UFO Types and Shapes Reported in Government Files
Catalog of UFO/UAP shapes documented in declassified U.S. government files — orbs, triangles, cylinders, ellipsoids, discs — with primary-source quotations from the 2026 PURSUE release.
UFO and UAP reports in the U.S. government catalog cluster around a small set of recurring shapes: spheres or orbs (most frequent), triangular or V-formations, metallic cylinders, classic ellipsoid "saucer" forms, and amorphous balls of light with halo effects. The 2026 PURSUE Release 01 catalog confirms this distribution across 26 indexed incidents. Orbs appear in roughly half the modern cases, including the 2023 Western U.S. "Eye of Sauron" orange-orb encounter and a September 2023 "blacker than black" Prius-sized object that tilted 45 degrees and shot upward faster than known drones. Triangular formations appear in the Apollo 17 lunar sky anomaly. Metallic cylinders appear in a 2023 southeastern U.S. case where two contractors observed an object "approximately commercial-airplane sized."
“Misshapen and uneven ball of white light.”
Orbs and spheres
Orbs are the most frequently reported UAP shape in modern U.S. military and FBI records. The 2023 "Eye of Sauron" case describes orange orbs that emitted smaller red orbs in groups of two to four, observed by federal law enforcement agents over a two-day period. A separate September 2023 case describes a glowing orange orb near a rock pinnacle in the western United States; AARO rates this case "among the most compelling cases in current AARO holdings." The Syria October 2024 video shows two semi-transparent orange areas appearing for two seconds each.
Triangles and V-formations
Triangular formations appear in both the federal catalog and major civilian sightings. The Apollo 17 lunar sky photograph (December 1972) shows three dots in triangular formation north of Grimaldi crater, witnessed by Astronaut Jack Schmitt. The 1997 Phoenix Lights remain the highest-witness-count V-formation event in U.S. history, with thousands of Arizona witnesses describing a slow-moving carpenter's-square shape preceding a separate set of stationary hovering lights. PURSUE Release 01 also includes a January 2024 Mediterranean Sea report of a "triangular and metallic UAP at 25,000 feet" from a Navy pilot.
Cylinders, ellipsoids, and discs
Cylindrical and ellipsoid forms dominate the historical record. The 1947 FBI Dallas memo on the Roswell-area recovery describes the object as "bronze, metallic, of ellipsoid form, between 130 and 195 feet in apparent dimension." A September 2023 southeastern U.S. case describes "a large metallic cylinder, approximately commercial-airplane sized" observed by two government contractors in separate vehicles — the object remained stationary for 15-20 seconds before disappearing. A separate September 2023 DoD photograph captures an "ellipsoid bronze metallic object materializing out of a bright light," with an FBI lab graphic overlay aligning the photograph with eyewitness sketches.
Misshapen / amorphous lights
Some of the most recent PURSUE entries describe shapes that resist categorization. The Pentagon's January 2024 INDOPACOM full-motion video clips capture what the Pentagon describes as a "misshapen and uneven ball of white light" with a "light/glare halo effect." FBI black-hot infrared still images from September and December 2025 capture unidentified objects below helicopter platforms in the western U.S., released without geolocation to protect facility identity. The 2017 GOFAST clip — initially appearing as a small white object skimming the ocean — was resolved in 2026 by AARO's geospatial-intelligence analysis as a parallax illusion of an object at approximately 13,000 feet altitude.