Witness 1 Narrative: The Western U.S. Event, October 2023

Source file: DoW-UAP-D079_Narrative-1_Western-US-Event.pdf Originating agency: Office of the Under Secretary of War for Intelligence and Security — All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Document type: Memorandum for Record — first-hand witness narrative Signatory: Jon T. Kosloski, Director, AARO Date: 02 June 2026 (incident October 2023) Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Page count: 2 (all read) VIRIN: 260508-D-D0360-1061 Companion renderings: FBI-UAP-D014, D015, D021 (Incident 1) PURSUE Release: 3

Summary

This is the verbatim, first-hand narrative of Witness 1 in the Western U.S. Event — one of six federal law enforcement special agents whose accounts underpin AARO's unresolved case analysis (DOW-UAP-D077). At AARO's request, Witness 1 wrote out "the sequence of events exactly as they remember them." The result is among the most detailed and unsettling testimonies in the entire PURSUE collection.

Over the second night of a two-day deployment, Witness 1 reports: a large, well-defined "circle of light" resembling "a swirly pattern of bright lava" hanging near a hillside; an orange light that "appeared three red lights flew out of and away from it," repeated minutes later in a different formation; and — most strikingly — a close-range encounter with a hovering, vehicle-like object that mimicked a car with a mismatched red/white, round/square taillight pair, made no sound, kicked up no dust over rough terrain, and ultimately appeared partly transparent: "as it floated past I could see a star through the object... It was almost like looking at something through water." The narrative is signed by AARO Director Jon T. Kosloski.

Research Article

The first night and the glowing ball

Witness 1 saw little on the first night, but notes that "other teams reporting weird lights moving along in groups miles away." On the second night, while driving through a valley with a partner, "we suddenly noticed a large glowing ball to our right 90 degrees from where we were." Initially estimated at 500–600 meters, a later rangefinder reading placed the hillside behind it at about 1,100 meters. The witness is careful and specific: "It was just a circle of light that looked like a swirly pattern of bright lava... a well defined circle, but had no visible structure at the edges to show what contained the light." Through binoculars it "almost appeared to have a line or spindle below possibly touching the hillside." It cast no glow on the ground, made "no particular sound," and after a minute or two simply ceased to be visible: "It did not fade out, we just could not see it anymore." The witness estimated the circle at "20 feet or more in diameter."

The orbs launching orbs

About twenty minutes later, "another object that looked similar lit up in the sky over the top of another hillside." It "only lit up for a second or two," and "while it was lit, it appeared three red lights flew out of and away from it," evenly spaced and fast. A flash appeared "over the horizon to the left." Twenty minutes after that, the sequence repeated, but this time the red lights left "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." This is the "orbs launching orbs" behavior at the heart of the case analysis, witnessed here directly.

The vehicle that hovered

The most extraordinary passage describes a close encounter hours later. Gaining on what looked like a car ahead, the witness noticed it had a broken taillight — "one taillight was red and one was white... one was round and one was square." When an oncoming vehicle approached, "the car changed direction and moved off the road to the right," and the oncoming vehicle "passed us, almost like it did not even see the vehicle move off the road." Critically: "It did not bounce or move with the terrain, but seemed to hover. It did not kick up any dust either." Its lights stayed "facing us even though we were in a different direction from it." When it left, "I could see a darker object moving up and toward behind us as it flew away." With the windows down, the witness "did not notice any sound at any point," and remarked that "it reminded me of a Toyota Prius."

The translucent object

An hour or two later, after seeing "dust and thick spider web looking material floating in-front of us," the witness saw "what looked like the same object floating in a more vertical orientation." The two light spots — one round, one square — were visible but unlit. The object was "about 15-20 feet up," and as it floated past, "I could see a star through the object, as well as the crest of the hill and some vegetation. It was almost like looking at something through water where it was not completely clear." This corresponds to the "Translucent Kite" incident named in the notional map (DOW-UAP-D078).

Significance

Witness 1's account is one of the strongest individual testimonies in the archive. It is first-hand, written for the record at AARO's request by a federal law enforcement special agent, and it independently captures the two phenomena that define the case: the "orbs launching orbs" behavior and the close-range, vehicle-mimicking, partly transparent "object." The detail is granular and self-skeptical — distances rechecked with a rangefinder, mundane comparisons ("a Toyota Prius"), explicit notes on the absence of sound and dust. AARO's case analysis (DOW-UAP-D077) singles out exactly this kind of consistency across multiple viewing angles as the reason it judges the incident worth continued investigation despite the lack of imagery.

Key People

Locations

Incidents

Notable Quotes

"It was just a circle of light that looked like a swirly pattern of bright lava... a well defined circle, but had no visible structure at the edges." — page 1

"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." — page 2

"It did not bounce or move with the terrain, but seemed to hover. It did not kick up any dust either... It reminded me of a Toyota Prius for some reason." — page 2

"As it floated past I could see a star through the object, as well as the crest of the hill and some vegetation. It was almost like looking at something through water where it was not completely clear." — page 2