At least five special law enforcement agents witnessed red and orange glowing “orbs” in the night sky in October 2023, according to UFO-related documents released Friday by the Department of Defense.
Over two days in October 2023, at least five agents reported seeing anomalous lights that appeared in the western United States near a “sensitive national security site.”
Witnesses separately described seeing a bright orange “mother orb” that appeared to produce “smaller red orbs” over several hours.
The reports are part of a newly-released batch of files contains reports from the CIA, Defense Department, FBI and other intelligence agencies dating back to 1949 about flying saucers, firsthand accounts of “orbs” and incidents where government employees saw unidentified objects.
Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell said the release contained declassified and historical unidentified anomalous phenomena and that the Defense Department was working to release the next batch of files.
open image in gallery“As the unprecedented levels of interest in both this topic and the Trump administration's historic transparency effort continue, WAR.GOV/UFO has received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since the site’s launch on May 8, 2026,” Parnell added.
The separate reports by special agents were notable because each agent witnessed the event from a different angle in the same area. They also used similar language and described the event almost identically.
Nearly all the reports from federal agents also included a detail about a vehicle-like object moving down the highway.
One agent said the vehicle “hovered above the right lane at approximately the height of a vehicle,” but said that it only had one centered taillight. The agent recalled that they drove 80 miles per hour to try and catch up to the object but could not do so.
“Towards the end of the interaction, we saw the object abruptly transition into an orange light/orb-like disk with a halo glow and glide to the side of the road,” the agent recalled.
open image in galleryDespite having multiple reports of the incident, the U.S. government has yet to close the case.
Federal employees have ruled out the possibility that the orbs were misidentified as military aircraft exhaust and believe it’s unlikely they were unmanned aerial vehicles, foreign intelligence activity or a meteorology-related phenomenon.
The Anomaly Resolution Office, which investigates reports of UFOs and other anomalies, said it was working with federal partners, scientists and academic institutions to try to understand what caused the orbs.
One possibility is that the orbs were unrecognized technology. The government also indicated that the description of the orbs aligns with certain U.S. military technology – however, it’s still unclear whether that technology was being used at the time of the incident.
open image in galleryAside from the special law enforcement agents’ report, the tranche of files also includes civilian recounts of unidentified “orbs.”
One report, from July 2025, states that two eyewitnesses saw “an intense bright light” in their backyard and found two “orbs” described as a “brilliant red sphere” that also contained a “white plasma ‘sun.’”
In October 2024, another eyewitness captured a “plasma-like sphere” hovering over a pond and intermittently changing shape.