THE DOCUMENT
A four-section Department of War briefing slide deck headed “Orbs Launching Orbs”, part of PURSUE Release 01, published at war.gov/ufo on 8 May 2026. It records sightings by federal law-enforcement agents over two days in the Western United States, dated 2023 in the release catalogue and October 2023 in the narrative statements paired with it, with follow-up measurements attributed to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
Why this one is worth your time
Over two days in October 2023, in the Western United States, at dusk, three two-person teams of federal law-enforcement special agents stood at separate vantage points and watched orange orbs appear in the sky, release smaller red orbs, and vanish. At least five times, by the document’s own count. The Department of War then wrote it all up under the most deadpan heading in the entire release, “Orbs Launching Orbs”, and published it. If Release 01 has a marquee case, this is it, and the file is short enough to read in one sitting.
What the document says
“Orbs Launching Orbs.” The central section states that three teams, six agents, “independently describe seeing orange ‘orbs’ in the sky emit/launch smaller red ‘orbs’ in groups of two to four, with three being the general consensus”, and that this “occurred at least five times”. The pattern each time: “the orange orb would appear, launch red orbs, then disappear”, the orange orb “only visible for one or two seconds”. The red orbs “would generally move away from the orange ‘mother’ orb in a horizontal path”, with two recorded variations: one witness described a red orb “heading up at an angle”, another said they would sometimes “swoop down” after launch. The document also flags what it cannot tell, in its own words: “due to the sequential nature of the events, it is not known whether there was a single orange ‘mother’ orb that released the groups of red orbs or whether there were multiple orange orbs at play.”
“Large, Fiery Orb.” Two of the agents, USPER5 and USPER6, separately describe a glowing orange orb at dusk near a rock pinnacle. They estimated it at “approximately 500-600 meters” away, similar in size to “a small helicopter cockpit”. A footnote then adds the follow-up layer: “Measurements later gathered by AARO assess the object to have been ~1050 meters away from the observers”, roughly double the witnesses’ estimate, and “between 12-18 meters in diameter”. The witnesses’ description is vivid: like “the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings, except without the pupil, or maybe an orange Storm Electrify bowling ball”, silent, and it “seemed to be hovering with zero resistance or movement”, for “about a minute”. USPER6 added that the object “did almost appear it might have had a small spindle or something connecting it from underneath to the rock formation”, a detail the document presents as an impression rather than a confirmed observation.
“Dark Kite” and “Transparent Kite.” Pre-dawn, USPER5 and USPER6 pursued what they first took to be a car on a road in a restricted zone, one red and one white light. As they closed to within a few hundred feet, the object “suddenly moved off the road over the desert without changing its orientation”, appeared to move laterally with “zero resistance”, then stopped and switched its lights off. Through night-vision goggles one agent saw “a very thin line” about four feet wide; the document notes that “in later discussions with AARO, the object is described as being triangular”. The record thus holds three renderings of the same object, a thin line, a dark kite shape, and later a triangle, side by side. About thirty minutes on, the same agents plus a third, USPER7, returned and saw a similar kite-shaped object floating with the wind about six metres up; one agent could “vaguely see a bright star or two in the distance through the object”. USPER7 “did not see the object” at all, and the section ends with the team unable to reacquire it.
How the file is built. Three teams “from varying locations and vantage points”; a follow-up measurement layer attributed to AARO, included where it differs from the witness estimates; and a recorded non-sighting, kept in the file rather than dropped. Apart from the AARO footnote, every distance, size and speed in the document is a witness estimate, and the document presents them as such.
What the document does not say
What the objects were. The document never claims to know; “orb” and “kite” are descriptions of shapes and lights, not identifications.
Whether there was one orange orb or several: the file states in terms that it cannot tell. Whether the dark kite and the transparent kite were the same object: the file does not connect them. Why USPER7, standing with the others, saw nothing: recorded without explanation. And beyond the single AARO measurement, the release includes no instrument data for any of the sightings; if a fuller measurement file exists, it is not here.
From the record
“Independently describe seeing orange ‘orbs’ in the sky emit/launch smaller red ‘orbs’ in groups of two to four, with three being the general consensus.”
The document, on the three teams
“Due to the sequential nature of the events, it is not known whether there was a single orange ‘mother’ orb that released the groups of red orbs or whether there were multiple orange orbs at play.”
The document, on its own open question
“Like the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings, except without the pupil, or maybe an orange Storm Electrify bowling ball.”
Witness description, “Large, Fiery Orb” section
“Measurements later gathered by AARO assess the object to have been ~1050 meters away from the observers… between 12-18 meters in diameter.”
AARO footnote to the same section
Where the case connects
This file sits inside a set the catalogue keeps together. The Western US Event summary is paired with the seven narrative statements, DOW-UAP-D077 through D083, with the ten FBI digital renderings, D014 through D023, and with the two FBI digital recreations, PR005 and PR006. The summary dates the sightings to two days in 2023 and the narrative statements to two days in October 2023. Release 03 opened that material up, and Release 03 Briefing 3 reads it.
A separate case shares the region and much of the language without being this one. ODNI-UAP-D001, published in Release 02, is a serving senior U.S. intelligence official’s account of glowing orbs seen from a helicopter in and near a sensitive U.S. military facility in late 2025, one of which appeared to split in two; the catalogue pairs it with the FBI statement of Release 01 Briefing 4 and with the FBI Photo A and B stills, not with this deck. Release 02 Briefing 2 reads it. Two years and two case files separate the two, and this briefing keeps them apart.
The document also names its own loose ends: the AARO footnote shows measurement reached this case, so a fuller analysis file may exist; the mother-orb question is open by the file’s own statement; the kite was never reacquired; USPER7 saw nothing. Any future tranche that touches one of those lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
The four-section deck is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 01, heading and footnotes intact.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
References and further reading
- “Orbs Launching Orbs”, Western US Event briefing document, U.S. Department of War, PURSUE Release 01, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, www.aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 01 Briefing 1, on PURSUE Release 01 as a whole and the evidence tier system