Western US Event: seven federal employees report orbs and a 'translucent kite'

Over a two-day period in 2023, seven separate United States federal government employees reported close-range encounters with multiple unidentified anomalous phenomena at a site in the western United States. The Department of War's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) groups the witness accounts into four categories of experience:

First: orbs observed at distance, with the witnesses describing the orbs as launching additional, smaller orbs.

Second: a single large stationary glowing orb observed at close estimated range.

Third: witnesses pursuing a large phenomenon close to the ground.

Fourth: observation of a large, seemingly transparent phenomenon that witnesses described as a 'translucent kite.'

In its official summary released as part of PURSUE Release 01, AARO writes that these events — combined with the consistency among the seven witnesses, the reporters' credibility, and the apparently anomalous nature of the events themselves — make this report 'among the most compelling within AARO's current holdings.' It is the closest the U.S. government has come to publicly endorsing a UAP case as inexplicable.