2026 Western U.S. Black Triangle Sighting

The 2026 Western U.S. Black Triangle Sighting is an encounter that federal special agents reported at a sensitive national security site in the western United States in 2026; the government's file catalogue dates it to June. It is documented in two separate records released on October 23, 2026, in PURSUE UFO Files Release 07: an FBI interview form, FBI-UAP-D043, and an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office memorandum for record of a witness debrief, DOW-UAP-D176. Both redact the date, the site and the witnesses' names, and neither includes a photograph or sensor recording of the object. The government lists the case among its unresolved files, meaning it has made no determination about what the agents saw.

The FBI record is an FD-302 reproducing a written statement co-signed by two special agents, whose agency is redacted. They say that after an agent at another observation post called out a thermal detection to the west, they crossed to the western side of their own post and almost immediately saw "a substantial, nonreflective, dark black triangular object most resembling a delta wing drone," with an estimated wingspan of nine to fifteen feet. One agent watched it through a handheld thermal device and saw an even signature, hotter than ambient, with no visible exhaust; the other tracked it by eye. In their account it rose vertically over a ridge about three miles west, climbed roughly 200 feet above it, then flew fast toward them and descended southeast until they lost sight of it about 1.5 miles away. They put the whole sighting at about three seconds and heard no sound. Nine landscape illustrations attached to the form show the object's changing position; the New York Post described them as sketches.

AARO's memorandum, drawn from a debrief of two federal special agents and a corroborating account from a third official at a separate observation post, gives a longer sequence. It says the third witness detected the object over the ridge line with long-range thermal equipment and radioed the others, whose tripod-mounted sensors were pointed east. It describes a "matte black triangular shape" with a thirteen-to-fifteen-foot wingspan that rose vertically for about ten seconds to 200 to 300 feet above the ridge, hovered for about twenty seconds, then banked and dropped into a canyon drainage within two to three seconds, at a speed the witnesses compared to a fighter jet. The memo records no sound, an even thermal signature without exhaust and a seamless surface with no visible intakes, control surfaces or cockpit, and notes that no instrumented speed measurement was obtained. A ground survey the next morning found no wreckage, scarring or vegetation damage, and according to the official file description, the memorandum also records a second observation the following evening.

The two records do not fully agree. The FBI statement puts the entire sighting at about three seconds and the wingspan as low as nine feet, while the AARO debrief describes roughly half a minute of ascent and hover before the final dash. AARO says the incident warrants further investigation because its reported shape and flight profile closely align with other reported incidents in the western United States, and the official description says the memorandum presents no conclusive finding about the object's nature or origin. Both files carry the government's caution that the witnesses' descriptions reflect their subjective interpretation at the time.

The case led release-day coverage. The New York Post computed a speed of about 1,800 mph from the FBI figures and reported that government officials had ruled out American technology and doubted a foreign origin; NewsNation reported officials suggesting the United States may be years from comparable technology. Those assessments came from unnamed officials and do not appear in the released records. The National News Desk noted that officials describe such files as unresolved because investigators lacked enough information for a definitive identification, not because of any link to extraterrestrial activity. With its date and site withheld and no sensor data released, the case rests on three federal witnesses' detailed but differing accounts, and the government has left it unresolved.