What happened
Late on a February morning in 2022, five US Army personnel leaving an office building at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs saw something hanging over Cheyenne Mountain, home of the hardened military complex inside the peak. A former Army intelligence officer in the group, interviewed by the FBI in 2024, called it potato-shaped with distinct edges: creamy white and opalescent, slightly translucent, with a faint shimmer and irregular, non-overlapping panels like fish scales that rippled in slow waves while the object itself stayed still. Fox News reported witness estimates that it was roughly the size of a large jet and 300 to 500 feet above the mountain. After somewhere between 30 seconds and about two minutes it was gone; the officer said it vanished in the moment it took to turn his head, and cast no shadow. No one had a phone. The FBI report (FBI-UAP-D002) and an artist's interpretation were published in PURSUE Release 03 on 12 June 2026.
The official explanation
An assessment by an intelligence community partner, included in the file, suggested with low confidence that the soldiers saw sunlight backscattering off the snow-covered mountain and lighting up low clouds. AARO, according to Fox News, considered that a possibility but also rated it low confidence because viewing angles, cloud cover and conditions were uncertain. A separate intelligence document in the release says clouds were present that day. The report judged that the object did not look like foreign adversary technology, and no aircraft or balloons were thought to be in the area.
The anomalous case
Five soldiers saw the same thing at the same moment, in daylight, over one of the most sensitive military sites in the country. The officer described a perfect 'blue bird' sky, which cuts directly against the cloud-reflection idea, and he reported structured detail that a patch of lit cloud should not produce: sharp edges and scale-like panels moving in waves across a motionless body. By his account the object then disappeared almost instantly. The only explanation on offer was put forward at low confidence by the analysts themselves, and the file says no aircraft or balloons were thought to be in the area and that the object did not appear to be adversary technology. A shimmering, edged object that blinks out of sight over a key defense installation is a textbook unresolved UAP.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- PURSUE Release 03 (12 June 2026), WAR.GOV/UFO official, war.gov
- FBI-UAP-D002: FD-1057 report on the Cheyenne Mountain / Colorado Springs sighting, 2022 (PURSUE Release 03) official, war.gov
Sources
- Was that a UFO or a potato? Troops describe bizarre sight over Cheyenne Mountain Denver7 (KMGH)
- Department of Defense publish third release of UAP files, references to southern Colorado KKTV 11 News
- Pentagon files reveal agents' reports of 'orbs launching orbs' near sensitive US security site Fox News
- Pentagon UFO files: third tranche NewsNation
- UAP Disclosure 3 is the most intriguing release thus far Avi Loeb (Medium)
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.