FD-302, “Thermally Elevated Aerial Object,” 2026

Unlike most FD-302s, this one is mostly a verbatim written statement: a U.S. government special agent gave the FBI a signed account of an evening observation in the western United States in 2026, and the form reproduces it word for word. It refers back to a sighting on the previous night, described in a “prior statement” that is not part of this file.

A Black Hawk for scale

At about 9:00 p.m., from the same observation area as before, the agent saw a thermally hot object in the same western sector and on a similar heading as the night before, but about two ridgelines farther west. At that range no features or configuration could be made out, though it appeared to be flying south, as the earlier object had. During the same period the agent filmed a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter operating nearby, on purpose, to give a visual and thermal reference for size and flight behavior. Comparing the two, the agent judged the object roughly half the Black Hawk’s size, and stresses that this is only an estimate based on appearance, distance and the reference footage.

What stays unknown

The statement says the agent could not tell its make, model or propulsion, or whether it was a fixed-wing, rotary-wing or some other unmanned aircraft, before terrain and distance hid it. The agent does not claim anything more. Another 2026 thermal sighting by a special agent in the West, triggered by a radio-frequency alert, is FBI-UAP-D032.