THINKABOUTIT-UFOS.COM — BREAKING UAP DISCLOSURE REPORT

The Fifth Release: Cold Orbs Over the Gulf of Oman, a Silent Triangle Over Bagram, and the FBI’s Black-Hot Objects

Published August 7, 2026

The Department of War released its fifth batch of declassified Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena files today, August 7, 2026, publishing 41 new documents, images, and videos to the government’s UAP disclosure site, war.gov/UFO. The release, mandated under President Trump’s January executive order directing agencies to make UAP-related records public, draws from the Department of War, the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, and the Executive Office of the President, with material spanning from 1950 to earlier this year. Officials say it will not be the last: the department has committed to releasing additional files on a rolling basis.

Three incidents anchor this release, and each one lands differently. One is a multi-sensor military encounter that the Pentagon’s own investigative arm could not resolve. One is a decades-old memory from a combat pilot, corroborated by a second witness in the moment and now backed by an official FBI rendering. And one is the newest and strangest: a 2026 infrared capture by an unnamed federal agent that the FBI is still trying to explain.

The Gulf of Oman: 25 “Cold Orbs” and a Gunship That Couldn’t Shake Them

The centerpiece of the release is a September 2021 encounter over the Gulf of Oman involving U.S. Special Operations forces aboard an AC-130J gunship during a live-fire exercise. Six of the newly released videos are cellphone recordings of the gunship’s own sensor screens, showing objects picked up on infrared and other onboard systems. An accompanying intelligence report states plainly that the crew “observed approximately 25 instances of UAPs while conducting a live fire exercise in the Gulf of Oman.”

The report’s own language is the most striking part of this release: “The UAPs were observed as cold orbs flying at lower altitudes between 250 to 1300 MPH in different formations as well as maneuvering aggressively. UAPs also appeared to react to the aircraft firing its main cannon.”

A speed range spanning 250 to 1,300 mph within a single encounter is not a small variance, it is the difference between a slow-moving surveillance platform and something outperforming most conventional aircraft, observed switching between the two. The phrase “appeared to react to the aircraft firing its main cannon” is doing a lot of work here too: it describes objects responding to a specific, discrete human action in real time, not simply loitering in the area. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Pentagon’s dedicated UAP investigative body, examined the case and could not resolve it. This is now an official, on-the-record government “Unresolved” designation, not an ufologist’s characterization of one.

“Did You See That?” — The Bagram Triangle, 2002

Among the eight FBI FD-302 witness interview forms in this release (the standard form the Bureau uses to document interviews) is an account from a former military pilot, interviewed by an FBI agent in 2024, describing an event more than two decades old. Serving in Afghanistan in 2002, the pilot recalled a night near Bagram Airfield when the stars themselves seemed to disappear.

Per the FBI’s own report: “At approximately 4:30 AM local time, [the witness] noticed that the stars were getting blacked out over Bagram. It appeared as if something huge went overhead, from west to east, and was an equilateral triangle shape. The object was moving silently, at a consistent speed and altitude, possibly 150 knots, with no lights visible.” The witness estimated the object at roughly 500 feet in size, though he told the agent he could not fully make out its complete shape in the dark. A second pilot present that night independently saw the same thing, and, according to the report, said only: “did you see that?”

The FBI has since produced an official artist’s rendering of the object based on the witness’s description, now published alongside the report itself, an unusual and notable step for the Bureau to take on a UAP case. The same pilot also told investigators he began seeing a separate, recurring phenomenon starting in 2023: white lights appearing between midnight and 3 a.m., first noticed on a flight from Massachusetts to Ireland that October, at 37,000 feet, with the lights believed to be considerably higher, potentially 50,000 feet or more. He described a consistent visual cycle, dim, brightening, then fading, lasting anywhere from 10 seconds to a full minute, and said he personally witnessed the phenomenon roughly ten separate times after that first encounter.

2026: Black-Hot Objects and a Federal Agent’s Infrared Sensor

The most recent case in the release is also the most procedurally unusual. Footage submitted by a “U.S. Government Special Agent” and captured in the western United States earlier this year shows, in the Pentagon’s own description, “two, slow-moving ‘black-hot’ areas of contrast, visible in infrared imaging.” A partially redacted FBI report accompanying the video describes how the sighting began: the agent received a report of an unusual radio frequency being detected and turned a handheld infrared sensor toward its source.

The report continues in the agent’s own words, as recorded by the Bureau: “He saw a black object in the sky. It was not moving fast. He took pictures using the optical device. While observing he saw a second object to the right of the first and took additional photos/videos. The objects were moving together at the same speed. Both were black hot. He lost view of the objects when they traveled a distance out of view. Total observation time was approximately 5 – 10 minutes.”

“Black hot” is a specific infrared imaging term, referring to objects that appear darker than their surrounding thermal background rather than brighter, meaning these objects were cooler than the environment around them, not radiating heat the way an engine or exhaust source typically would. Combined with the reported radio-frequency detection that first drew the agent’s attention, this is a case built from two independent, technical data streams rather than a single visual impression, and it remains unresolved.

Additional Material and What’s Still Coming

Beyond the three anchor cases, the release includes footage submitted by U.S. Central Command showing an object crossing the frame of a military aircraft’s camera over a populated area in the Middle East in 2025, also unresolved, along with several additional FBI 302 witness interviews, most paired with official Bureau artist renderings, and supporting video showing what the government itself describes as orb-like objects and other light sources reported over the northeastern United States in 2022.

The Department of War has stated explicitly that today’s release is not the final word: additional files will continue to be published on a rolling basis under the executive order’s mandate. For a research archive built on tracing exactly this kind of institutional record across decades, the significance here isn’t any single video. It’s the pattern: five consecutive government releases now, each containing cases the government’s own investigative office has formally been unable to close.

Source: Department of War, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Executive Office of the President records, published August 7, 2026 at war.gov/UFO; contemporaneous reporting by CBS News (Stefan Becket).