FBI-UAP-D026: The Dark Translucent Triangle Over Colorado Springs - Four Seconds on an FD-302

Source file: FBI-UAP-D026_FD-302_Dark-Translucent-Triangle_2023.pdf Originating agency: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Document type: FBI form FD-302, record of interview; interview conducted January 2026 by a Special Agent and a Supervisory Special Agent Date: January 2026 (interview and drafting); concerns an incident of October 2023 Classification: Unclassified law enforcement record; released with redactions Page count: 3 VIRIN: 260807-O-D0360-1146 PURSUE Release: 5

Summary

This is a three-page FD-302 recording a single interview. Two features set it apart from most records of its kind in the collection. The first is the time lag: the incident occurred in October 2023, but the interview was not conducted until January 2026, more than two years later. The second is the composition of the interviewing team: not a lone agent but a Special Agent together with a Supervisory Special Agent, meaning a supervisory presence in the room.

The interviewee's identity is redacted, as are his home address, the agents' names, and the day of the month on which the incident occurred. The official description of the document identifies him as a former employee of the Department of War. No one is named in the released text, which is why the Key People table in this article is deliberately empty.

What makes the document worth reading is not its length but its density. The entire observation lasted four seconds, and from those four seconds the interviewee produced an unusually detailed phenomenological account: altitude, angular size measured in fingers, optical texture, geometry, light source, trajectory and a final maneuver. Much of the record's value comes precisely from the caveats it preserves in his own words.

The accompanying digital rendering, FBI-UAP-D027, is this entry's featured image. It is not a photograph but an artist's reconstruction prepared by the FBI in 2026 from this witness's description, showing two silhouetted figures in a fenced suburban back yard with a faint, semi-transparent triangle in the night sky above them.

Research Article

The evening: 10:50 PM in Colorado Springs

The document opens with the geometry of the scene, an important detail because it fixes the viewing directions: "[he] and his wife were sitting on the back porch of their residence located at [redacted] Colorado Springs, Colorado. The porch faces toward the southwest, and he and his wife were sitting with their backs towards the house." The time was approximately 10:50 PM, in October 2023.

Viewing conditions are recorded precisely, including one small anomaly: the interviewee "did not remember seeing many stars in the sky that night even though the sky was clear." The document makes no attempt to explain that discrepancy.

Then the event: "something had flown over his house from behind him, coming from the northeast, and was moving away from him towards the southwest." The object, in other words, entered his field of view from above and behind rather than at the horizon.

"The UAP appeared low in elevation, possibly as low as 300 feet." On the basis of that altitude estimate he judged it "roughly the size of a large SUV." Alongside that absolute estimate, which is necessarily derived from the assumed altitude, the agent also recorded an angular measurement, which is the more raw figure: "From [his] viewing perspective, at arm's length, the UAP appeared to be the size of the space between his thumb and pointer finger, which he approximated as 5 inches." That is the kind of datum that permits later computation, unlike "the size of a large SUV," which already embeds an assumption about range.

The interviewee added that he did not think he would have noticed the UAP on a cloudy night, and supplied an important detail about the order of perception: he "first noticed the object's movement before actually seeing its silhouette."

"Almost see-through": the haze, the distortion and the ripples

This is the most quoted passage in the document, and the source of its official title. When he first spotted it, "he thought it appeared almost see-through, and it had what appeared to be a haze or distortion around it."

Then two analogies the record takes care to preserve: "He further described it appearing as if you were looking at it through mist; and that there were ripples like you were looking at an object that is underwater."

The shape: a perfect triangle with rounded corners

"The UAP looked like a perfect triangle, however because of his viewing angle, he couldn't definitively say whether it was isosceles or equilateral in shape." That caveat is a good illustration of the character of the record: the witness reports what he saw and what he could not see.

The color is hedged too: the object "could have been either dark gray or silver in color which would have blended into the night sky, and with the surrounding distortion, it may have caused it to have the appearance of being translucent." The witness himself, in other words, offers the possibility that the translucency was an optical effect of the haze rather than a property of the object.

The edges: he "thought the triangle had rounded edges and corners, but stated the distortion around the UAP may have made the edges less sharp in appearance." Again, a caveat volunteered by the witness.

Motion, the silverish blue band, and the sharp bank

The object travelled point-forward: "The UAP traveled away from him and his wife with a point forward-facing. As it traveled away from them, along the trailing, flat, back edge, it had what appeared to be a band of silverish blue light." The interviewee "hypothesized that the light could have been caused by the mode of propulsion for the UAP." That is the witness's hypothesis, and the document presents it as such.

Trajectory characteristics: "The UAP moved in a straight path at a consistent elevation. It moved very quickly and covered a large distance in the short time they observed the UAP."

Then the single maneuver: "Just before they lost sight of the UAP, the left side of the triangle banked up quickly to an almost vertical orientation, but it did not change path or elevation." That is not a trivial detail: a sharp bank in an ordinary aircraft produces a change of course. Here, according to the account, it did not.

The silence, and what the witness can rule out

"The UAP was completely silent, and [he] did not feel any rumble, static, or any other effects from the object as it passed over him."

The silence carries weight because of the background the document records immediately afterward. The interviewee's residence was near an airport and he frequently observed aircraft flying over his house, including private planes and helicopters, and was very familiar with how a normal aircraft should appear and sound overhead. Beyond that, he "was very familiar with all USAF aircraft, including the latest unmanned drones. The UAP he and his wife observed did not match anything he encountered before. The UAP was only a triangle without any extra wings, fins, or any bubble for the engine housing."

The duration is precise and short: he "witnessed the UAP for a total of four seconds from when he initially saw it to when he lost sight of it to the southwest," potentially over an area whose identity is redacted. And the subtlest detail of all: "The UAP disappeared from his visual sight sooner than [he] expected it should have." The whole thing was so quick that he did not have a chance to get his phone out to take a photo or video. There is therefore no physical record of the event.

Two witnesses, separate rooms, and a dark seam

Page 3 ends with a short paragraph that is both the most important and the most damaged: "Immediately following the event, both [redacted] and his wife, who also witnessed the UAP, went inside to separate rooms and [redacted]."

What was done in those separate rooms is redacted. What is visible is the continuation: "[his] wife remembered seeing a dark seem running around the edge of the UAP," The word "seem" in the scanned text is most likely a spelling or OCR corruption of "seam." The sentence breaks off at a comma, and page 3 ends there: the remainder of the record is not available in this copy.

The structure of the paragraph, an immediate separation into different rooms followed by a detail the wife recalled, is consistent with the familiar practice of capturing witness accounts separately to avoid cross-contamination. But precision is owed here: the released text does not say so explicitly, and the reason for the separation lies in exactly the passage that was redacted. Either way, this is a two-witness event, and the dark seam detail is attributed in the document to the wife rather than to the interviewee. The copy contains no separate interview with her.

Significance

The document reaches no conclusion, and cannot. There is no imagery, no radar, no air traffic control data, and no indication that any attempt was made to identify flights in the area that evening. It is a record of what one man told two agents, more than two years after the fact.

Its value lies in three things. First, the quality of the caveats: the witness repeatedly marks the limits of what he could see, and even volunteers an optical explanation for the apparent translucency. Testimony that qualifies itself this way tends to be more credible than testimony that does not.

Second, the phenomenological detail is unusual relative to the length of the observation, which is simultaneously the record's strength and its weakness. Human recall of four seconds, related more than two years later, is a limited measuring instrument.

Third, the specific anomalies that have no known counterpart in aircraft: total silence at low altitude, the haze with its ripples, and above all the sharp bank of the left side to a near-vertical orientation with no change of course or altitude. Those three, together with the witness's professional familiarity with the USAF inventory, are the basis on which the file was opened at all.

This document is one of a pair. The rendering FBI-UAP-D027 is the official visual interpretation of this description, and is presented here as an aid, not as evidence.

Key People

Locations

Incidents

Notable Quotes

"The porch faces toward the southwest, and he and his wife were sitting with their backs towards the house." -- page 1

"[He] did not remember seeing many stars in the sky that night even though the sky was clear." -- page 1

"Something had flown over his house from behind him, coming from the northeast, and was moving away from him towards the southwest." -- pages 1-2

"The UAP appeared low in elevation, possibly as low as 300 feet. He estimated it was roughly the size of a large SUV based on his elevation estimation." -- page 2

"At arm's length, the UAP appeared to be the size of the space between his thumb and pointer finger, which he approximated as 5 inches." -- page 2

"[He] first noticed the object's movement before actually seeing its silhouette." -- page 2

"He thought it appeared almost see-through, and it had what appeared to be a haze or distortion around it. He further described it appearing as if you were looking at it through mist; and that there were ripples like you were looking at an object that is underwater." -- page 2

"The UAP looked like a perfect triangle, however because of his viewing angle, he couldn't definitively say whether it was isosceles or equilateral in shape." -- page 2

"As it traveled away from them, along the trailing, flat, back edge, it had what appeared to be a band of silverish blue light. [He] hypothesized that the light could have been caused by the mode of propulsion for the UAP." -- page 2

"Just before they lost sight of the UAP, the left side of the triangle banked up quickly to an almost vertical orientation, but it did not change path or elevation." -- page 2

"The UAP was completely silent, and [he] did not feel any rumble, static, or any other effects from the object as it passed over him." -- page 2

"[He] witnessed the UAP for a total of four seconds from when he initially saw it to when he lost sight of it to the southwest." -- page 2

"[He] was very familiar with all USAF aircraft, including the latest unmanned drones. The UAP he and his wife observed did not match anything he encountered before. The UAP was only a triangle without any extra wings, fins, or any bubble for the engine housing." -- page 3

"Immediately following the event, both [he] and his wife, who also witnessed the UAP, went inside to separate rooms." -- page 3

"[His] wife remembered seeing a dark seem running around the edge of the UAP." -- page 3