Pentagon Just Released Footage of a Flying Humanoid — And It Matches a 2015 Sighting Nobody Could Explain

The United States Department of War — the rebranded Pentagon — just published official infrared footage of a flying humanoid figure roughly two metres tall, holding something in its hand, before it accelerated upward and vanished from the frame. The file was uploaded to war.gov/ufo on Friday, 22 May 2026, as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. Its internal designation: DOW UAP PR059, “NAG UAP 1 JUN 20”. Captured by a US military infrared camera in June 2020. Sat inside a classified vault for almost six years. And it looks almost identical to a flying humanoid recorded over Sequoia National Park in 2015 — a clip the UFO community has been arguing about for a decade.

The footage was released as part of the second batch of declassified UAP material under the PURSUE programme, an initiative ordered by President Donald Trump in a February 2026 executive directive. Since the war.gov/ufo portal went live on 8 May 2026, it has received over one billion hits worldwide in less than three weeks. The 22 May drop alone contained more than 50 previously classified videos and documents.

And one of those 50-plus files is a humanoid figure flying through the sky.

What The Footage Actually Shows

The clip is short. It runs only a few seconds. The infrared imaging — the same thermal sensor technology used by US military aircraft to track targets in low light — picks up a single bright humanoid silhouette suspended in mid-air against a darker sky.

• The figure is roughly two metres tall. That is the height of a tall adult human.
• It has clear arms, legs and a head. The shape is unmistakably humanoid.
• It is holding something in its right hand. The object is small. The military analysts who labelled the clip did not identify it.
• The figure is not falling. It is not parachuting. It is not in any visible aircraft. It is simply suspended in the air.
• Within seconds, the figure accelerates upward at high speed and exits the top of the frame. It does not fade or dissolve. It moves with directional intent, the way a vehicle moves, the way a body cannot.

The Department of War’s own statement on the release is careful. The materials, the press release notes, are being made public “for informational purposes only” and should not be interpreted as a determination about what the objects are, or whether the events occurred as captured. That is bureaucratic language. It is also the only language the Pentagon has ever used for footage like this. The Tic Tac videos that started the modern disclosure cycle in 2017 came with the same disclaimer. So did every official UAP release since.

The file designation matters. DOW UAP PR059. “NAG UAP 1 JUN 20”. The “JUN 20” is the capture date — June 2020. Which means the US government has been sitting on official infrared footage of a flying humanoid for almost six years. The decision to release it was made in May 2026. Why now, and not in 2020, and not in 2021, and not in 2025, is a question the Department of War has not answered.

The 2015 Sequoia Parallel

Within hours of the war.gov/ufo file going live, the comparison was being made everywhere. The clip looks almost identical to a video that has been circulating in the UFO community since 2015, when an unnamed hiker filmed what appeared to be a humanoid figure flying over Sequoia National Park in California.

The 2015 Sequoia footage was always controversial. The video was sped up by approximately eight times to make the figure more visible. The original cropping was tight enough that scale was hard to establish. Mainstream commentators dismissed it as a person paragliding, or as a digital fake. The UFO community said it was something else. The argument has gone in circles for a decade.

What changed on 22 May 2026 is that the US Department of War now appears to be holding very similar footage of its own, captured by a US military infrared camera, five years after the Sequoia incident, and has chosen to publish it on a government website. Two videos. Same kind of figure. Decade apart. Independent capture. Different cameras. Different witnesses. Same suspended, hovering, humanoid silhouette.

This is not the first time IE has covered the flying humanoid phenomenon. We have documented the Phoenix flying humanoid that broke the internet in 2020, the multiple-witness sighting over California, and the three separate flying-humanoid recordings made across the United States inside a single month. Each of those cases was met with the same mainstream dismissal. Each of them looks like the figure the Pentagon just officially admitted it captured.

What Else Was In The 22 May Drop

The humanoid video was not the only striking piece in the second PURSUE release. The Department of War published the file alongside several other genuinely strange items:

• A first-hand statement from a US senior intelligence officer describing being “virtually speechless” after a 2025 helicopter mission in which his aircraft was approached within ten feet by a glowing orange orb that rose from the ground, split into two, and outran the fighter jets called in to intercept it.
• Infrared footage captured by US military platforms operating in the Middle East.
• Cold War-era investigation files concerning unexplained “green orbs”.
• A CIA report from 1973 describing a glowing object photographed over Soviet territory.
• Audio files of Apollo 12 astronaut transcripts related to unidentified objects observed in space during the mission.

The flying humanoid is the visual centrepiece, but the cumulative effect of the dump is what matters. Decades of US military, intelligence-community, and astronaut accounts — covering every era from Apollo to the Cold War to recent helicopter missions — were all dropped into the public record on the same Friday afternoon.

Why This Release Hits Different

The previous disclosure waves had ambiguity built into them. The 2017 New York Times AATIP story showed strange shapes in distant infrared footage that could be argued about. The 2023 Grusch testimony was sworn but second-hand. The 2024 Mexican congressional hearings had bodies but no consensus chain of custody.

This is different.

The flying humanoid file sits on a US Department of War web server. It carries an official Department of War file designation. It was made public on the direct order of a sitting US president. And it shows, on official US military infrared imaging equipment, a humanoid figure that is doing what no known biology or aerospace technology can do.

The fact that the same Department of War’s press release insists, in the same breath, that the public should not interpret this as a determination of authenticity is not a contradiction so much as it is the institutional language of agencies that are no longer fully in control of their own information.

What Comes Next — The June 2026 Batch

The Department of War has confirmed that the May release is not the end of the rollout. The next batch of UAP files, scheduled for June 2026, is expected to include something significantly more confronting: photographs and reports of what the rollout press team has openly described as “translucent” long-limbed beings and the first official records related to alleged alien abductions.

If the June drop materialises as briefed, the United States will, in the space of two consecutive monthly releases, have officially published military-grade imaging of a flying humanoid and official photographic material of translucent long-limbed beings. That sequence has no precedent in US government disclosure. The Tic Tac videos took thirteen years to come out. This is happening in thirty days.

So What Is The Flying Humanoid?

The Department of War will not say. Its own file is captioned with the literal phrase “for informational purposes only”. The footage is short, the imaging is infrared, and the figure is too small in the frame to extract surface detail.

What we can say is what the footage genuinely shows: a two-metre humanoid figure, suspended in mid-air without visible support, holding an object, accelerating upward at high speed, captured by a US military infrared sensor in June 2020 and held inside a classified system for nearly six years before being made public by the United States Department of War in the second week of an unprecedented presidential disclosure programme.

It looks like the 2015 Sequoia figure. It looks like the 2020 Phoenix figure. It looks like the multiple flying humanoids witnessed and filmed across California over the past five years. And it looks, by every visible measurement, like something that should not be there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I watch the Pentagon flying humanoid video?

The official file is hosted on the United States Department of War’s UAP portal at war.gov/ufo. Its internal designation is DOW UAP PR059, with the title “NAG UAP 1 JUN 20”. It was published on Friday, 22 May 2026, as part of the second PURSUE release.

What is PURSUE?

PURSUE — the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters — is a US government initiative ordered by President Donald Trump in February 2026 to identify, declassify, and publish historical and current records relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena. The first PURSUE batch was released on 8 May 2026; the second on 22 May 2026. The next is expected in June.

When was the humanoid footage captured?

The “JUN 20” in the file’s internal title indicates a capture date of June 2020. The footage was held inside the US Department of War’s classified imaging archive for almost six years before being released publicly on 22 May 2026.

Is this the same humanoid as the 2015 Sequoia National Park video?

The two videos appear visually similar. The 2015 Sequoia clip was an amateur capture, sped up by approximately eight times, and was always disputed by mainstream commentators. The 2026 Department of War release is official US military infrared footage with a Department of War file designation. Whether the two figures are the same entity, the same class of phenomenon, or coincidental similarities is unresolved, but the visual parallel is the reason the comparison spread within hours of the Department of War posting the file.

What is the Department of War’s official position on the figure?

The Department of War’s own framing is that the released material is published “for informational purposes only” and does not represent a determination as to the nature, authenticity, or origin of the objects depicted. It has neither confirmed nor denied that the figure is a person, a craft, an unknown biological entity, or a non-human intelligence.

What is expected in the June 2026 release?

According to the rollout press team, the June batch is expected to include images of what have been openly described as “translucent” long-limbed beings, alongside the first official records relating to alleged alien abductions. If that release materialises as briefed, it will represent the most aggressive single month of US government UAP disclosure in modern history.

How is this different from previous UAP releases?

The 2017 Tic Tac videos were leaked through journalism and only later confirmed by the Pentagon. The 2023 Grusch testimony was sworn but second-hand. The 2024 Mexican congressional hearings displayed physical material without consensus chain of custody. The 22 May 2026 release places official US military infrared footage on a US government web server, with an official Department of War file designation, by direct order of the sitting US president — the most institutionally formal UAP disclosure event in the modern record.