ICA-UAP-D001, Analysis: Colorado Springs UAP Incident, 2022
This document contains analysis by an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Intelligence Community (IC) partner to account for a 2022 incident involving an airborne object near Colorado Springs, Colorado. U.S. military service members reported the incident to AARO in 2023. AARO’s IC partner assessed, with low confidence, that the reported phenomenon, which observers characterized as resembling an “angular, non-symmetrical potato,” was attributable to sunlight backscattering, where sunlight reflecting from mountain snow cover illuminated the underside of low-altitude clouds. This low-confidence assessment contributes to AARO’s consideration of the incident, which remains unresolved as of June 2026.
The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of ICA's 1 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the ICA agency block it ranks #1 of 1 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 294-file archive it ranks #293 of 294.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (293 of 294 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
Anomalousness Index: 47/100
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.
Civilian witness whose report entered the federal record through investigative channels. The rubric weights civilian credentialed witnesses below uniformed personnel because the report enters the federal record at a remove rather than directly from a mission context.
Single-witness or single-instrument capture. Every file in the PURSUE archive scores at this corroboration tier 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.
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.
Catalogued as unresolved with no formal review process having concluded. This is the AARO baseline disposition for the 27-file score-66 cluster - the reports are logged into the system as unresolved, but no formal review has finalized. The rubric distinguishes this from 'open after review' because the absence of review is itself a status signal.
Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 47/100 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 ICA
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
ODNI-UAP-D001, USPER Narrative, Senior USIC Official
CIA-UAP-017, Placement on High Alert Due to Perceived Aggressive Foreign Posturing
CIA-UAP-002, Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, Report, 1952-1953
CIA-UAP-003, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCA…
CIA-UAP-004, CASE 17708 (CLOSED) and DR. Leon Davidson
CIA-UAP-005, German Scientist's Article on 'Flying Discs'
Verification
SHA-256:
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