THE DOCUMENTS
FBI-UAP-D037 and FBI-UAP-D040, both titled “FD-302, Multiple Red Lights, 2026”, two Federal Bureau of Investigation records from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 05, published at war.gov/ufo, cleared 7 August 2026. D037 is three pages, D040 two, each an FD-302 (Rev. 5-8-10) witness interview form with FD-302a continuation sheets. Each is released with two digital renderings: FBI-UAP-D038 and FBI-UAP-D039 with D037, FBI-UAP-D041 and FBI-UAP-D042 with D040, all four as PDFs. The two interviews and the four renderings are the whole of the record here.
Why this one is worth your time
In most of Release 05’s FBI interviews somebody else was standing there. The 2002 triangle had a second pilot; the 2011 triangle had a driver and a front-seat passenger. None of them was interviewed. Release 05 Briefings 9 and 10 record the same shape each time: a second witness present at the sighting, and one account of it on the record.
This pair is the exception. D037 and D040 describe one night in 2026 and come from the two men who were in the same vehicle, interviewed separately and by different means: D037 in person by two FBI Special Agents with a third participant whose role is blacked out, D040 telephonically by a single agent. Neither form mentions the other, neither names the other man, and nothing says the two accounts belong together. They match anyway, on a watch and on an argument about shape.
There is also a hole in the release. FBI-UAP-D040 is two pages, and page 2 carries no text layer at all.
What the documents say
The forms. Both are FD-302 witness interview forms, Rev. 5-8-10, with FD-302a continuation sheets, the FBI OFFICIAL RECORD stamp and the printed footer that the document contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI. Every redaction is a plain black bar with no exemption code. Every date is blacked out except the year, 2026. The interview location on both runs out at “United States”, and both men’s roles and employers are withheld.
The missing half. D040’s page 2 exists in the PDF as an image with zero extractable text. Roughly half that witness account is absent from any text extraction of the release, and a reader searching the released text will not find it. Everything drawn from that page below was read from the rendered page image, and is written as read from the page rather than quoted.
D037, the night. On a redacted date in 2026 he and a companion left at approximately 7:45pm for a location on the central or northern portion of a redacted feature; the weather was rainy with significant cloud cover. About 30 minutes after passing a redacted point, at approximately 8:00pm to 8:30pm, he saw two unidentified lights, pulled over and got out. To the naked eye they were “dash” shaped and dull red, moving along the ridgeline of the mountains to his west. Through Night Optical Devices they appeared orb-like or circular with the characteristic “NOD halo”; he has more than 25 years of NOD experience. He also has astigmatism, and while they looked dash-shaped to him, his companion said they appeared triangular or diamond-shaped, which the form notes could possibly be attributed to that astigmatism.
D037, the rest of it. After about 20 minutes both disappeared. Another similar light appeared directly above their location for about 10 minutes and went. Between 10:00pm and 11:00pm another appeared approximately 600 metres east and about 500 feet above the vehicle, moved toward them and stopped approximately 400 metres away; a second appeared, stopped near it, and sat approximately 6 feet off the ground. While he watched those two, a light in his peripheral vision descended and stopped in a dry wash about 100 metres behind them. He could not see the source, only the glow emanating from the wash, and watched the glow move through it.
D037, the watch. They drove to the next intersection for a better view, found nothing, returned and could not re-acquire the lights. He adjusted the filter on his NODs to check his watch: approximately 1:00am, against 12:40am on his phone. The watch, a men’s automatic analogue model whose brand is blacked out, was 25 minutes ahead of the phones and the vehicle’s digital clock, and he relayed the discrepancy to his companion, whose digital watch matched. He had owned it about five years, it had never been off by more than 60 to 90 seconds, and it was accurate at approximately 10:00pm. He did not reset it for 24 hours; it kept accurate time and remained 25 minutes fast.
D037, his assessment. He had spent considerable time at a redacted facility looking at the night sky and knew how stars, satellites and meteors look to the naked eye and through NODs. What he saw was unlike anything he had seen before. It did not track linearly as satellites do; it moved around, changed direction and was as low as 6 feet off the ground. It was not a UAS he was familiar with, showed no exhaust or tail and no audible sound signature, and a thermal attempt failed. He noted no physiological effects and no fear or agitation, just curiosity, which he and his companion found strange afterwards given their backgrounds. He offered further contact.
D040, page 1. He and others left at approximately 2100 to drive north on a redacted route for area reconnaissance. It was raining heavily at the gate; they waited for it to subside, unlocked the gate and drove north. At approximately 2200, about 25 miles on, he noticed a red light at the crest of the mountain range to their west and pulled over. He first took it for something on the mountain, then it began to move east; with the range at approximately 5000 feet and the cloud cover at approximately 7000, he judged it between 5000 and 7000 feet above ground level. After approximately 15 minutes, approximately 6 to 10 more lights appeared directly over their position, and these and the first appeared to “sync up” and travelled east or south-east. One descended rapidly, an estimated 1000 feet, and disappeared; the rest continued and disappeared too. The lights were red, and at first glance and through NODs appeared as a single point of light, however upon closer observation, and there the text layer stops.
D040, page 2, read from the page image. On closer observation, or while squinting, each light appeared to be three separate lights in a triangular or diamond-shaped pattern; each cluster moved in tandem and never separated, as if all three were attached to the same object. Cloud cover was heavy enough that no stars were visible. At approximately 2350 they saw two lights on or close to the ground to their east, visible only through NODs; one moved west toward them, the second, south of the first, moved north and stopped near it, and both stopped approximately 200 to 300 metres from their position. While watching them he saw a rapidly moving streak of light in his peripheral vision, analogous, he said, to a sparkler or flashlight moved quickly at night, with the light tail visible behind the source. Turning to look, he saw only a bright hue of light, the source being in a defilade; the hue moved north along the defilade until it faded, and the eastern lights disappeared too. They drove east to reach the area of their observations, failed, returned and parked. Later one man walked back to the truck to check his phone; the other asked him what time he had and relayed that his watch was 25 minutes fast. The interviewee wore a digital watch matching their phones and the vehicle clock, and the other man’s was the only analogue, non-digital clock present and the only one that was different. He had known him for years, described him as squared away, and said faulty gear was not something he would let happen; the watch had been accurate throughout that day and night. He reported no physiological reactions or effects.
Where the accounts lock together. Two links would identify the pair on their own. The watch appears from both sides: D037 is the man whose analogue watch ran 25 minutes ahead and who relayed it to a companion whose digital watch matched the phones and the vehicle; D040 is the man with the digital watch, reporting being told, and noting the other man’s was the only analogue clock present and the only one that differed. So does the shape disagreement: D037 records his companion calling the lights triangular or diamond-shaped where he saw dashes, and D040 is the man giving exactly that description. Three shared observations sit alongside them: the two lights near the ground to the east, at about 600 and 400 metres in D037 and 200 to 300 in D040; the peripheral light that resolved into a glow rather than a source and moved along a low terrain feature, a dry wash in D037 and a defilade in D040; and the failed repositioning and return.
The renderings. Each set matches its own witness. D038 is one page: a desert basin and range under heavy ochre overcast, a dark vehicle at left, a man beside it in silhouette, two small dull-red horizontal dashes above the western ridgeline. D039 is three pages of one night-vision frame, a twin-circle cyan field with mountains along the bottom and a bright white orb ringed by concentric halo rings, the pages differing only in the radii of the rings. D041 is six pages of a night desert scene with a vehicle and a standing figure: page 1 carries a single red light above the crest and each page after it adds one more to the east, so page 6 carries six, and at full resolution each is a red glow containing three small white points in a triangular cluster, which is what D040’s page 2 describes and the released text does not. D042 is one page, the twin-circle field again, with a bright vertical streak descending at upper right behind a tapering tail.
What the documents do not say
Neither file identifies anything. There is no assessment, no hypothesis, no attribution and no follow-up in either, and the printed footer says as much. No redaction carries a reason, so the record does not say on what authority any of it was withheld, or by whom.
Neither file says when or where. The night is dated only to 2026, the interview location on both forms is “United States”, and the route, the gate, the facility, the mountains and the wash or defilade are all withheld, as are both men’s roles and employers. Nor does either file connect itself to the other: nothing states that these are two witnesses to one event, or that a second interview was taken. The pairing rests entirely on what the two men say.
The clock times do not agree. D037 has departure at 7:45pm, the first lights at approximately 8:00pm to 8:30pm and the eastern lights between 10:00pm and 11:00pm; D040 has departure at approximately 2100, the first light at approximately 2200 and the eastern lights at approximately 2350. The order of events matches; the timestamps run roughly 60 to 90 minutes apart throughout. Neither document remarks on it and neither explains it.
The counts do not agree either. D037 has two dash-shaped lights along the ridgeline; D040 has one light at the crest, then approximately 6 to 10 more overhead about fifteen minutes later. Nothing reconciles the two, and no total number of objects appears anywhere in either file.
Half of D040 is not in the released text. Everything from the three-point clusters onward, including the corroboration of the watch, the defilade and the absence of physiological effects, exists only as an image of a page.
D037 loses its largest passages to redaction. Page 3 carries two substantial fully blacked paragraphs, one immediately before the surviving fragment that the low-elevation lights described would have been backdropped by the mountains and below the relative horizon line, the other immediately before the line that what he observed was not a UAS he was familiar with, and a further block sits at the foot of the page. Nothing states what any of them contain.
Nothing was recorded by either man: no photograph, no video, no instrument data, and the thermal attempt in D037 failed. No further contact appears on the record, although D037 offered it, and no closing entry or analysis is released with either file.
The renderings are unattributed. They carry no caption, credit, date or attribution, and nothing states whether they were produced by a witness, an FBI artist or a contractor, or whether either man reviewed them; they should not be read as witness sketches. The green pseudo-telemetry blocks and orange timestamp overlays on D039 and D042 are illegible at native resolution, and no date can be read from them.
From the record
described the lights as “dash” shaped and dull red in color to the
FBI-UAP-D037, page 1, the first description of the objects; the sentence continues: naked eye, and the next records that the lights moved along the ridgeline of the mountains to his west
on his phone and observed that the time on his watch was 25 minutes ahead of
FBI-UAP-D037, page 2, the discrepancy that identifies the pair; the sentence continues: the time on his phone and the vehicle’s digital clock
stated that the lights he observed and described were unlike anything he had
FBI-UAP-D037, page 3, his assessment, immediately after the line recording that he was familiar with how stars, satellites and meteors look to the naked eye and through NODs; the sentence closes: seen before
noticed a red light at the crest of
FBI-UAP-D040, page 1, the first sighting in the second account; the sentence continues: the mountain range to their west and pulled over to investigate
this light, multiple more (approximately 6 to 10) lights appeared directly
FBI-UAP-D040, page 1, the count D037 does not give; the sentence continues: over their position, and the next records that these lights and the first appeared to sync up and travel east or south-east
lights appeared as a single point of light, however upon closer observation,
FBI-UAP-D040, the last line of page 1 and the last line of the released text layer; the sentence finishes on page 2, which has no text layer, with the three separate lights in a triangular or diamond-shaped pattern
Where the case connects
These two sit in the same 2026 FBI group as Release 05 Briefing 11, which covers FBI-UAP-D032, FBI-UAP-D033 and the clip FBI-UAP-PR007. The vocabulary carries across: serving personnel with night-vision and thermal optics, objects described first by colour and shape to the naked eye and then again through the devices, and a thermal attempt that comes to nothing.
The procedural difference from the rest of the FBI block is what makes this a pair. Release 05 Briefings 9 and 10 cover the four triangle interviews, and in every one a second witness was present and never separately interviewed; in one, two men were questioned together and their differences sit side by side on a single page. Here the accounts were taken apart from each other, by different agents and different methods, and filed as separate records with separate rendering sets. This is the only place in Release 05 where two versions of one sighting can be read against each other, and they disagree on the clock and on the count.
What is missing sits next to them in the numbering. FBI-UAP-D034, D035 and D036 are absent immediately before this pair, with no withdrawal sheet and no exemption citation, and D040’s page 2 is a block of released FBI narrative that no text search will reach. Release 05 Briefing 13 sets out what this tranche references and does not contain. If a later tranche releases the missing numbers, a searchable D040, or anything the Bureau wrote after either interview, it lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
FBI-UAP-D037 and FBI-UAP-D040, both “FD-302, Multiple Red Lights, 2026”, are hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 05, with their renderings FBI-UAP-D038 and D039, and FBI-UAP-D041 and D042. In D037 the shape disagreement is at the foot of page 1, the watch is on page 2, and the assessment and the redacted blocks are on page 3. D040 is two pages: page 1 breaks off mid-sentence, and page 2 has to be read as an image, because it has no text layer.
Read the files. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
References and further reading
- FBI-UAP-D037, “FD-302, Multiple Red Lights, 2026”, PURSUE Release 05, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- FBI-UAP-D038, “Digital Rendering 1, Multiple Red Lights, 2026”, PURSUE Release 05, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- FBI-UAP-D039, “Digital Rendering 2, Multiple Red Lights, 2026”, PURSUE Release 05, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- FBI-UAP-D040, “FD-302, Multiple Red Lights, 2026”, PURSUE Release 05, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- FBI-UAP-D041, “Digital Rendering 1, Multiple Red Lights, 2026”, PURSUE Release 05, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- FBI-UAP-D042, “Digital Rendering 2, Multiple Red Lights, 2026”, PURSUE Release 05, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 11, on the other 2026 FBI cases and their thermal and night-vision optics
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefings 9 and 10, on the triangle interviews, where a second witness was present in every case and never separately interviewed
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 13, on the release’s gaps, including D040’s missing text layer and the FBI-UAP-D034 to D036 numbering gap