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Orbs Over a Colorado Interstate: The First Local Law Enforcement Records in the PURSUE Archive

Interstate highway, Colorado, USA (mile marker redacted) · October 2023 · Nocturnal lights / police-attended report · United States

Frame from LLE-UAP-PR002 at about three minutes twenty seconds, brightened here to reveal foreground detail that is invisible at normal exposure. Two parallel power lines cross the frame and the bright object sits above them, with a second and much fainter point of light higher and to the left. The white core carries a pink and magenta fringe, which is what a point source looks like through a phone camera at high digital zoom. (Local law enforcement footage submitted to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Released by the U.S. Department of War under PURSUE Release 06, 18 September 2026. U.S. Government work. Brightening and cropping by UAP Globe.)

A Colorado police officer pulled over on an interstate, pointed a phone at the sky and narrated for fifteen minutes. The Department of War published the result on 18 September 2026 under a record prefix that had never appeared before, LLE for local law enforcement, in four videos and a transcript. The officer says he checked radar and found no aircraft. The same release redacts the two fields that would let anyone else check the sky.

What did witnesses see at Interstate highway?

The record released by the Department of War consists of four videos and a single page transcript. Together the clips total just under twenty two minutes of footage, all of it shot on the rear camera of a commercially available mobile phone.

The four clips run 1 minute 19 seconds, 15 minutes, 27 seconds and 1 minute 42 seconds, and this archive has confirmed each duration against the released files. All four are vertical, 608 by 1080, and all four have had the bottom half of the frame blurred by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office to obscure, in its words, information whose release could reasonably be expected to affect the privacy or other protected interest of a United States person or commercial entity.

The transcript, released as LLE-UAP-D001, is a single page and is the most informative document in the set. It opens at timestamp 00:00 with the officer stating the date and time, both redacted, and his position: "I am at mile marker [redacted] I-[redacted] westbound direction. I am watching another orb that is flying approximately..." The sentence resumes at 00:15 with "...300 feet up off the ground. I did check radar, there is no aircraft flying in the area." At 00:30, over background radio traffic, he says "This has been flying stationary for about 15 minutes." At 00:45 and 01:00 the transcript notes the sound of vehicles and then of a large truck passing, and the officer says "Okay, the craft is flying closer to me now. I can see it."

Two things in that short transcript are worth drawing out. The officer says "another orb", which implies this was not the first object he had watched that night, and which fits a record set of four separate recordings. And his statement that it had been "flying stationary for about 15 minutes" matches the duration of the longest video in the release exactly.

This archive examined the footage directly. At normal exposure the clips are almost entirely black with a single bright point, the frame mean sitting near zero against a peak pixel value above 200. Brightening the frames reveals what the darkness hides: two parallel power lines running across the frame, with the object clearly above them rather than among them, and at one point a second much fainter light higher and to the left. The bright object is a rounded core with a pink to magenta fringe and, in some frames, a short teardrop tail. The apparent position of the object within the frame wanders considerably between samples taken across the fifteen minute clip, which is consistent with a handheld camera panning and zooming rather than with measured motion of the object.

More footage and images of this sighting

The object at normal exposure about thirty seconds into LLE-UAP-PR002, cropped and enlarged. A single power line crosses beneath it. The core is white with a warm fringe and a short downward tail, the appearance of a bright point source at high digital zoom on a phone camera. — The object at normal exposure about thirty seconds into LLE-UAP-PR002, cropped and enlarged. A single power line crosses beneath it. The core is white with a warm fringe and a short downward tail, the appearance of a bright point source at high digital zoom on a phone camera. Local law enforcement footage submitted to AARO. Released by the U.S. Department of War under PURSUE Release 06, 18 September 2026. U.S. Government work. Crop and enlargement by UAP Globe.

LLE-UAP-D001, the single page transcript of the officer narrating his own recording. The black bars are Freedom of Information Act exemptions (b)(7)(A) and (b)(7)(C), and they remove the date, the time, the interstate number and the mile marker. Those are precisely the fields an independent astronomical or weather check would need. — LLE-UAP-D001, the single page transcript of the officer narrating his own recording. The black bars are Freedom of Information Act exemptions (b)(7)(A) and (b)(7)(C), and they remove the date, the time, the interstate number and the mile marker. Those are precisely the fields an independent astronomical or weather check would need. Office of the Under Secretary of War, Intelligence and Security. Released under PURSUE Release 06, 18 September 2026. U.S. Government work.

What is the official explanation?

The material was submitted by a local law enforcement officer to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office and published by the Department of War on 18 September 2026 in the sixth PURSUE tranche. The Department classifies all four videos as an Unresolved UAP Report, which is its category for material it has not explained.

AARO appended the same comment to every one of the four videos, and it is a caution rather than a conclusion: "Cellular devices of the type used to capture this footage employ autofocus and other automated image-processing functions that may distort the apparent morphological and kinematic characteristics of distant subjects, particularly at high magnification." In other words the agency is warning that the shape the object appears to have, and the way it appears to move, may both be artefacts of the phone.

The agency also describes the officer's own account of the phenomenon in consistent terms across all four records. He described it as "silent" and as featuring "red, blue, and green flashing lights".

The release carries an inconsistency this archive is flagging rather than resolving. The manifest dates the incident to October 2023 for all five records, and the titles of four of them say October 2023, but the description attached to LLE-UAP-PR004 states that the officer submitted that particular footage in January 2024. The Department does not explain whether the January date is a second sighting, a later submission of October material, or an error.

The prefix itself is new. Every previous PURSUE record has carried a DOW, FBI, CIA, ODNI or similar originator code. LLE, for local law enforcement, appears for the first time in this release, and these five records are its entire contents so far.

What did the witnesses think it was?

The officer is not named and cannot be, because the Department has redacted his identity along with the date, the time, the highway number and the mile marker. The redaction codes used are (b)(7)(A) and (b)(7)(C), the Freedom of Information Act exemptions covering interference with law enforcement proceedings and unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

What survives the redactions is a professional witness doing something useful. He states his position by route and mile marker, he notes his direction of travel, he gives an altitude estimate, and, most usefully, he reports that he checked radar and found no aircraft in the area. Background radio traffic and the sound of passing vehicles and a large truck corroborate that he is where he says he is, working, on a road.

His altitude estimate is the weakest element of his own account and should be treated as such. A single observer at night, looking at an isolated light with no reference points, cannot determine range, and an estimate of "300 feet up off the ground" carries no more weight than any other unaided guess at the distance of a light in the dark. The officer's radar check is more valuable, but it establishes only that the object was not a transponder-equipped aircraft in controlled airspace, which is a narrower claim than it first appears.

Is the Orbs Over a Colorado Interstate: The First Local Law Enforcement Records in the PURSUE Archive real? The two-pass assessment

Pass one, how could this be mundane. The strongest prosaic candidate is an astronomical object, and much of the evidence points that way. An object that stays "stationary for about 15 minutes" behaves like something at effectively infinite range rather than something hovering at 300 feet. Red, blue and green flashing is the classic description of a bright star or planet scintillating at low elevation, where the light crosses several air masses and is torn into rapid colour changes. The pink and magenta fringing this archive measured around the white core is what a defocused point source looks like through a phone lens at high digital zoom, and it is the same signature the archive documented in the Spring Hill, Tennessee case, where the object resolved to Capella at thirteen degrees elevation. AARO's own comment about autofocus at high magnification points in the same direction. A distant aircraft holding a landing light, or a tethered or drifting light, are weaker but live alternatives, and the officer's radar check does not exclude an aircraft without a transponder or below radar coverage.

There is one observation that cuts against the simplest version of that reading. The object sits above the power lines rather than among them, so it is not a lamp on the wires the officer was parked beneath, and it is at least further away than that foreground. That rules out the nearest prosaic explanation without touching the astronomical one.

Pass two, if it is what the officer thought. Then a trained observer watched a silent, brightly lit object hold position for a quarter of an hour close enough to a public highway to film it repeatedly over what may have been months, checked the air picture, found nothing, and reported it through his chain to a federal office that has now published it unexplained.

The honest verdict is that this case cannot be closed from the outside, and the reason is the redactions. This archive's standard method for a light in the night sky is to fix the time and the place and then compute what was actually there: solar depression for the satellite window, an ephemeris for the planets and bright stars, the nearest automated weather station for cloud, and the migration radar for birds. Every one of those instruments needs a timestamp and a coordinate. The Department has redacted the date, the time, the interstate and the mile marker, so not one of them can be run. The exemptions are ordinary and their purpose is legitimate, but their effect is that the public cannot test the most testable case in the tranche. The tier is Unknown, which is what this archive uses when no official explanation exists, and it is unlikely to move unless the underlying fields are released.

One further note on scope. Two other October 2023 Colorado cases already sit in this archive, the Colorado Springs triangle interviews from FBI FD-302s and the western United States orbs encounter reported by federal agents. This is a different record: a different reporting agency, a different witness, and a different described phenomenon. Nothing published establishes a link between the three, and this archive does not assert one.

Sources

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