FBI-UAP-D028: FD-302 - "Dark Triangle with Lights", Two Former Service Members, 2011

Source file: FBI-UAP-D028_FD-302_Dark-Triangle-with-Lights_2011.pdf Originating agency: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Document type: Form FD-302 (Rev. 5-8-10), joint interview of two former U.S. military service members Date: Interview conducted 11 April 2025; drafted April 2025 and entered May 2025; the incident occurred in June or July 2011 Classification: No legible classification marking on the released copy; names, addresses and identifying details are redacted throughout Page count: 3 VIRIN: 260807-O-D0360-1148 PURSUE Release: 5

Summary

This is an FBI FD-302, the standard form on which the Bureau records interviews. It documents a single joint interview, conducted on 11 April 2025 with two former U.S. military service members, and entered into the Bureau's records system in May 2025. Both interviewees described one incident that had taken place some fourteen years earlier, on an evening in June or July 2011.

The document's principal contribution is not the drama of the event but its structure: this is one of the few cases in the collection in which two witnesses to the same sighting are interviewed together and their accounts set side by side on the same form. The gaps between them, and not only the agreements, are its evidentiary value.

The document is heavily redacted. Every location detail has been removed: the driveway address, the name of the street the vehicle was turning onto, the intersection, and the names of everyone involved. The archive cannot, and does not attempt to, place this incident geographically.

Research Article

The document and the interview

The form opens with the standard FD-302 formula: "After being advised of the identity of the interviewing agents and the nature of the interview," the two interviewees provided the information that follows. The agents' names are redacted, but the surviving text indicates that a Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) was among the interviewers.

The dates deserve attention. The interview took place on 11 April 2025, while the incident is from June or July 2011: roughly fourteen years separate the event from its formal documentation, a memory gap the document makes no attempt to conceal. It does not say how the witnesses came to the Bureau's attention, and contains no Bureau conclusion of any kind: the footer repeats the fixed formula, "This document contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI."

The evening: the first witness's account

The account opens with notable caution: "On an evening in June or July 2011, it was dark outside," "at about 8 or 9 PM." Neither the month nor the hour is known with certainty.

The scene is described in mechanical detail. One of the witnesses was leaving the driveway at his home, another person was driving the vehicle and a third sat in the front passenger seat. The vehicle was about fifty feet from the driveway and preparing to make a left turn at an intersection. The names of all three people, the address of the house and the name of the street are all redacted, and the document does not make clear which of the three roles each of the two interviewees held.

Then the moment itself: the witness was looking out the window, saw three lights in the sky, got out of the vehicle, and when he looked up "he saw a massive black isosceles triangle shaped object flying North." That explicit geometric description is later gently disputed by the second witness.

The description of the lights is unusually precise: "The object had a car-sized white light in each of its three corners that emitted a diffuse glow and were recessed back a bit from the corners." Two details there merit attention: the glow is described as diffuse rather than as a beam, and the lights are not set at the point of the corner but recessed slightly inward. Alongside the visual account the document records an auditory one: "The object was low to the ground, and creating a low humming noise that made a pulsing sound." This is a material difference from the case recorded in FBI-UAP-D030, where a complete absence of sound is stressed.

The attempt to document it failed. Someone whose identity is redacted told him to take a video, but "by the time [the interviewee] got his phone out, the object had flown over the tree line behind the houses to the north, and out of sight." The sighting lasted approximately ten to fifteen seconds, and no contrails were left behind the object. The document closes the first witness's portion with an emotional description, which is relatively rare on an FD-302: he "felt dumbfounded and awestruck during the experience."

The second witness: size, altitude and dimensions

The second witness adds the measurement layer. First the impression: "he was overwhelmed by the size of it and how low it was to the ground." Then the numerical estimate: he thought the object may have been 800 feet above the ground, and "based on the dimensions of their environment, he estimated the object was 200 feet long and 100 feet wide."

That method, deriving dimensions from the dimensions of a familiar environment, is the only reasonable estimation technique available to a ground observer. It is also the source of the single internal tension in the record: the second witness "believed the object had more of an equilateral triangle shape, but based on the calculated dimensions, it could have been more of an isosceles triangle." Confronted with the arithmetic implication of his own dimensional estimate, in other words, he moved toward the first witness's version. The form records that retreat rather than smoothing it over.

On the remaining details the two agree: the movement was slow and steady, he too heard the pulsing sound, and he saw the three lights at the corners. He adds one detail the first witness does not report: he "also remembered seeing something in the middle of the triangle that was grayish or graphite colored." This is the only detail in the document that speaks to the object's surface rather than merely to its outline and its lights.

What the witnesses cannot say

A considerable part of the document's value lies in the paragraph devoted entirely to the limits of memory: "Neither [interviewee] had a clear memory of the thickness or any other description of the vertical profile of the triangle."

What distinguishes that paragraph is that it also records the explanation the witnesses themselves offered for the gap: "They opined that they were initially underneath the triangle and didn't really have a view of its side or vertical profile." Then the second explanation: "They were then temporarily distracted by their unsuccessful attempt to get a phone out to video record the UAP, at the moment when they likely would have had a better view of the back profile." The document says, in effect, that two people lost their best observational moment precisely because they were trying to photograph it.

At the end of the document one further detail appears: one of the interviewees believed that several people in the neighborhood had also seen the object, and offered to find out whether they, along with a further individual whose name is redacted, would be willing to write a statement about their observation or speak to the FBI about it. The document does not record whether such an approach was made or what came of it.

The redacted location and the companion rendering

This should be stated plainly: the document does not allow the location of the incident to be determined. The driveway address, the street name and the intersection are all redacted, and even the agency's official description avoids naming a state or a city, whereas the parallel descriptions of other items in the same collection do name locations. This is a limitation of the source, not an omission by the archive, and the location field is therefore marked "Undisclosed, United States" with the coordinates left empty. The geographic details that survived are relative only: a private driveway, an intersection about fifty feet away, houses with a tree line behind them to the north, and a neighborhood with neighbors in it. That is enough to say the setting was suburban or rural residential, and no more.

The companion item, FBI-UAP-D029, is a digital rendering prepared by the FBI in 2026 "as a visual aid in support of the PURSUE initiative," based on the two witnesses' descriptions, and it serves as the featured image for this entry. It is an artist's reconstruction made fifteen years after the event from testimony alone, not a photograph. The single attempt to photograph the object, as noted, failed.

Significance

This is a document of middling weight in the collection, and its score reflects that. It contains no sensor data, no visual documentation and no location, and some fourteen years separate the event from its documentation. Three features nevertheless give it weight. The first is multiple witnesses: two people present at the same moment were interviewed together, and their accounts are recorded separately on the same form, including the point on which they differ over the triangle's shape. The second is the quality of the neutral details: lights recessed slightly from the corners, a diffuse glow rather than a beam, a pulsing sound, something grayish at the center of the underside. The third is the explicit documentation of what the witnesses do not know, foremost the absent memory of the vertical profile.

Comparatively, the document belongs to the group of large-triangle reports in this release, alongside FBI-UAP-D024 from 2002 and FBI-UAP-D026 and FBI-UAP-D030 from 2023: a large triangular outline, slow and relatively low flight, lights at the corners. What differs is no less material: here a pulsing sound was heard, whereas the 2023 reports from Colorado Springs stress a complete absence of noise. The documents assert no connection between the cases, and the archive asserts none.

Key People

Locations

Incidents

Notable Quotes

"On an evening in June or July 2011, it was dark outside when [the interviewee] was leaving his driveway located [redacted] at about 8 or 9 PM." -- page 1

"He saw a massive black isosceles triangle shaped object flying North." -- pages 1 to 2

"The object had a car-sized white light in each of its three corners that emitted a diffuse glow and were recessed back a bit from the corners." -- page 2

"The object was low to the ground, and creating a low humming noise that made a pulsing sound." -- page 2

"By the time [the interviewee] got his phone out, the object had flown over the tree line behind the houses to the north, and out of sight. He had seen the object for approximately 10-15 seconds. There were no contrails left behind the object." -- page 2

"[The interviewee] felt dumbfounded and awestruck during the experience." -- page 2

"He was overwhelmed by the size of it and how low it was to the ground. [He] thought the object may have been 800 feet above the ground, and based on the dimensions of their environment, he estimated the object was 200 feet long and 100 feet wide." -- page 2

"[He] believed the object had more of an equilateral triangle shape, but based on the calculated dimensions, it could have been more of an isosceles triangle." -- page 2

"[He] saw the three lights in the corners, but also remembered seeing something in the middle of the triangle that was grayish or graphite colored." -- page 2

"Neither [interviewee] had a clear memory of the thickness or any other description of the vertical profile of the triangle. They opined that they were initially underneath the triangle and didn't really have a view of its side or vertical profile." -- page 2

"They were then temporarily distracted by their unsuccessful attempt to get a phone out to video record the UAP, at the moment when they likely would have had a better view of the back profile." -- page 2