The September 2023 Test-Site Ellipsoid

Five records in the May 2026 PURSUE release describe a single event: in September 2023, three eyewitnesses working in restricted airspace at a U.S. test site reported a large metallic ellipsoid that appeared out of a bright light and disappeared instantaneously. The FBI interviewed each witness under its standard 302 process and its laboratory produced a composite sketch overlaid on an actual site photograph, depicting a bronze object 130 to 195 feet in length. A fourth, senior intelligence official described a related encounter at a military facility. The site's identity and the exact date remain withheld.

The three witnesses were working on a project involving LiDAR technology in restricted airspace, according to press reporting on the released files. One witness, who had personally closed the airspace in the area, described a cigar-shaped object with an extremely bright light roughly 500 to 3,000 feet above the nearest tree line. The three separately described the object as metallic bronze, metallic grey, and a bright light over the horizon. The FBI Laboratory's composite depicts an ellipsoid materializing out of light and vanishing instantly.

The associated USPER statement, an FBI 302 with a senior U.S. intelligence official, describes a "super-hot" orb at a U.S. military facility that outran a pursuing helicopter over 20 miles, followed by a swarm of lights flaring for 30 minutes.

Three civilian or contractor witnesses, one senior intelligence official, the FBI as documenting agency, and AARO and the Department of War as publishers.

Four FBI 302 interview records and the FBI Lab composite sketch, which implies some form of triangulation behind the size estimate. No radar, telemetry, or sensor data appears in the release. Publication of an FBI Lab reconstruction of an unresolved case is itself unusual.

The case is published as unresolved. The Department of War's standing caveat applies: descriptions carry no analytical judgment about the event's validity or nature.

Skeptics note the absence of any instrument data from a sensor-rich test range, which is either a telling gap or a classification artifact, and that three witnesses gave three differing color descriptions of a brief event involving a blinding light, conditions that produce unreliable size and distance estimates. An instantaneous disappearance is also consistent with a light source switching off. Proponents respond that independent 302 interviews, a closed-airspace setting, an FBI Lab workup with a triangulated size range, and a corroborating senior-official statement make this the most formally documented single sighting in the PURSUE release. The open questions, starting with where and exactly when, define the follow-up reporting.