Insights from the Sixth UAP Tranche (Sep. 18, 2026)

Snapshot from a 1 minute of video footage from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform in 2025. An accompanying mission report, DOW-UAP-D108, described the UAP as “six small spherical objects grouped together, and characterized their behavior as “seem[ingly] agile,” and “frequently changing direction.” The reporter estimated the speed of the UAP to have been 480 miles per hour, about 63% of the speed of sound. (Image credit: DoW)The sixth tranche of archival data on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) was released here on September 18, 2026 by the U.S. Department of War on behalf of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. A couple of hours later, I was heading to Logan airport in Boston, Massachusetts on a flight to Seoul, South Korea. There, on a different side of the Earth, I am scheduled to deliver a public lecture on UAP and represent the selection committee for the worldwide Miwon Peace Prize. The prize is awarded this year to “The Bulletin of Atomic Physicists” which was founded in 1945 by former Manhattan Project scientists shortly after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The founders felt a deep responsibility to inform the public and influence policymakers about the existential dangers of the nuclear age. Albert Einstein served as a founding member of its Board of Sponsors, and J. Robert Oppenheimer was its first chair.As humanity contemplates existential threats from nuclear wars or AI robots, related facilities are being monitored by UAP. The fundamental question is whether UAP represent human-made black projects or alien technologies, far more advanced than anything humans developed so far.The sixth UAP tranche spans more than seven decades of records (1952 to 2025) through 55 PDF files, 15 videos, and an audio file. It includes here a 1-minute of video footage from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform over the Middle East in 2025. An accompanying mission report (DOW-UAP-D108) described