Unresolved UAP Report, Iraq, December 2022

This is one of the more tentative reports in the series. Central Command sent AARO ten seconds of infrared footage from a U.S. military platform over Iraq in December 2022, together with a mission report, DoW-UAP-D18. According to AARO’s summary of that report, the operator described one “possible UAP” flying from west to east and did not try to follow it.

What the video shows

A single patch travels diagonally from the bottom left of the frame toward the top right. At about six seconds it leaves the picture near the top right corner, and the rest of the clip shows nothing further. AARO records no change in brightness, no splitting and no tracking attempt.

Context

A mission report, or MISREP, is the routine form crews file after a sortie; its free-text section is where unusual observations like this one tend to be noted. The report’s hedged “possible” and the lack of pursuit are all it says about the operator’s view. The direction across the screen cannot be equated with west to east without the camera’s heading, which the file does not give. AARO treats the case as unresolved and draws no conclusion. “Area of contrast” is AARO’s deliberately neutral phrase for anything that stands out from the background in a sensor image; on an infrared camera that usually means something warmer or cooler than its surroundings.