USPER Narrative, Senior USIC Official, 2025 — ODNI File
This document is a first-hand account written by a currently serving (May 2026) senior U.S. intelligence official. The official was part of a team investigating reports of unusual noises and sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena in and near a sensitive U.S. military facility in late 2025.
Incident Overview
In late 2025, at a sensitive military test range in the Western United States, a senior U.S. intelligence officer and a helicopter crew spent more than an hour in direct encounter with multiple unidentified aerial phenomena — an encounter documented in a first-hand narrative the officer wrote and submitted to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The ODNI then released it publicly on May 22, 2026, as part of the PURSUE program. No other document in either government disclosure tranche approaches it for specificity, recency, or the seniority of its author: this is a currently-serving intelligence professional writing about an active investigation on an operational test range in a year the document was still classified.
The account begins routinely. The officer and colleagues deployed by helicopter to investigate “loud thuds heard in the mountains” that had coincided with multiple nights of orb sightings near the facility. For the first portion of the mission they found only old rocket debris. Then, after refueling, the Joint Operations Center called them back: radar had detected fresh hits in an area where UAP had been repeatedly observed. What followed, in the officer’s words, was “a series of close UAP encounters lasting over an hour.”
Ground teams radioed that they had acquired a UAP on FLIR — described as “super-hot,” low to the ground, moving rapidly east then south before splitting into two objects and reversing direction. When the helicopter arrived, the JOC advised that the object had risen from the ground, approached to within ten feet of the rotor disk, dropped below the aircraft, and accelerated away. The pilots pursued briefly but “broke off, unable to match its speed.”
At approximately 700 feet AGL, hovering over the area, the crew then observed “countless orange orbs swarming in all directions against the backdrop of the mountain” — an event lasting several minutes before the objects faded. At a second location, two large oval orbs — “orange with a white or yellow center,” emitting light in all directions — appeared stationary just above and to the right of the helicopter. A third orb formed below the pair, then a fourth, creating a “T” formation near the rotor disk. They dimmed in reverse order and vanished. Total duration: 10–15 seconds.
The final phase involved Air Force fighter jets that had launched on a training mission in the same airspace. As the officer watched from the helicopter, orbs appeared directly above the fighters at roughly 23,000 feet AGL, matched the jets’ speed and flight path, flared in a horizontal formation for 10–15 seconds, then dimmed sequentially and disappeared — repeating several times as the fighters transited the area. The officer’s summary to the pilots: “it seemed the same orbs we had encountered were now ‘chasing’ the fighters.”
The crew also noted a large cave entrance during the mountain sweep — no safe landing spot, so they orbited it for observation and noted the coordinates. The officer did not photograph the orbs during the close encounter, explaining: “I was focused on assessing what it was and whether it posed a threat.”
What the government released
This document is a first-hand account written by a currently serving (May 2026) senior U.S. intelligence official. The official was part of a team investigating reports of unusual noises and sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena in and near a sensitive U.S. military facility in late 2025. From the official’s vantage point as a helicopter passenger, the official recounts encountering unidentified “glowing orbs” both at close range and at a distance. The account describes an apparent high-speed object moving low to the ground, which appeared to split in two and accelerate away in two different directions. It also describes numerous higher-altitude “orbs,” some of which the official assessed to be in close proximity to the helicopter. This account is accompanied by infrared imagery taken during the same exercise by other federal officials from the ground, originally released on war.gov/UFO on May 8, 2026.
Primary-source excerpt
Drawn directly from the released document:
“En route, ground teams reported spotting a UAP on FLIR, describing it as ‘super-hot,’ low to the ground, and moving east then south at high speed. The object then split into two and changed direction. Upon arrival, we scanned the area using NVG, FLIR, and the naked eye. The ground team suddenly radioed that the object had risen from the ground, approached within ten feet of the helicopter, dropped below us, and then sped away. The pilots observed it through NVGs and saw it split into two as a smaller object emerged before it accelerated out of sight. We briefly pursued but broke off, unable to match its speed.”
And later:
“Through NVGx, the pilots and I (using the naked eye) observed two large orbs flare up side by side, close to the helicopter — stationary and just above the rotor disk to our right. They were oval-shaped, orange with a white or yellow center, and emitted light in all directions. After a few seconds, a third orb flared up below the pair, followed by a fourth below that, forming a total of four or five in a ‘T’ formation under the original two. Moments later, they dimmed in reverse order, remaining stationary until they vanished from view. The entire event lasted 10-15 seconds.”
And on the fighter jet phase:
“As [we] watched from afar, the same type of orbs appeared directly above the fighters. They flared up one at a time in a horizontal formation, matching the jets’ speed and flight path. After 10-15 seconds, they dimmed sequentially and disappeared. This repeated several times as the jets transited the airspace and eventually landed. I remarked to the pilots that it seemed the same orbs we had encountered were now ‘chasing’ the fighters.”
Status of the case
Records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which means the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Where AARO has offered a likely source for an item — an infrared sensor aboard a military aircraft, a commercial camera, or a known optical effect — that attribution is the agency’s working assessment rather than a final determination. Conventional candidates such as drones, balloons, flares, satellites, parallax and forced-perspective artifacts, and ordinary aircraft remain on the table for any unresolved case absent better data than a single sensor pass or a witness recollection.