The declassified record describes not one object but a catalog of forms, and that catalog shifts across eras, theaters, and behaviors. The classic disc dominates the 1947 files and then all but disappears. The luminous orb never does: it is there in the wartime night-phenomena file, in the green fireballs over the 1949 nuclear labs, and it dominates the modern sensor record. Here is every morphology in the corpus, what attests it, and the patterns hiding in the shapes themselves.
Each form is rated by how well the primary documents support it: strong, circumstantial, contested, or historical (era terminology rather than a resolved modern sighting). Where declassified footage exists for a form, it is linked.
Orange and red spheres, often "super-hot" on FLIR; one orb releasing smaller ones.Western U.S. Event, Oct 2023; USPER helicopter encounter, 2025
The dominant modern form. Carries the parent-child and station-keeping behaviors. The strongest-attested shape in the corpus.
A glowing spherical object with a vertical, unwavering cylindrical pole or bar.UAE, 2024 (DOW-UAP-D27); Greece diamond-with-probe (DOW-UAP-D25)
A structured signature: a simple body with a fixed protrusion that does not move relative to it. Recurs across separate theaters.
"Diamond-shaped object with a non-maneuvering probe at the bottom," visible only on SWIR.Greece, January 2024 (DOW-UAP-D25)
Detected on shortwave infrared while invisible to the eye and standard IR, a detection anomaly as much as a shape.
A matte white, non-metallic, horizontal oval, completely motionless and silent.Cheyenne Mountain, Feb 2022 (FBI FD-302)
Five Fort Carson soldiers, over the NORAD complex. The shape is strongly described; the IC's backscatter explanation is contested.
FBI rendering only, no footage releasedElongated capsule and cylinder forms; "cigar-shaped or fast spherical."USCG C-144 Tyndall, 2024 (PR065/066); PR053, Oct 2022
The form made famous in 2004; here it appears as IR-hot capsules tracked by Coast Guard sensors.
"Featureless triangular object with a solid, unwavering silhouette"; FBI "Triangle Orbs."National-security facility (DOW-UAP-D51); FBI PR001, 2026
A solid dark delta, sometimes with corner lights. Distinct from the luminous-orb family.
An ovoid "football" body with three radial projections.INDOPACOM, 2024 (PR046)
A body with fixed structural protrusions, the closest the modern record comes to a "built" appearance.
A dark kite that translates laterally without turning; a transparent one that blocked then released a spotlight beam.Western U.S. Event, Oct 2023 (AARO briefing)
The transparent kite's beam-blocking is the single most optically anomalous detail in the corpus.
Witness + AARO reconstruction, no footageSpherical objects operating near the surface and a submarine; a "USO formation."PR067 (USO near sub); PR052 (USO formation)
Defined by medium-crossing behavior rather than a single shape, usually spherical.
The classic flying disc, overwhelmingly the language of the 1947–50 files; one contested modern composite sketch.FBI 62-HQ-83894 (1947–50); 2024 composite sketch (contested)
The defining shape of the early era that the modern sensor record almost never reproduces. Its absence after 1960 is itself a finding.
No modern footage of a classic disc exists in PURSUESort the resolved shapes by decade and two patterns appear. The disc and saucer own the 1947–59 files and then all but disappear, while the luminous orb runs the whole span: attested beside the earliest disc reports, in the 1949 green fireballs, and across a third of the 2020s record, where every structured modern form joins it. Bars show all documents per era; the muted segment is the unresolved share.
Where a shape appears is not random. The historical disc clusters on the U.S. nuclear complex; the modern orb and the structured forms cluster in the Gulf and Pacific military theaters; point-lights and tic-tacs belong to space.
Spans the whole timeline: the 1947–50 disc files over the nuclear labs, then the modern orb events (Western U.S., Northeastern, Cheyenne Mountain bean).
The densest modern military cluster: CENTCOM ISR orbs, the UAE sphere-with-pole, the Syrian instant-acceleration event.
Astronaut observations, Apollo through Gemini and Mercury: dot-like points and a cylinder seen through a sextant.
Greece (diamond-with-probe), Kazakhstan 1994 (90-degree turns), and the Soviet Sary Shagan weapons-range reporting.
INDOPACOM: the football body with three projections, and the East China Sea object that may have shed a sub-object.
Cross the shapes against the behaviors documented for them. The orb is the generalist; the structured forms cluster on infrared and SWIR detection anomalies; the silent motionless hover belongs to the bean. Shape and behavior are not independent.
| Form | Parent-child / split | Sharp maneuver | Silent | IR / SWIR anomaly | Station-keeping | Optical effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orb / Sphere | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | |
| Sphere + appendage | ● | ● | ||||
| Diamond | ● | ● | ||||
| Oval / Bean | ● | ● | ||||
| Triangle | ● | ● | ||||
| Tic-Tac / Cylinder | ● | ● | ||||
| Kite | ● | ● |
Declassified DoD footage for the forms that were captured on video. Full catalog on The Video Record.
Every form in this catalog is drawn from the PURSUE tranches — nothing here is sourced from social media or outside the release. Use this index to jump from a shape straight into the primary document that attests it. Where a page scan or sensor still has been declassified, you can open it inline.
The Tic-Tac/cylinder and transmedium/USO sets have no released page scan or sensor still — they are documented through the PURSUE video reductions, linked from each card above and gathered on The Video Record.