Key takeaways
- In October 2023 a Colorado police officer filmed a light he called 'another orb', about 300 feet up beside a highway. The Pentagon published his one-page transcript and four phone videos on 18 September 2026
- He says he checked radar and found 'no aircraft flying in the area', and that the light had been 'flying stationary for about 15 minutes'
- Two FBI interviews released in August 2026 describe triangles, not orbs, over Colorado Springs in the same month
- The better-known 'orbs launching orbs' case from October 2023 is placed only in the western US. Its location is redacted, so the files don't put it in Colorado
- Nothing in the files links the Colorado reports. They share a state, a month and a few words, and no explanation is offered or ruled out for any of them
Jump to section 8 sections
- What Are the Colorado UFO Orbs?
- What Did the Colorado Police Officer Say About the Orb?
- What Do the Colorado Police UFO Videos Show?
- Colorado Springs UFO Sightings: What Did the FBI Witnesses Report?
- Were the 'Orbs Launching Orbs' in Colorado?
- Are the Colorado UFO Sightings Connected?
- What Could the Colorado Orb Have Been?
- How to Watch the Colorado UFO Videos Yourself
In October 2023 a police officer pulled up beside a Colorado highway and filmed a light he called "another orb". Nearly three years later the Pentagon published his Colorado police UFO video, four clips in all, with a one-page transcript of what he said. The same month produced two FBI interviews about triangles over Colorado Springs, and the famous "orbs launching orbs" case, which is often lumped in with them.
So were police, FBI agents and federal officers all reporting UFOs over Colorado that month? Not quite. The FBI files are interviews with members of the public, and the federal agents' case is never placed in Colorado at all. This post goes through what each file says and what nothing in them connects. For the full case record, with every clip and the redaction codes, see our guide to the Colorado UFO orbs of October 2023.
What Are the Colorado UFO Orbs?
The Colorado UFO orbs are lights reported in Colorado in October 2023, and the core of the case is one local police officer's report to AARO, the Pentagon's UFO office. His transcript and four videos came out on 18 September 2026 under a new "LLE" label, for local law enforcement. AARO lists the case as unresolved.
They arrived in the Pentagon's sixth UFO file release, which was mostly about the old AAWSAP research papers. The officer's files were the only ones in that batch from someone outside the military and the federal government.
What Did the Colorado Police Officer Say About the Orb?
He said he was watching an orb about 300 feet up, that radar showed no aircraft nearby, and that it had hovered for about 15 minutes before coming towards him. The transcript, LLE-UAP-D001, is his own narration while filming, and it lasts just over a minute.
He starts with the time, his mile marker and his direction, all blacked out, and then says:
"I am watching another orb that is flying approximately... 300 feet up off the ground. I did check radar, there is no aircraft flying in the area."
Police radio cuts in twice, both times redacted. He adds that it "has been flying stationary for about 15 minutes". After the sound of passing traffic and a large truck comes his last line: "Okay, the craft is flying closer to me now. I can see it."
That's all the transcript has. It doesn't give a size or a shape, or say what kind of radar he checked. The Pentagon's notes on the videos add one detail: he described the light as "silent" and featuring "red, blue, and green flashing lights".
The word to watch is "another". It could mean more than one orb was in view, that he'd seen one earlier, or that "orb" was already the word being used on the radio. The files don't say which, and we're not going to guess.
What Do the Colorado Police UFO Videos Show?
The four Colorado police videos show a small point of light in a dark sky, filmed on a phone, with no shape you can make out. Together they run to just over 18 minutes. The longest, PR002, lasts 15 minutes, which fits the officer's "stationary for about 15 minutes".
AARO attaches the same warning to all four clips. Phone autofocus and image processing "may distort the apparent morphological and kinematic characteristics of distant subjects, particularly at high magnification". Put simply, a zoomed phone at night can make a point of light look bigger, oddly shaped or on the move when it isn't. In PR004, the clip that goes with the transcript, headlights from passing traffic twice throw the focus off.
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Colorado Springs UFO Sightings: What Did the FBI Witnesses Report?
The two FBI witnesses reported triangles, not orbs. Their accounts are FBI interview records released in the fifth batch of files on 7 August 2026, and they come from members of the public, not FBI agents. Both describe Colorado Springs in October 2023. Our black triangle UFO files page covers them in full.
In the first, FBI-UAP-D026, a man sitting on his back porch with his wife at about 10:50pm saw a hazy, see-through triangle pass over the house in about four seconds. "The UAP was completely silent," the record says. He lived near an airport and knew what ordinary aircraft looked and sounded like.
In the second, FBI-UAP-D030, a man outside at work between 8pm and 9:30pm saw a solid black triangle with a red light at each corner come out of a strange, still grey cloud. He thought it might be as big as the car park he was standing in, and said it banked the opposite way to an aircraft.
Neither interview mentions orbs or police, and both were recorded two years or more after the event. Colorado Springs also has an older case from February 2022, the Cheyenne Mountain "potato" sighting, which is a separate event.
Were the "Orbs Launching Orbs" in Colorado?
Not according to the files. In the Western U.S. Event, six federal agents watched an orange orb release smaller red orbs over two nights in October 2023. The location is given only as a sensitive site in the western United States, and the details are redacted.
It gets grouped with the Colorado reports because it shares the month and the word orb. But it's a different case with far more paperwork: three two-person teams, written statements and an AARO analysis that judged about 60% of what they saw to be plausibly military flares from an exercise. Our Western U.S. Event page goes through it, and our first report on the orbs launching orbs files covers the release.
Are the Colorado UFO Sightings Connected?
Nothing in the released files connects them. The police officer and the two Colorado Springs witnesses were in the same state in the same month, and the officer and one FBI witness both used the word silent. That's where the overlap ends.
They describe different things: a hovering coloured light, a hazy triangle and a black triangle with red corners. Every October date is redacted in all three Colorado files, so we can't even tell whether any two fell on the same night. A shared word tells you how people describe a light at night. It doesn't tell you they saw the same thing.
What Could the Colorado Orb Have Been?
The files don't say, and they don't rule anything out beyond the officer's own radar check. With the date, time and direction all redacted, nobody outside the case can test an explanation either.
A silent light hovering a few hundred feet up with red, green and blue flashes does match some ordinary things. A drone carries coloured lights and can hold still for a long time. An aircraft coming head-on from far away shows red and green lights and seems to hang in the sky. And a bright star or planet low down twinkles through every colour, and on a zoomed phone it can seem to drift and pulse. None of that is a verdict. It's the checklist worth running before calling anything unexplained.
You can run it yourself. See what you can see in the sky tonight for the bright planets, check for ISS passes tonight, and our guide to spotting the ISS and satellites shows how they move. The UK night sky this week lists what's up, and stargazing for beginners covers the usual suspects.
How to Watch the Colorado UFO Videos Yourself
All four videos and the transcript are public domain. Here is PR004, the clip that goes with the transcript (DVIDS 1023416):
One slip in the release: PR004's title says October 2023, but its description says the footage was taken "in January 2024". Everything else in the set says October 2023, so we've gone with that.
The rest are in our PURSUE files browser under LLE, which plays the clips and links a download, along with the FBI interviews under D026 and D030. Our guide to the US PURSUE file releases explains the file names, and the UAP research hub lists every case we've written up from the original documents.
Header image: an illustration made with Google Gemini, not a photograph of the officer's location. Transcript and video frames: LLE-UAP-D001 and PR002, US Department of War via DVIDS, public domain. Triangle drawing: FBI-UAP-D031, public domain.
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Ian ClaytonAmateur astronomer and founder of WatchTheStars.co.uk, dedicated to helping others explore the wonders of our universe. Full profile →
