Iraq.Ayn al-Asad · a hot object crosses the sensor during a launch

A gunship on an armed overwatch mission from the 16th Special Operations Squadron, with 30 mm and 105 mm guns, took off at 17:40 UTC on September 20, 2024 from OKAS in Kuwait. At about 19:30 UTC it entered the restricted operating zone "RAINDROP" over Ayn al-Asad Air Base, in Iraq's Anbar province, to conduct a weapons calibration; the form marks the zone as a training range. During the calibration it fired 20 rounds of 105 mm, 101 of 30 mm and one missile.

At about 20:25 UTC it received a call for fire to employ an AGM-176 Griffin, a lightweight laser-guided missile. The crew launched it and held the laser on the target until impact. At 20:27:59 UTC, between launch and impact, the weapons systems officer and the combat systems officer saw an unidentified object "fly" at high speed through the aircraft's sensors.

The object caused an infrared lens flare on the MX-20 and MX-25 sensors (the aircraft's optical turrets), which the operators read as a significant heat source. The report describes the event this way: "UAP flew through sensor in between munition release and munition impact." The aircraft was flying straight and level at 13,000 feet (about 4,000 meters), at 170 knots indicated airspeed (about 195 mph) on heading 096, nearly due east.

The report's form records that the object's physical state was solid, that no advanced capabilities or materials were observed and that the object did not react: "none observed; path of movement appeared predetermined." The box goes on to say that this movement was not a response to the detection by a party whose name is redacted in the document. There were no effects on persons or equipment and no material was recovered. As an anomalous trait, the form notes that it is unknown whether an object detached from the primary one just before leaving the sensor's field of view, and the crew did not see it again.

The form leaves blank the number of objects, the propulsion, the payload and whether there was intelligent control, and the description gives no size or shape. The crew made no attempt to interrogate the object with its sensors or to engage it: both boxes say "no." The object's altitude, depth, velocity and trajectory are marked "estimated," but with no value. The report therefore does not allow a calculation of how fast or how high the object flew: it says only that it moved "at a high rate of speed" and crossed the sensors' field of view.

Two more details bound the event. Under "third-party observers and/or reporters," the report records that no parties reported an additional aircraft in that airspace: nobody had declared traffic there. And the observation was signed by a captain, who assessed the object as "benign." The event was assigned serial number 202027ZSEP2024-CENTCOM, which encodes the day and time (the 20th, 20:27 UTC), the month, the year and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). The aircraft landed at OKAS at 00:46 UTC on September 21, after a mission of 7 hours 6 minutes, of which it spent 3 hours 53 minutes on station, between 19:30 and 23:23 UTC.

The object appeared in the seconds between the launch of a guided missile and its impact, while the crew held the sensor and laser fixed on the target, during a seven-hour mission. The record therefore has an exact timestamp, a documented operational context and a sensor pointed right where it happened.

The report records no reaction by the object to the missile or the crew, and calls its trajectory "predetermined." Ayn al-Asad has for years been a recurring target of drone and rocket attacks by Iran-aligned militias, besides being a base with intense U.S. air activity. In that context, a hot, fast object on an apparently predetermined path with no declared traffic fits a one-way drone, a rocket, a fragment of the munition itself or the munition's own heat signature.

No source proposes that or any other identification: the report names no candidate. In its 2024 report, the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) stated that all 174 cases it had finalized were resolved to prosaic objects, including balloons, birds, drones, satellites and aircraft, and added that many other cases remain unresolved. That nobody has analyzed this one does not rule out an ordinary cause. An enemy drone, a classified friendly aircraft or a fragment of the munition are, in Anbar in 2024, equally earthly explanations.

The operator saw a heat source cross the crosshairs, assessed the object as benign and moved on. An unattributed object remains in the airspace of a threatened base during the launch of a missile.