The Department of War's PURSUE Release 01 identifies this FBI item as "FBI September 2023 Sighting - Serial 4," with an incident date of September 1, 2023 and a United States location. The release metadata describes an FBI 302 interview with a U.S. citizen about a first-hand UAP encounter at a U.S. test site, and says the witness described an object as "metallic/gray in color." The linked PDF, however, is the remote asset currently paired with this entry and its readable text describes a "metallic bronze" object, so the public release contains a metadata-to-PDF tension rather than a fully harmonized record.12
The FD-302 Interview
The PDF is a two-page scanned FD-302/FD-302a marked as an FBI official record. It documents an in-person September 2023 interview, date-entered and drafted in October 2023, with names, offices, building identifiers, file numbers, and exact site details redacted. The form states that it contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI.2
The interviewee said she was working with contractors on a special project and had restricted airspace or ranges for upcoming testing. At 7:02 a.m., after a base briefing, the group drove in three vehicles toward the test site. Between 7:15 and 7:30 a.m., a gate opened only after several attempts; the record notes no prior or later operating issues with that gate.2
As she drove through the gate, the witness reported seeing a cigar-shaped object southwest of the group, about 500 to 3,000 feet above the nearest tree line. An agent note placed that tree line about one mile southwest of the witness position. The text says the object was nearly hovering while moving east to west, had an intense diamond-white light with an apparent ring at its eastern end, was silent, and appeared roughly two to three Blackhawk helicopters long.2
The witness and another person watched the object for five to ten seconds before it disappeared from a clear sky. The file reports no photos or video, no noticed engine interference, and the witness's statement that fifteen years of exposure to U.S. military aircraft and drones had not shown her anything like the object she observed.2
Redactions and Missing Evidence
The document is a witness-interview serial, not a technical assessment. Redactions remove the site, identities, special project, test details, and exact date portions, and the public file supplies no radar track, sensor data, photographs, video, weather report beyond the stated clear sky, or follow-on investigation. The gate behavior, the restricted-airspace context, and the witness's aviation familiarity are recorded as interview claims; the released file does not establish what caused the sighting or whether those circumstances were connected.2
The metadata/PDF color mismatch also matters. The release entry's gray-language and the linked PDF's bronze-language may reflect a pairing error, a duplicate serial naming issue, or another cataloging problem, but the released materials do not resolve it. For this page, the PDF link preserved in the current source record remains the cited primary asset.12
A Test-Site Account With Caveats
This serial matters because it preserves a near-contemporaneous FBI interview from a modern test-site UAP report, not just a later summary. It provides the observation setting, movement sequence, approximate bearing and height, duration, color/light/body description, witness hesitation, corroborating passenger, lack of imagery, and the FBI's own warning that its FD-302 is not an analytical conclusion. Those details make it useful for tracing what was reported to federal investigators while also showing how little public evidence exists beyond the redacted witness account.2