Trump's UFO panel has found little so far, a 2023 case shows
According to an October report by The New York Times, the Trump administration's UAP advisory panel, including Avi Loeb, Tim Gallaudet and Garry Nolan, is working from documents released this year, but so far it has no substantive breakthrough to report. The paper presented a 2023 case in the western United States as an example of what the panel is dealing with.
The Department of War released UAP files in six tranches this year, and the new advisory panel, whose previously announced members include Avi Loeb, Tim Gallaudet and Garry Nolan, is working from them. The NYT asked both the panel and its critics what they have found so far: the answer was essentially not much yet, and several skeptical voices also criticize the approach. The paper's article described in detail an October 2023 so-called "fiery orb" sighting near a sensitive national security site in the western United States, observed by six federal law enforcement officials in three teams of two, over two days, at dusk: an orange "mother orb" appeared for one to two seconds, released two to four red "orbs," then disappeared, and one red orb reportedly hovered motionless above a ridgeline for hours. No photos, video or sensor data were produced of the event, only the witnesses' after-the-fact written accounts.
According to an analysis by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) dated June 5, 2026, and signed by Director Jon T. Kosloski, flight logs confirm that military aircraft were dispensing infrared countermeasure flares in the area that day as part of a routine exercise, and radar and ADS-B data align well with about 60 percent of the reported activity. AARO classified the remaining roughly 40 percent, on an exclusion basis and explicitly without technical data or physical evidence, as "Unrecognized Technology (Pending)," and for the motionless hovering orb it considers celestial misidentification somewhat more plausible, though in its view this too is unlikely. The witness statements, incidentally, contain widely varying details: one describes floating, spider web-like material, reminiscent of the phenomenon traditionally known as "angel hair," which is linked to spider ballooning; in another, car headlights were described as "morphing" into an orb-like light; and in a third, a disc-shaped light phenomenon glided to the roadside and was gone by the time the witnesses reached it.
Forum members who reviewed the documents also pointed out that the deployed officials were not given cameras for the observation, which could explain the lack of photographic evidence; however, one forum member noted that in 2023 the witnesses undoubtedly had cell phones with which they could have recorded footage. For now, the panel's work consists of document analysis, without new footage or confirmed evidence, so it remains an open question how much the next tranche of files will change this picture.
The sober take
According to AARO's own analysis, most of the event is explained by a military countermeasure flare exercise taking place that day, while the remainder was placed in the unidentified category on an exclusion basis, without evidence; some witness details (spider web-like material) may also be connected to the fall ballooning season of spiders, and according to the AARO document the described characteristics are also consistent with certain U.S. military technologies, although their presence is not confirmed.