Greece.Two circular objects skimming the sea, two days apart

The first sighting occurred on October 27, 2023. The aircraft had taken off from Larissa Air Base (LGLR) at 23:39Z the previous day, on a mission that also included transiting to and landing at Muwaffaq Salti (OJMS, Jordan) to relieve another platform. At 00:35:12Z, while en route to its target, the crew detected an object flying just above the surface of the water. Over the following three minutes the object executed several ninety-degree turns at an estimated kinetic velocity of 80 mph. At 00:38Z it dropped off the sensor feed.

The operator described the object as 'seemingly circular, too small to make out details.' In the structured form he recorded the maneuvers as 'sharp ninety-degree turns,' physical state as solid, means of propulsion as unknown and —significantly— the intelligent-control box as 'no.' The object's signatures were recorded as 'none': there was no detection in any band other than video. The object's response to observer actions was 'none,' the observing aircraft's heading was southwest, and the operator's assessment was 'benign.'

The second sighting occurred two days later, on October 29, on a different mission also flown out of Larissa, departing at 15:04Z on the 28th. At 08:11Z the crew detected another object likewise flying just above the ocean surface. This one moved skimming the water toward land, at an estimated kinetic velocity of 30 mph, and dropped off the feed in the same minute it was detected. The aircraft returned to Larissa at 11:05Z.

The notable coincidence is one of language: the operator on this second mission described the object with exactly the same formula —'seemingly circular, too small to make out details'— and also marked intelligent control as 'no,' signatures as 'none,' physical state solid, maneuverability 'none' and assessment 'benign.' In this second case the anomalous-characteristics box was left empty. Both reports were declassified on January 22, 2026 by the CENTCOM chief of staff under the same file, MDR 26-0019, and released to AARO.

These two reports are valuable precisely for how modest they are, and for what they reveal about how the institutional UAP corpus is generated. They are the kind of record that numerically dominates military archives: small objects, no signature in sensors other than video, observed for seconds or a few minutes, which the operator himself rates as benign and which nobody pursues. Counting them as part of the phenomenon matters as much as counting the spectacular cases, because they are the base of the distribution.

The prosaic reading is strong and should be stated first. Small circular objects, at 30 and 80 mph, skimming the sea surface and in one case heading toward land, describe seabirds fairly well —the Aegean sits on a major migratory route— and also small commercial or military drones, abundant in a theater where Greek, Turkish and allied forces operate. The ninety-degree turns are anomalous for a large bird in cruise flight, but trivial for a quadcopter. That both operators marked the intelligent-control box as 'no' suggests neither perceived directed behavior.

What the pair does contribute is a weak form of cross-corroboration. Two different crews, on missions two days apart, described with the same formula objects with the same flight profile —skimming the water, small, no signature— in the same area of operations. That proves nothing about their nature, but it does indicate a recurring and locally present phenomenon rather than an isolated perception. If they are birds or drones, what is interesting is that a surveillance system designed to detect threats is formally cataloging them as unidentified, which is itself a datum about the sensor's discrimination threshold.

The posterior reflects that reading without dressing it up: more than half the mass on prosaic explanation with a misidentification subtype, a smaller share split between human platforms —classified or adversary, both plausible in the Aegean— and a fifth on indeterminate, which is what honestly remains when the object is too small to make out details and vanishes from the feed within minutes.