The Test Range Orbs

Two large orbs flared up side by side "just above the rotor disk", a senior US intelligence officer writes of a night flight over a weapons test range in late 2025. They were oval and orange with a white or yellow centre. More lit beneath them in a T, then dimmed in reverse order. Earlier a ground team had reported an orb that rose from the ground and came within ten feet of the helicopter before outrunning it. Later the officer watched the same kind of orbs flare above fighter jets crossing the range and remarked to the pilots that they seemed to be "chasing" the fighters.

What is on the record

Two records from the Department of War's PURSUE releases describe the night. USPER-Statement-Redacted came in the first release in May 2026. It is a SECRET//NOFORN statement with no agency identifier and no date of its own, and it withholds the date, the range, the call signs, the aircraft type and every witness name. ODNI-UAP-D001 is the officer's first-person narrative. It was released under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence prefix on 22 May 2026 and corrected on 26 May, and it names no one and no place. The two agree closely.

The pilots said they were recording, the statement notes, but many sightings sat above the helicopter and outside its infrared camera's view. No footage was released. The records supply an ordinary context themselves. The flight had gone out to trace loud thuds in the mountains and kept finding rocket debris, and a test ran at the site that day.

Two video tellings reached the archive first. Congressman Eric Burleson says he was briefed on plasmoid-type objects at a western US installation. A second telling, attributed to unnamed intelligence officials, describes three-metre orbs that interfered with the helicopter and chased scrambled F-16s. The records give no size, no interference and no fighter type. Their jets were already out on a training mission, and neither record says plasmoid or where the range is.

Why it sits where it does

The file now holds two government records beside the video tellings. The witnesses in the records are redacted: an intelligence officer, a colleague, two pilots and a ground team appear by role only. The one named person in the tellings was briefed rather than present. What flared over the range is not resolved here.