FD-302, Unidentified Aerial Object Observation Report, June 2026 — FBI File
This document is an FBI FD-302, a form the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uses to record interviews. This FD-302 records a 2026 interview with two Federal Special Agents, in which the interviewees describe an incident reported as involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) at a…
Incident Overview
In June 2026, in the Western United States, FBI preserved a documentary record that was declassified and published on October 23, 2026 as part of the seventh tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The released copy carries redactions.
The file runs to eleven pages: a two-page FD-302 and nine uncaptioned picture pages.
What the government released
This document is an FBI FD-302, a form the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uses to record interviews. This FD-302 records a 2026 interview with two Federal Special Agents, in which the interviewees describe an incident reported as involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) at a national security site in 2026.
What the form records
The form says an FBI office received a written statement from one special agent, co-signed by a second, and reproduces it “verbatim below for ease of reading.” The statement gives a time of approximately 1923 hours on an evening in 2026. A third agent at Observation Post 6, several miles to the west, called out a “thermally elevated aerial object” at an estimated bearing of 251 degrees.
They report “a substantial, nonreflective, dark black triangular object most resembling a delta wing drone,” nine to fifteen feet across, six to nine feet deep and one to two feet thick. Through a handheld thermal device it looked warmer than its surroundings, evenly heated, with no visible exhaust. It rose vertically over a ridge about 3.2 miles west, on a heading of about 268 degrees, climbed about 200 feet, turned to horizontal flight “at a very significant velocity,” came toward them and descended southeast along a redacted feature. They lost it at about 1.5 miles. The sighting lasted about three seconds, and neither heard a sound. The picture pages show one twilight hillside with a dark shape that moves between frames, first a thin line, then a triangle; the release does not say who made them.
An FD-302 is the form FBI agents use to write down what someone told them, and its footer says it “contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI.” Every number here is an estimate made in seconds. No radar, rangefinder or thermal recording is attached, so this is testimony, not measurement.
Where the two records agree
The AARO memorandum for record also describes two agents at a primary post, a third official at a separate post making the first thermal callout, and a matte black, nonreflective triangle one to two feet thick. Both say it rose vertically over a ridge, climbed about 200 feet or more, showed an even heat signature with no exhaust, and made no sound. Both use 3.2 miles as a range to the ridge area. The released summaries do not show whether the two documents record the same sitting.
Ordinary candidates to test
The usual explanations for a triangle of lights at night fit poorly, because the agents describe a dark silhouette at dusk, not lights. A formation of drones or aircraft usually shows as separate points, though that cannot be excluded without imagery. A single drone or aircraft seen end-on can look like a line and then a triangle as it turns, which is the change the pictures show, and the agents’ own comparison was a delta-wing drone. Perspective matters too. A twelve-foot object at 3.2 miles spans about 2.4 minutes of arc, near the limit for seeing shape, and a smaller, nearer object would look the same. The figures also strain against each other: closing from 3.2 to 1.5 miles within three seconds means more than 2,000 miles per hour, in silence. None of these is the answer until tested.
Related records
The release pairs this record with Triangular UAP AARO Memorandum for Record. Both are written accounts of interviews with federal special agents about a 2026 incident at a national security site in the western United States. The released summaries do not say whether they record the same sitting or separate ones, and either way two write-ups of one set of witnesses are one account told twice, not independent corroboration.
Two other FBI 302s in this tranche, FD-302-67 and FD-302-71, concern orb sightings in the northeastern United States and are not linked to this incident.
Status of the case
An FD-302 is the form on which the Federal Bureau of Investigation writes down what a witness said, recorded by the agent who conducted the interview. It establishes that the account was given and that the Bureau thought it worth preserving — not that the events happened as remembered. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has made no determination about this report, and the Bureau’s own description of these files calls them documentation of interviews rather than findings. Where a digital rendering accompanies an interview, the image was drawn in 2026 from the witness’s description, which means it reproduces the account rather than independently confirming it; an illustration of testimony carries exactly the weight of the testimony it illustrates and no more. That distinction matters most for objects seen at a distance in fading light, where distance, size and speed are the first estimates to fail in the absence of a reference object, and where a compelling drawing can lend a recollection a precision the recollection never had.
As released, this file is a signed account of a three-second sighting with no attached sensor record. It cannot settle what the object was.