In the fall of 1974 the FBI answered a correspondent named Larry Bryant, who had asked about an "alleged April 8, 1954 sighting of an occupied unidentified flying object (UFO)." Per the archive's summary, the Bureau said it held no record of the event and did not collect information regarding UFO sightings. The exchange is in FBI-UAP-D014-R4, filed with a September 1967 Chicago memo about an eleven-year-old who heard a "weird" noise and saw a "flash of light going north in the sky." The memo ends by noting the information was furnished to a sergeant at the Army-Air Force 755th Radar Squadron. Taken down, passed along.
Fifty years after the Bryant reply, in November 2024, two FBI special agents went out to a witness's patio in the northeastern United States, about 48 degrees and overcast, and wrote up lights they were watching themselves. That form is FBI-UAP-D007.
Both sit in the same archive, which now holds 105 FBI records under FBI UAP files, the newest added today in Release 07. Read in order, they show what the Bureau's paperwork does with a UAP report. Less than the headlines suggest, and odder than the 1974 letter would predict.
Two forms do most of the work
The FD-302 records interviews. The FD-1057 records investigative activity that is not an interview: a site survey, a video pickup, a forensic sketch session, an agent's own observations. Both carry the revision line "Rev. 5-8-10" in their extracted text, and the FD-302s quoted below all include the same sentence: "This document contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI." The newer releases add a third type, digital renderings prepared from witness descriptions and filed as separate records.
That sentence sets the terms. The forms record what a witness said or what an agent did. None of them rules on what anything was. Where an assessment exists, it comes from somewhere else.
Colorado Springs, 2022: one incident, four records
A February 2022 sighting near Fort Carson produced at least four documents, and they do not fully agree.
FBI-UAP-D001, an FD-302, summarizes a March 2025 Microsoft Teams interview with a U.S. military service member. Early February 2022, about 1:00 or 2:00 PM, clear blue skies by his account. He and four others from his unit saw an object hovering in a "saddle" of Cheyenne Mountain: matte white or off-white, non-metallic, "bean-shaped," covered in intersecting lines forming an abstract polygon pattern. Motionless for the 3-5 minutes they watched, silent, about the size of a pool cue at arm's length. None of the five had a phone. They looked away to decide who would fetch one, and when they looked back it was gone. Each drew it from memory and the drawings were consistent. He said AARO contacted him in early 2024 but he was never interviewed by AARO or anyone else.
FBI-UAP-D002 is the FD-1057, a forensic sketch interview at 26 Federal Plaza in New York with an Operational Projects Unit forensic artist. This witness, a former Army intelligence officer, puts it at 11:25 am under a cloudless "blue bird" sky. His object is "potato" shaped, creamy and opalescent, made of what he described as articulating fish scales or panels shifting in slow waves while the object stayed perfectly still. After about two minutes it "cloaked" in the time it took to turn a head. The sketch work became FBI-UAP-D003, a digital rendering.
The analysis is ICA-UAP-D001, from an Intelligence Community partner of AARO. It dates the event to 0935 on 15 February 2022, gives the duration as 30-180 seconds, and assesses with low confidence possible backscattering of sunlight, light off the snow on Cheyenne Mountain illuminating the underside of low clouds. It notes that weather reports indicated partly to mostly cloudy skies that morning despite the witnesses' clear-sky accounts, and that no aircraft or balloons were noted in the area. The archive lists the incident as unresolved as of June 2026.
Three times of day, three durations, an argument about the sky. The FBI forms just write the accounts down. The disagreement only shows because the files sit next to each other.
The northeastern cluster, 2024-2026
The largest modern block concerns one general area in the northeastern United States. The archive states the link in the same words each time: the subject matter in FBI-UAP-D004 through D008 and the associated video corresponds to reports from the same general area. Geography, nothing more.
FBI-UAP-D004 logs an October 2024 contact in which agents collected video from a U.S. person. FBI-UAP-D005 records an October 2024 interview about incidents over the previous three years. FBI-UAP-D006 is a November 2024 site survey. Then D007, whose stated purpose was to confirm the witness's reports and video. About twenty minutes after the agents went out to the patio, one saw a white pulsation of light that moved horizontally "with somewhat erratic movements," did not reflect off the water, danced around for less than ten seconds, and disappeared. Later both agents saw what they believed to be a UAP in the same spot. Five photos were taken. The form says they were mostly blurry and that a tripod or other stable platform would be required. FBI-UAP-D008 is the December 2024 survey of the place where the two agents had made their observations.
A 2026 pair uses matching language. In FBI-UAP-D009, a witness saw a red sphere about one meter across with a "white plasma sun" at its center, then a second one, the two moving off "as if they were flying in formation or were tethered together." Video is attached. The companion interview is FBI-UAP-D010.
Release 05 and the triangle interviews
Release 05, on August 7, brought a run of triangle FD-302s, each paired with a rendering. Fourteen cases in the archive now carry the triangle tag. What stands out in the FBI ones is the lag. These are memories, taken down years later.
FBI-UAP-D024 is a March 2024 interview with a former military pilot. Most of it is about white lights seen from the cockpit since October 2023, once filmed on his Samsung Galaxy S22. Then June 2002, Bagram, about 4:30 AM, stargazing with another pilot, when the stars started blacking out: something huge, an equilateral triangle he put at 500 feet in size, west to east, silent, no lights, possibly 150 knots. The other pilot said, "did you see that?" He did not discuss it further with anyone. The rendering is FBI-UAP-D025. Twenty-two years between event and form.
FBI-UAP-D026, a January 2026 interview, goes back to Colorado Springs, October 2023, about 10:50 PM. A former Department of War employee on his back porch saw a triangle, dark gray or silver, possibly as low as 300 feet and roughly the size of a large SUV, cross from northeast to southwest in about four seconds. It looked almost see-through, "ripples like you were looking at an object that is underwater," with a band of silverish blue light along the flat trailing edge. Just before he lost it, the left side banked to almost vertical without the path changing. Silent. He said he was very familiar with all USAF aircraft, including the latest unmanned drones. His wife saw it too. The rendering is FBI-UAP-D027.
FBI-UAP-D028 is an April 2025 interview with two former service members about an evening in June or July 2011: a massive black triangle flying north, low, a car-sized white light recessed in each corner, a low pulsing hum, 10-15 seconds, no contrails. One estimated 800 feet up, 200 feet long, 100 feet wide. Fourteen years. The rendering is FBI-UAP-D029.
The western files, 2026
The other 2026 cluster is in the western United States, and it is where the files start to include written statements from government special agents.
FBI-UAP-D037 records three incidents inside about five hours on a rainy night. Dull red, "dash" shaped lights along a mountain ridgeline, "orb-like" through night optical devices. Later a light stopped about 400 meters away, a second appeared about 6 feet off the ground, and a glow moved through a dry wash behind them. Thermal optics got nothing. Then the watch. His automatic analog watch, accurate at about 10:00 PM and never off by more than 60-90 seconds in roughly five years, read 25 minutes ahead of his phone and the vehicle clock at 12:40 AM. The other person's digital watch matched the phones. The second witness's interview is FBI-UAP-D040.
FBI-UAP-D033 is a Special Agent's signed statement, attached to an FD-302 and reproduced "verbatim below for ease of reading," under the heading "Unidentified Aerial Object Observation Report." At about 2100 hours the agent saw a thermally elevated aerial object two ridge lines farther west than an object seen the previous night, flying southbound. The agent filmed an Army Black Hawk in the same area for scale and put the object at roughly half its size, "an estimate only." Make, model and propulsion undetermined.
Release 07: FBI-UAP-D043
Today's addition, FBI-UAP-D043, has the same arrangement and the same heading. The archive describes it as a 2026 interview with two Federal Special Agents about an incident at a national security site, incident date June 2026. Whether it is the "previous night" D033 mentions, neither document says, and the dates are redacted.
In the co-signed statement, someone stationed nearby called out a thermally elevated aerial object to the west. The two agents ran across their observation post and almost immediately saw "a substantial, nonreflective, dark black triangular object most resembling a delta wing drone." Estimated wingspan nine to fifteen feet, depth six to nine, thickness one to two. Through a handheld thermal device it read hotter than ambient, consistent across the airframe, no visible exhaust. It climbed vertically over a ridge line, came toward them, descended southeast, and switched from vertical to horizontal flight. They lost it at about 1.5 miles. Total duration approximately three seconds. No sound. By the last lines the statement is calling it "the unmanned aerial system," which is the agents' word for it and nothing more.
The old files read differently
The historical material is correspondence and referrals. Take the letter, log it, send it to whoever might own the question.
FBI-UAP-D011 is the clean example. On January 31, 1949, the Rev. Charles Barnes wrote Hoover about four beams he had seen the previous May converging in the Cascade mountains, "a great explosion effect" where they met, visible at least ten minutes. He mentioned a prewar article on radio-beam rainfall experiments and a son working with the AEC at Hanford. Per the archive's summary, Hoover thanked him and forwarded the letter to the Atomic Energy Commission.
FBI-UAP-D012, a Newark inquiry covering New Jersey from 1952-1967, and FBI-UAP-D013, Washington state from 1952-1960, are mostly memoranda and correspondence with the Air Force. The Air Force had the question then. Against those files, the 1974 letter reads as an accurate description of its era.
What changed, on paper
Somewhere between 1974 and 2024 the flow reversed. The old files send reports out, to the Air Force, the AEC, a radar squadron sergeant. The modern files have agents conducting interviews, surveying sites, collecting video, sitting witnesses down with forensic artists, logging what they see from a patio, and taking signed statements from other agents at observation posts. The analysis still happens elsewhere, at AARO and its partners. None of the forms remark on the change. It shows up in who signs them.
The CIA's 23 files are compared in FBI vs. CIA UAP files. The FD-302s keep to their one sentence throughout. No recommendations, no conclusions, just what somebody said they saw, sometimes decades later.