and US Navy Report of Flying Discs (1948) to complete the foundational trio of late-1940s U.S. military UFO records.
• Los Alamos "green fireballs" conference, 1949 — a document covering the 1948–1949 wave of "green fireball" sightings observed near Los Alamos National Laboratory. Conference attendees included prominent scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project. The event pre-dates Project Blue Book by several years and is one of the most-cited early-postwar U.S. UAP investigations.

The NASA space-era addition — STS-80, 1996

NASA-UAP-D030 — STS-80 Unidentified Object Image 1, 1996. Astronaut photographs from the November 1996 Space Shuttle Columbia STS-80 mission depicting a small triangular or cone-shaped object. STS-80 was Columbia's 21st flight and holds the record for the longest Space Shuttle mission ever flown (17 days 15 hours). This is the first shuttle-era in-flight photograph in the PURSUE catalog and joins the earlier NASA Apollo and Gemini debriefing files as the space-era historical thread.

The modern-sensor cases

Western US 2020 (DOW-UAP-PR108) — the "Tic Tac"-like clip

Sensor video collected over the Western United States in 2020, reportedly notable for its resemblance to the famous 2004 "Tic Tac" imagery captured by F/A-18 pilot Chad Underwood off the USS Nimitz. Officially unresolved. The comparison to the 2004 Nimitz encounter is significant — that case is one of the most-referenced pieces of U.S. military UAP evidence and helped catalyze the modern-era Congressional interest.

Yellow Sea 2025 (DOW-UAP-PR104) — 4 min 57 sec, progressively degrading sensor

Nearly five minutes of dual-sensor footage (electro-optical + infrared) over the Yellow Sea. The report specifically notes that the imagery "gets progressively worse over time" — an unusual sensor-degradation pattern that the official report does not resolve. Longest continuous single-sensor video in Release 04.

The domestic and East Asia clusters

• DOW-UAP-PR112 — Eastern United States, 2019
• DOW-UAP-PR116 — Atlantic Ocean, 2020
• DOW-UAP-PR105 — East China Sea, 2025 (companion to Yellow Sea 2025)
• DOW-UAP-PR030 — Middle East, 2023

PR112 and PR116 add to the Continental US / Atlantic domestic-territory Release 04 additions; PR105 pairs with PR104 to establish an East Asia Pacific cluster; PR030 continues the Middle East pattern that dominated Release 01.

The candor problem — a note on framing

Third-party reviewers including The Debrief have noted after Release 04 that "to date, none of the videos or other documentation made available at the DOW website as part of its PURSUE releases provides clear examples of any objects attributable to unknown aircraft, or objects exhibiting unusual or advanced technologies." Many R04 clips show what could be balloons, ice particles, or sensor artefacts. The Yellow Sea 2025 degrading footage is a case in point — the sensor is definitively behaving oddly, but that could be a hardware/environmental issue rather than a phenomenon-side one. Release 04 is honest about the ambiguity.

How Release 04 compares to Releases 01–03

• Release 01 (May 8) — 162 files, mass evidentiary drop, videos + FBI sensor stills + Apollo/Gemini transcripts
• Release 02 (May 22) — 64 files, video-heavy, headlined by the F-16 shootdown over Lake Huron
• Release 03 (June 12) — 72 files, the triangulated Western US Event 2023 + first FBI orb videos + Apollo 16 audio + 18-file CIA Cold War batch
• Release 04 (July 10) — 40 files, historical anchoring (1948 Project Sign, 1949 Los Alamos), NASA STS-80 (1996), "Tic Tac"-like Western US 2020, and multi-theater modern sensor coverage

Total across all four batches: 338 files (the site UI displays 334 while file counts settle across sources).

What SkyLens will cover next

Each of the R04 headline cases will receive its own SkyLens deep-dive — sensor context, historical corroboration where applicable, hedged interpretive framing, and links to the primary war.gov source. The full archive is browsable on the SkyLens UAP files page.

SkyLens is editorially independent and not affiliated with any government agency. All Release 4 files are sourced from the official PURSUE portal at war.gov/ufo. Third-party reviewers (Metabunk, The Debrief) have noted that many PURSUE clips have plausible mundane explanations — those caveats are reflected in the per-file deep-dives.