AARO Unresolved Case Analysis Update: Western United States Event

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a. The reporting agents did not collect video footage, photographic imagery, or other
technical data during the incident.  Human capacity for optical estimation regarding the
distance, size, speed, and direction of travel of unreferenced phenomena in low-light
conditions is constrained by intrinsic biological and perceptual limitations.  As a standard
analytic practice, AARO considers the influence of such limitations when assessing
narrative descriptions of a phenomenon’s morphological and performance characteristics.
In this case, AARO assesses that contextual factors supersede those limitations, and that
the nature of the reported incident warrants further investigation.  These factors include:
i.
The close alignment of the phenomena’s reported morphological features and
kinematic profiles with those of other reported incidents in the western United
States region.
ii.
AARO’s favorable assessment of the reporting agents’ contextual awareness of
the operational environment and overall familiarity with U.S. military systems.
iii.
The high degree of consistency in the agents’ narrative descriptions of potentially
anomalous features, as seen from multiple viewing angles.
b. Due to a lack of instrument-measured distance data, AARO cannot determine whether the
phenomena’s reported silence corresponds to an inherent characteristic or to acoustic
attenuation.
c. The total number of orange “mother orbs” is unclear based upon the narrative reporting.
As described, AARO finds two interpretations plausible:
i.
A single orange “mother orb” periodically “launching” smaller red “orbs.”
ii.
Multiple orange “mother orbs” periodically “launching” smaller red “orbs.”
4. Current Case Disposition and Hypotheses.
Approximately 40 percent of the reported phenomena lack a plausible explanation after
first stage analysis and thus remain unresolved. To evaluate this incident, AARO cross-
correlated the agents’ narrative accounts against commercial and military flight logs, radar data,
spatial estimates, and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data.  AARO
considered several hypotheses to account for the currently unresolved component of the
phenomena.
a. Misidentified Military Aircraft Exhaust (Ruled Out): The reported characteristics do not
align with those of military aircraft exhaust.  Though military aircraft were present in the
airspace, their altitudes were too high for standard exhaust to appear as orange “orbs.”
This hypothesis is also inconsistent with the agents’ characterization of the phenomena as
“silent,” the reported loitering behavior, and the apparent “launching” of red “orbs.”
b. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) (Unlikely): Agents reported that, in at least one case,
red “orbs” persisted over a period of several hours.  A loitering time of several hours
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