Iraq.Al Taqaddum · a surveillance blimp films something floating

On October 23, 2017, an infrared sensor aboard a force-protection aerostat (a tethered, sensor-equipped blimp used for perimeter surveillance of military installations) was operating at about 2,700 feet above Al Taqaddum Air Base, in Iraq's Al Anbar province. For 17 minutes and 30 seconds it recorded an unidentified object that appeared to be floating above the ground. The DVIDS record, posted by AARO on April 29, 2025, dates the event only as "October 2017"; the exact day comes from the case resolution report. The case resolution report does not identify who reported the object and lists no reported altitude or speed: the only original data is the video itself, and the object's shape is logged as "abnormally shaped".

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) first published a short assessment alongside the video, saying it had used "full-motion video analysis and pixel examination techniques", plus geo-locational data from the aerostat itself to assess the object's speed and direction of travel. The full case resolution report, dated September 8, 2025 (reference 25-P-1190), specifies that the assessment rested on the video, its metadata, line-of-sight analysis, scenario reconstructions and weather data. With moderate confidence (because of the variability of historical and real-time wind data) the office places the object between 850 and 2,200 feet, moving at 4 to 14 miles per hour; with high confidence, it states that the object was traveling within the range of wind speed, from east to west.

The conclusion, at high confidence, is that the object was consistent with a cluster of fully and partially inflated balloons. The report relies on what the video shows: in several stretches, rounded balloon shapes and dangling strings are visible, and their number and shape change as the cluster rotates relative to the sensor. The object's fluctuating infrared brightness is attributed to the sensor constantly readjusting its grayscale over a changing background, and the growing graininess at the end of the clip to the object's increasing distance.

One of AARO's partners proposed an alternative hypothesis (a quadrotor drone draped in camouflage netting), which AARO and its partners rejected for two reasons: a quadrotor would not drift with the wind as this object does, and its motors would produce a heat signature the video does not show. The lack of thermal signature is also, according to the report, consistent with previously identified balloon clusters.

The resolution rests on a long piece of evidence: 17 continuous minutes allow the object to be followed frame by frame. The observing platform is also a tethered aerostat whose position is known precisely, unlike a fighter or a moving drone; that makes it possible to reconstruct the line of sight and bound the object's speed and direction with more confidence.

Two things carry the weight of the conclusion: the visible shape (balloons and strings that can be made out in the video itself) and the motion, a downwind drift without the heat signature a motor would produce.

The resolution has limits. The altitude and speed estimate is only moderate-confidence, because it depends on variable wind data; the original observer is not identified, and the report does not say where the balloons came from. And one of AARO's own partners proposed a camouflaged drone: the object was not obvious at first sight. Even so, the combination of visible shape, absence of heat and wind drift supports the conventional explanation.