Pentagon's Sixth UFO File Release Includes a 2010 Study of Injuries Linked to an 'Anomalous Aerospace' Event

✓ What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

• The release. According to CBS News, the Sept. 18 release contains 71 files: 67 from the Defense Department and four from local law enforcement in Colorado. There are 55 PDFs, 15 videos and one audio file, dated 1952 to 2025, and 64 of the 71 contain redactions. Some outlets count 72 files. It’s the sixth release under PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, quoted by Anadolu Agency, said the department “will release additional files on a rolling basis.”
• The AAWSAP papers. The biggest block of documents comes from the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, which the Defense Intelligence Agency set up in 2008 and which ended in 2012, CBS reports. It includes 37 “Defense Intelligence Reference Documents,” or DIRDs, on topics including warp drives, wormholes, antigravity, negative-mass propulsion and invisibility cloaking. CBS notes that all 37 have been public for years, including through DIA Freedom of Information Act releases. The new versions restore some previously withheld details.
• The Pentagon’s framing. In notes accompanying the documents, the Pentagon says the DIRDs are “best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research” and “should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed.”
• The injury study. One of the DIRDs, dated March 11, 2010, is titled “Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human Biological Tissues.” It describes “three previous fit and active individuals” who “experienced an anomalous [‘irregular, incongruous and inconsistent with their domain’] aerospace-related event.” Within 72 hours, according to the document, they developed symptoms including skin heat and redness, fever, hair loss and heart palpitations. One showed “signs of radiation illness” and “over several years developed signs of malignant transformations.”
• The study’s conclusion on cause. The document identifies the three as “antennae engineers.” It states that “extensive, but controversial investigations revealed the three had been subjected to an accidental exposure in the near-field [meters] to a broad-band ultrahigh radiofrequency mixed radiation of RF (radio frequency), NIEMR (non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation) & microwave energies,” centered at about 785 MHz. It doesn’t name the source of that radiation. Its first reference is a 1997 paper in Occupational and Environmental Medicine titled “Effects of acute exposure to ultrahigh radiofrequency radiation on three antenna engineers.”
• Other items. CBS reports the release also includes a 1952 audio recording in which Air Force officer Edward Ruppelt says about 20% of 800 UFO reports the Air Force had investigated remained unexplained, and a Middle East video in which a crew reported “six small spherical objects” that “seemed to be agile” and were “frequently changing direction.” That incident remains unexplained, CBS reports.
• The NDA waiver. On Sept. 14, the Pentagon announced a waiver covering current and former civilian personnel, service members and contractors, DefenseScoop reported. It supersedes civil and administrative enforcement provisions in nondisclosure agreements and Special Access Program indoctrination agreements, but only for disclosures made to official PURSUE representatives. “This waiver removes those barriers by explicitly authorizing covered disclosures to PURSUE representatives without triggering breach-of-agreement penalties or standard NDA violations,” officials wrote.