DOW-UAP-D079, Narrative Statement 1, Western United States Event, 2023
This memorandum presents the first-hand narrative from Witness 1 provided to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Witness 1 was one of several United States (U.S.) federal law enforcement special agents who reported observing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) over a period of two days in October 2023 in the western United States.
The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.
Text of the document
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OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF WAR 5000 DEFENSE PENTAGON AND SECURITY MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD SUBJECT: Nairntive from Witness 1 -Western U.S. Event This memorandum presents the first-hand naiTative from Witness 1 provided to the All domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Witness 1 was one of several United States (U.S.) federal law enforcement special agents who reported observing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) over a period of two days in October 2023 in the western United States. fu response to AARO's request to provide a free-fo1m naiTative of the sequence of events exactly as they remember them, Witness 1 submitted the following text: "It staiied the first night with other teains repo1iing weird lights moving along in groups miles away. From my vantage point I could not see them, though in theo1y should have been able to. Because ofmy location I did not see anything specific the first night. The second night another teain member and I were out working and driving to our destination. As we headed through a valley area we suddenly noticed a large glowing ball to our right 90 degrees from where we were. It looked like it was between us and a hill face, and initially I guessed it was 500 to 600 meters away, though another later day I was able to use a range finder to put the distance to the hillside at about 1100 meters. The ball appeared close to the hill face. It was just a circle of light that looked like a swirly pattern ofbright lava. It was bright in the dusk light, the time was just before 7 pm I think. It was not visible up to the moment we first saw it, though the hillside face behind it was visible as we drove for some distance before we saw the object. The object's lighted ai·ea was a well defined circle, but had no visible strncture at the edges to show what contained the light or why it was where it was. Looking at it through binoculars it almost appeared to have a line or spindle below possibly touching the hillside below. It was not possible to verify for sure because ofthe distance. There was no observed glow behind or below the object on the hillside or ground. It was only observed for a minute or two before we could no longer see it. It did not fade out, we just could not see it anymore. There was no paiiiculai· sound heai·d with it. All seemed quiet and it was pretty remote. I would have guessed the circle to be 20 feet or more in diameter. We sta1ied driving and drove a few more minutes. Then we stopped and had to get out ofthe vehicle. About 20 minutes later to the front, another object that looked similar lit up in the sky over the top of another hillside slightly to the right of front. It appeai·ed to be several miles away. It only lit up for a second or two and then was gone again.
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While it was lit, it appeared three red lights flew out of and away from it. They seemed evenly spaced apart and moved pretty fast, quickly disappearing from sight. At the same time the orange light lit up, there appeared to be a flash from over the horizon to the left. The flash lit up the sky pretty well, though very briefly. About twenty minutes later the experience repeated except this time the orange ball appeared to the front and slightly to the left this time. This time however, the red lights appeared to leave in a different pattern as one flew straight out, one appeared to fly up horizontally and another flew down horizontally, appearing to fly away in a vertical alignment of three lights. A flash accompanied this event as well and all three sightings appeared to be similar though at different distances. Several hours later we departed from where we were at to drive to another location in preparation for work the next day. It took several hours of driving, and as we were driving hours later still, we observed a car driving ahead of us on the road, we were gaining on the car and as we got closer I noticed it appeared one taillight cover was broken because one taillight was red and one was white. They were also different because one was round and one was square. Another vehicle approached from the opposite direction and as it was about to pass the vehicle in front of us, the car changed direction and moved off the road to the right. The oncoming vehicle continued driving and passed us, almost like it did not even see the vehicle move of the road as it passed. It did not bounce or move with the terrain, but seemed to hover. It did not kick up any dust either. It stopped on the road next to it, and the lights appeared to be in the same position facing us even though we were in a different direction from it. When we stopped the lights turned off and I could see a darker object moving up and toward behind us as it flew away. When we stopped we already had the windows rolled down and I did not notice any sound at any point. It reminded me of a Toyota Prius for some reason. It was hard to identify the exact shape though. The hillside was about 200 meters away, and when it stopped it was less than halfway to the base of the hillside. We started looking around the area and approximately an hour or two later as we were stopped we observed some dust and thick spider web looking material floating in-front of us. We then saw what looked like the same object floating in a more vertical orientation floating with the dust. It was still at an off angle. I could see where the spots were for the two lights and
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of DoD's 257 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the DoD agency block it ranks #140 of 257 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 450-file archive it ranks #264 of 450.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (264 of 450 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
Anomalousness Index: 56/100
Evidentiary weight that this encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. Not a probability of extraterrestrial origin - that number is not honestly computable from the released files and this tracker refuses to publish it.
🤖 AI-ASSISTED SCORING · methodology
The six rubric components break down for this file as follows. Each component has a weighted contribution to the final score; the per-component explanation below describes what this file's particular value on that component means in the rubric's framework.
Reported by a witness with no instrumented record. The lowest tier in the rubric's sensor axis. Eyewitness perception in field conditions, even when the witness is highly credentialed, scores below capture by any instrumented modality. This report reached the federal record through the Department of War.
Trained U.S. military personnel reporting from an operational mission context. A high witness-credibility tier, ranked in the rubric below astronaut, trained-aviator, and federal-agent testimony. This is the witness profile shared by the entire AARO-submitted infrared-capture cluster that anchors the 66-point score band.
Single-witness or single-instrument capture. This is the corroboration tier for the overwhelming majority of the PURSUE archive on the released metadata - the rubric records the honest limit of the underlying record rather than inferring multi-witness corroboration that the released summaries do not establish. A small number of files with an independent second witness or instrument score on the multi-witness/multi-instrument tier above this one.
No kinematic measurements - speed, acceleration, vector - are published in the released file with sufficient precision to score on the kinematic axis. The rubric does not infer kinematic anomaly from narrative observer estimates. Every file in the archive carries this value, which is itself an observation about the disclosure: kinematic-grade telemetry was not part of what was released.
A conventional candidate explanation has been considered but is not dispositive. Every file in the archive scores this way - reflecting that the underlying release metadata systematically caveats strong determinations in either direction. The released summaries warn against reading them as conclusive analytical judgments, and the rubric respects that.
Released as open after formal review by the originating agency. The file passed through a review process and was published in that posture - a stronger disposition signal than 'unresolved with no review,' because review has occurred and the open status is the agency's published conclusion.
Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 56/100 reflects evidentiary weight that this specific file's encounter remains structurally unexplained by the rubric's six axes - it is not a claim that the underlying event involved anything non-conventional, and it is not comparable across rubrics that use different weights. For the full per-axis weights and the rubric JSON, see /methodology.
Related files in DoD
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
DOW-UAP-PR024, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2023
DOW-UAP-PR072, "ADMINISTRATIVE REVISION: IIR 1777 J0032 22 Kazakhstan - UAP in the vicinit…
DOW-UAP-PR106, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR108, Unresolved UAP Report, Western United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR109, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2015
DOW-UAP-PR110, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
Verification
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