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.
Text of the document
Machine-extracted from the PDF war.gov published (its text layer or OCR), so expect errors, especially in names, numbers and handwriting; the PDF is the authoritative copy. Lines that did not extract as readable text are left out. Showing about 494 words from pages 3, 4 of 4.
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An airborne object over Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado /was observed by five U.S. Army service members at Fort Carson, /backscattering of sunlight. has low confidence in this /assessment based on uncertainty in the field of view of each /witness, amount of snow cover, and exact elevation and amount of /cloud cover. No anomalous data or characteristics were recorded or /assessed, and the event did not represent an unknown adversarial / According to the accounts of five U.S. Army service /members On 15 February 2022, an airborne object was observed /approximately 6 miles to the west over and slightly behind the /The witnesses describe the object as roughly the size of a large /jet and resembling an angular, non-symmetrical potato made of /uneven panels, which was completely stationary about 300-500 feet /above Cheyanne Mountain while slowly changing shape. It had a /slightly translucent, shimmering white appearance, with defined /edges and a milky shimmer that reflected sunlight. The witnesses /noted that the sky was clear, and despite keeping their eyes on the /object, it suddenly disappeared. /the sun was positioned at an altitude of about 27.5 over the /horizon in the southeast sky and roughly at an azimuth of 125, /casting shadows toward the northwest and providing soft, angled /light. According historical the National Water and Climate Center /reporting, snow depth on Cheyenne Mountain likely ranged from 6 to /12 inches. Although witnesses reported clear, blue skies, multiple /weather reports, including those from AFWA and Weather Underground, /indicated the presence of clouds, suggesting that the skies were /partly to mostly cloudy that morning. / Analysis possibly indicates that the positioning of the /sun in relation to Cheyenne Mountain would allow for backscattering /of sunlight reflecting off snow-covered ground. This reflection /could illuminate low-level clouds in the vicinity, which might /account for the visibility of the object followed by its sudden /disappearance. It is possible that either the clouds or the sun /shifted slightly, causing the reflection to vanish. has low /confidence in this assessment based on uncertainty in the field of /view of each witness, and exact level of cloud cover. / Analyst Note: Altostratus clouds are a kind of mid-level cloud /known for their consistent gray or blue-gray appearance. These /clouds usually develop at altitudes ranging from 6,500 to 23,000
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/feet (about 2,000 to 7,000 meters) and can create a dense, uniform /layer across the sky or thin and wispy. While they often appear /opaque, altostratus clouds can permit some sunlight to pass /through, resulting in a luminous effect. Typically, the presence of /altostratus clouds suggests that precipitation is imminent, as they /may bring light rain or snow. / Analyst Note: Backscattering is the phenomenon where sunlight /reflects off the snow-covered ground and reflects upwards, /scattering through the atmosphere and illuminate low-level clouds. /This is especially noticeable when the sun is low over the horizon. / No aircraft or balloons were noted active in or around /Cheyenne Mountain during the time the witnesses saw the airborne
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of Intelligence Community's 1 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the Intelligence Community agency block it ranks #1 of 1 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 450-file archive it ranks #449 of 450.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (449 of 450 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.
No sensor, camera, or instrument backs this observation - it is testimony, relayed through the Intelligence Community, and scored on the rubric's lowest sensor-quality tier for that reason. That doesn't bear on the witness's credibility (a separate axis); it reflects only that nothing beyond human perception recorded the event.
A civilian account, routed into the federal record via the Intelligence Community's investigative channels rather than an operational mission report. The rubric scores this tier below uniformed personnel specifically because of that remove - the witness wasn't reporting from within a federal mission context when the observation occurred.
On corroboration, this file from the Intelligence Community - like every single-tier file in the PURSUE archive - is a single-witness or single-instrument capture per the released metadata. The rubric doesn't infer multi-witness confirmation the summaries don't actually establish; this score reflects the honest limit of what was released, not a judgment about the underlying event.
The released file contains no speed, acceleration, or vector data precise enough to score on the kinematic axis - and that's true archive-wide, not specific to this file. The rubric declines to infer kinematic anomaly from a witness's narrative estimate of how fast something moved; that itself says something about what PURSUE actually released: descriptive accounts, not flight-path telemetry.
Every file in the archive, including this one, scores this tier: a conventional explanation was considered in the released record but isn't treated as dispositive. That's a pattern in how war.gov's own summaries are written - they consistently hedge against strong conclusions either way - and the rubric takes that hedging at face value rather than resolving it for them.
This file from the Intelligence Community is catalogued as unresolved, with no formal review process having concluded - logged into the system, but not yet finalized by any review. The rubric treats that differently from 'open after review,' because the absence of a completed review is itself part of the file's status, not a placeholder for one.
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 Intelligence Community
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
ODNI-UAP-D001, USPER Narrative, Senior USIC Official
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'
CIA-UAP-006, Sighting Of Unconventional Aircraft
Verification
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