Western US Event
This document is a summary of statements by seven US PERSONs employed by the federal government who separately reported observing several unidentified anomalous phenomena in the western United States over the course of two days in 2023. The summary notes the US PERSONS reported four distinct categories of experiences, including observing “orbs launching other orbs” at a distance, observing a large stationary glowing orb at close estimated range, pursuing a large phenomenon near the ground, and observing a large, seemingly transparent phenomenon, reported to being akin to a “translucent kite.” Although there is no technical data directly associated with this report, contextual factors — such as these events sharing features with others reported to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the reporters’ credibility, and the potentially anomalous nature of the events themselves — combine to make this report among the most compelling within AARO’s current holdings.
The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.
Text of the document
Machine-extracted from the PDF war.gov published (its text layer or OCR), so expect errors, especially in names, numbers and handwriting; the PDF is the authoritative copy. Lines that did not extract as readable text are left out. Showing about 963 words from pages 1, 2, 3, 4 of 4.
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• Time of Day: Dusk (on two separate days) • Three teams of two federal law enforcement special agents each (USPER1 through USPER6) independently describe seeing orange “orbs” in the sky emit/launch smaller red “orbs” in groups of two to four, with three being the general consensus. This is stated to have occurred at least five times. Each time, the orange orb would appear, launch red orbs, then disappear. The orange orb was only visible for one or two seconds. The red orbs would generally move away from the orange “mother” orb in a horizontal path, but in a couple of instances, one red orb was stated to move “heading up at an angle,” while another witness stated sometimes the red orbs would “swoop down” after being launched from the larger orange orb. These events were witnessed by multiple teams from varying locations and vantage points over a two-day period. Due to the sequential nature of the events, it is not known whether there was a single orange “mother” orb that released the groups of red orbs or whether there were multiple orange orbs at play.
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Artist Rendering • Time of Day: Dusk • Two federal law enforcement special agents (USPER5 and USPER6) witness a glowing orange orb at a distance of “approximately 500-600 meters,”* where it was perched close to a rock pinnacle. Size was difficult to determine, but it appeared to be similar in size to a “small helicopter cockpit.”** Witnesses were unable to clearly see any structure other than the glowing orb, though USPER6 noted that the object “did almost appear it might have had a small spindle or something connecting it from underneath to the rock formation.” Witnesses stated that the object did not emit any noticeable sound. The object was described as being “similar to the Eye or [sic] Sauron from Lord of the Rings, except without the pupil, or maybe an orange Storm Electrify bowling ball.” • USPER6 stated the object “seemed to be hovering with zero resistance or movement, or to be suspended…” The * Measurements later gathered by AARO assess the object to have been ~1050 meters away from the observers. ** Measurements later gathered by AARO assess the object to have been between 12-18 meters in diameter.
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White light • Time of Day: Pre-dawn hours Image 1: Recreation of drawing provided by USPER6 of object seen in night vision goggles. • Two federal law enforcement special agents (USPER5 and USPER6) observed what is initially thought to be a car traveling along a road in a restricted zone. The “car” had two lights (one red and one white) that are about 2 to 3 feet off the ground. Agents pursued the “car” and as they got to within a few hundred feet of it, the object suddenly moved off the road over the desert without changing its orientation with respect to the observers, i.e., it appeared to move laterally, at an estimated speed of 15-20mph. The object didn’t change height and appeared to move with “zero resistance.” The object stopped about 100 meters off the side of the road and turned off its lights. USPER6 described the object as a “thin line,” from the back whereas the other agent (USPER5) stated that “it almost looked like an ill defined, dark kite shape that had some rounded width to the sides.”* • USPER6 used night vision goggles (NVGs) to view the object once it had stopped off the road. The agent stated that they observed the object for “a split second in the NVGs before the light turned off” and that once the lights were off, a “very thin line” remained. The object was estimated to be about 4 feet wide and positioned horizontally to the ground (see Image 1). The object then began moving at about the speed of 15-20mph and appeared to “move up in height…, but [remain] a flat line.” The agent lost sight of the object after a few seconds. * In later discussions with AARO, the object is described as being triangular.
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Note: Outline was not definitive, but location of lights stayed in exact • Time of Day: Pre-dawn hours • About 30 minutes after the “Dark Kite” sighting, federal law enforcement special agents (USPER5 and USPER6) returned to the same general area with another colleague (USPER7) in response to a report of another unauthorized object in the area. Within a few hundred meters of the “Dark Kite” sighting, two of the team members (USPER5 and USPER6) observed a kite-shaped object with a lighting pattern similar to the object seen previously. This object is about 6 meters off the ground, is canted at an angle from lower right to upper left (see Image 2), and appeared to be floating slowly with the wind. USPER5 was using NVGs when viewing the object and USPER6 used the bare eye. USPER7 did not see the object. USPER5 stated that in the night vision goggles, they could “vaguely see a bright star or two in the distance through the object, though somewhat more faint,” leading them to believe the object was somewhat transparent. After losing sight of the object, USPER5 tried using a spotlight to find it again. The witness noted that when shining the light around, “at one point my beam went from shining far into the Image 2: Recreation of drawing provided by USPER6 of object distance to stopping about 50 yards away on nothing in particular, it just was not seen with the bare eye. projecting into the distance and then it was.” When the witness pointed the light at the spot where the light had appeared to be blocked by something, this time the light was “projecting into the distance again.” The team was unable to reacquire sight of the object.
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of DoD's 282 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the DoD agency block it ranks #177 of 282 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 478-file archive it ranks #301 of 478.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (301 of 478 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
Anomalousness Index: 56/100
Evidentiary weight that this encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. Not a probability of extraterrestrial origin - that number is not honestly computable from the released files and this tracker refuses to publish it.
🤖 AI-ASSISTED SCORING · methodology
The six rubric components break down for this file as follows. Each component has a weighted contribution to the final score; the per-component explanation below describes what this file's particular value on that component means in the rubric's framework.
Reported by a witness with no instrumented record. The lowest tier in the rubric's sensor axis. Eyewitness perception in field conditions, even when the witness is highly credentialed, scores below capture by any instrumented modality. This report reached the federal record through the Department of War.
Trained U.S. military personnel reporting from an operational mission context. A high witness-credibility tier, ranked in the rubric below astronaut, trained-aviator, and federal-agent testimony. This is the witness profile shared by the entire AARO-submitted infrared-capture cluster that anchors the 66-point score band.
Single-witness or single-instrument capture. This is the corroboration tier for the overwhelming majority of the PURSUE archive on the released metadata - the rubric records the honest limit of the underlying record rather than inferring multi-witness corroboration that the released summaries do not establish. A small number of files with an independent second witness or instrument score on the multi-witness/multi-instrument tier above this one.
No kinematic measurements - speed, acceleration, vector - are published in the released file with sufficient precision to score on the kinematic axis. The rubric does not infer kinematic anomaly from narrative observer estimates. Every file in the archive carries this value, which is itself an observation about the disclosure: kinematic-grade telemetry was not part of what was released.
A conventional candidate explanation has been considered but is not dispositive. Every file in the archive scores this way - reflecting that the underlying release metadata systematically caveats strong determinations in either direction. The released summaries warn against reading them as conclusive analytical judgments, and the rubric respects that.
Released as open after formal review by the originating agency. The file passed through a review process and was published in that posture - a stronger disposition signal than 'unresolved with no review,' because review has occurred and the open status is the agency's published conclusion.
Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 56/100 reflects evidentiary weight that this specific file's encounter remains structurally unexplained by the rubric's six axes - it is not a claim that the underlying event involved anything non-conventional, and it is not comparable across rubrics that use different weights. For the full per-axis weights and the rubric JSON, see /methodology.
Related files in DoD
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
DOW-UAP-PR024, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2023
DOW-UAP-PR072, "ADMINISTRATIVE REVISION: IIR 1777 J0032 22 Kazakhstan - UAP in the vicinit…
DOW-UAP-PR106, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR108, Unresolved UAP Report, Western United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR109, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2015
DOW-UAP-PR110, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
Verification
SHA-256:
This hash is the SHA-256 of the file body war.gov served on the verification date above. War.gov has re-processed some file bodies since first release (re-compression + OCR, no content removed - see /changes); we re-verify and record the change rather than silently serve a stale hash. How to check this yourself →
Source: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/western_us_event_slides_5.08.2026.pdf