United States.Western U.S. · a thermal camera picks up slow-moving objects

In 2026 (the statements redact the month and day), at a sensitive federal site whose name is not disclosed, a special agent of an agency whose name is redacted was with other people, among them another special agent, when at about 4:04 p.m. he received a radio-frequency detection alert: a detector had picked up a radio emission lasting 5 to 10 seconds, at about 10,000 feet (about 3,000 meters) above sea level, from no known direction; the figure comes right after a redacted place, and the statement does not say whether it is the height of the emission or of the site. A later communication clarified that he was being asked to look toward a bearing of 58 degrees (measured clockwise from north); the statement does not say who asked.

The witness was not an aviation professional, though he had some hours as a private pilot; the statement redacts his agency and the position he held.

Within a few minutes, the witness aimed a thermal optical device (a camera that shows heat instead of light) in that direction and saw a black object in the sky, moving slowly. He photographed it with the device itself. As he watched, a second object appeared to the right of the first, and he took more photos and video. The two moved together at the same speed, and both showed as "black hot" in the thermal image: in that setting the hottest things are drawn black, so the objects were warmer than the background. They were above the mountain line.

The statement gives their direction as southeast, "approximately 58 degrees to 62 degrees." On a compass, those degrees point northeast, not southeast; the statement does not explain the difference. It adds that, given the distance, the witness found it hard to determine the direction. He lost sight of them as they moved out of range. The observation lasted 5 to 10 minutes, and he could not estimate altitude or speed. He was the only person present who saw them and the only one who used the device; the photographs were given to the FBI agent who took his statement. The official description released with the video says it was captured by "a U.S. Government Special Agent" with a hand-held thermal imaging device; the statement also identifies him as a special agent.

The next day, at about 9:00 p.m., a special agent whose agency is redacted, and who refers to an earlier statement of his own, took up a position in the same observation area as the day before. According to his signed statement, he saw an aerial object that appeared "thermally elevated" in the thermal camera, warmer than the background. It was in the same western sector, about two ridgelines farther west than the spot where the first objects were seen, and on a heading similar to the previous day's. That "western sector" does not square with the first statement's 58 degrees either, and neither statement says where the directions are measured from. Because of the greater distance and the terrain between them, he could not identify physical features or its exact configuration, but it appeared to be flying south, in the same general direction as the previous day's objects.

That same night, the agent also filmed a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter operating in the area, to have a visual and thermal reference for scale, flight characteristics and size. From that comparison, the object appeared to be about half the size of the Black Hawk; the agent stresses that this is only an estimate, based on how it looked, the distance and the reference footage available. He could not determine its make, model or propulsion, or whether it was a fixed-wing aircraft, a rotary-wing craft such as a helicopter, or some other kind of unmanned aerial system, because of the distance and how little detail was visible. The object continued south until he lost sight of it behind the terrain and the distance.

Two black objects moving slowly in formation do not indicate anything anomalous on their own and fit a pair of drones, commercial or military, near a sensitive facility, which is the scenario a radio-detection system is built for. The agent himself hesitates only between a fixed-wing aircraft, a rotary-wing aircraft and another unmanned system.

The agent filmed the Black Hawk to have a scale reference, which reduces, without eliminating, the margin of error in his "half a Black Hawk" estimate. The objects of both days registered warmer than the background (the first day's "black hot," the second's "thermally elevated"), so the thermal image offers no feature that separates one from the other. Nor is that enough to say they were the same kind of object, and the statements do not settle it.