Senior Intelligence Official Says Orbs Flared up around His Helicopter, Came within 10 Feet of the Rotor, Then Broke off to Chase Fighter Jets
The Department of War dropped the first tranche of declassified UAP files. The release is the opening batch under President Trump’s PURSUE program, the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. One redacted SECRET/NOFORN witness statement is the most arresting document in the bundle.
Titled “USPER Statement About UAP Sighting,” the report is a timeline filed by a senior US intelligence official describing a multi-hour helicopter mission in late 2025. The witness was joined in the cabin by a second senior intelligence official and pilots from a state partner organization. They were searching the mountains west of a classified site after personnel on the ground reported seeing orbs and hearing “thuds as if something had fallen and hit the ground.”
The mission was supposed to be a daytime search. By 22:00 they were still in the air.
At 22:02, a Listening Post/Observation Post crew was tracking an orb on FLIR described as “super-hot” and hovering at ground level. The orb broke into two objects moving south at high speed. The helicopter couldn’t match the pace and broke off pursuit. The co-pilot reported watching under night vision as something emerged from the two objects and traveled away in a different direction at high speed.
The LP/OP then relayed that the orb “gained elevation, came within ten feet of [Call Sign 1]” before heading east. 5 US military aircraft were in the airspace conducting a training mission.
At 22:18, the witnesses spotted a swarm of lights “too many to count” moving in all directions. At 22:27, the report continues:
“[Witness 1 (naked eye) and the pilots (NVG)] spotted two large orbs appear in close proximity to [Call Sign 1] to the west and above the rotor disk. From the naked eye perspective, the two orbs appeared to flare up and remain stationary side by side. They appeared to be oval shaped, orange in color with a white or yellow center and emitting light in all directions. After a few seconds, a third orb flared up below the two, and then another one below that one until there were four or five in total below the original two.”
Over the next 30 minutes, the same horizontal formation appeared in different locations. A triangle formation of 3 orbs. A swarm moving in all directions. 4 orbs flaring up over the descending military aircraft. Each formation went dark in reverse order before the next one appeared.
The witness’s own conclusion, filed at the end of the statement:”The orbs appeared to break off from [Call Sign 1] and pursue the [military aircraft].”
The pilots indicated they were recording but most of the sightings were above the helicopter, outside the FLIR camera angle. The helicopter ran low on fuel and returned to base at 23:16.
The document is heavily redacted on names, exact locations, the partner organization, and the type of military aircraft involved. It’s one of roughly 160 records in the first PURSUE release, with more batches expected.