Iraq.Iraq · two military drone crews track small objects

The first sighting was recorded in the report of a U.S. military MQ-9 Reaper drone from the 20th Attack Squadron (DOW-UAP-D109, mission report 7467030). It took off at 21:49 Z on May 4, 2022 (all times are in Coordinated Universal Time, Z) and was on station from 00:57 to 15:52 Z on the 5th, within Operation Inherent Resolve. Its task was target development over a compound, with the declared intent to "conduct POL [pattern of life, that is, watch the routines of the place], identify PID of weapons and weapons/ammo storage areas, as well as identify personnel within the compound." At 05:24 Z the crew recorded in the narrative: "observed PROB UAPS traveling SW at roughly 80-180 MPH."

The report's observation block says that between 05:24 and 07:04 Z (an hour and forty minutes) the crew periodically observed UAPs flying sporadically at various speeds between 80 and 180 miles per hour, that it could not determine altitude, that the size was approximately 1-2 meters, and that "the UAPs did not hinder the mission." It adds that the crew "would reacquire the UAPs after returning the sensor back to the original POI locations", which indicates that they were still there each time the camera came back. The weather field notes that "due to dust storms some collection on UAPs was affected" between those same hours.

Footage of this sighting was also published: two clips, DOW-UAP-PR140 (1 min 47 s) and DOW-UAP-PR141 (2 min 36 s), which expressly cite the report and repeat its verbatim figure of 80 to 180 miles per hour. Together they run 4 min 23 s against the hour and forty minutes of the observation period, so they are excerpts. They mostly show the instrument: the sensor switches between electro-optical mode (a visible-light camera) and infrared and, in PR141, loses contact intermittently through the final minute; around 52 seconds into that same clip a second area of contrast briefly appears, which fits a report that speaks of UAPs in the plural. The video adds no shape and does not resolve the altitude the report says it could not determine: it confirms the sensor's behavior, not the object's nature.

The second sighting was recorded by another MQ-9, callsign CDR74, from the 196th Attack Squadron of the 163rd Air National Guard wing (DOW-UAP-D106, mission report 7468013). On May 5, 2022 it took off at 06:14 Z, late because of weather at its launch and recovery element, on a reconnaissance mission within Operation Inherent Resolve, tasked by U.S. Central Command's 609th Air Operations Center. From 10:54 to 21:00 Z it supported an operation by a Marine aircraft group, called PHANTOM FLEX. It landed at 00:39 Z the following day at Ali Al Salem, Kuwait, after eighteen hours and twenty-five minutes of mission, seventeen hours and fifty minutes of them on station over Iraq.

At 20:26 Z, while examining a point of interest with the sensor, the crew observed what the report describes thus: "periodically observed UAPs flying sporatically within the target area... According to the MTS [the sensor], the UAPs were travelling at various speeds between 80-180 MPH. We were unable to determine altitude. The size of the UAPs were approximately 1-2 meters. The UAPs did not hinder the mission." It is the same text, almost word for word, as in the other crew's report. The video was exploited by the distributed ground station DGS 1, and no footage of this sighting was published.

The form also has a structured field, "observed activity description", that contains a single word: "UAS", the regulation abbreviation for unmanned aircraft system, that is, a drone. The same crew that wrote "UAP" in the free paragraph coded the observation as a drone in the box the system reads. They are two records with different jobs: the box classifies for the statistics and the prose recounts what happened. The difference indicates that the crew did not believe it was seeing anything extraordinary, and the closing sentence, the formula reports end with, confirms it: the objects did not hinder the mission, so the mission continued. In the other crew's report that field is redacted, so what it wrote is not known.

What was observed fits a small drone well: objects one to two meters across moving at between 80 and 180 miles per hour over an Iraqi target area in May 2022, at the height of Operation Inherent Resolve, and drones of that size were routine in that theater and that year. That altitude could not be determined is what one would expect from a single electro-optical sensor without ranging on the object: it measures angle, not distance, and without distance there is neither height nor true size (the "1-2 meters" is an estimate that assumes a range). What the reports do not settle is whose the objects were: there is no identification, and in that theater and that year there were drones from several sides in the air.

The release also includes two still frames from the sensor, DOW-UAP-PR130 and PR131, labeled "Iraq, 2022" like the second crew's report. They are consecutive (frames 029 and 030) and show arid terrain from above, with a dry watercourse, the tracking reticle and two dark shapes: one beside the reticle, with track marks around it, and a longer one, with what looks like a faint trail, at lower left in 029 and upper right in 030, with the terrain shifted between one frame and the next. That there are two shapes fits reports that speak of several objects. The white redaction boxes sit at the edges of the frame, where sensors usually burn in their telemetry (coordinates, altitude, platform designation). In 030 none of them covers the objects; in 029 one falls right beside the central object. What is withheld appears to be, essentially, the instrumentation and not the scene.

Two military crews from different squadrons described, on the same day, with the same figures, objects one to two meters across moving at between 80 and 180 miles per hour. The second crew's report carries data that make almost everything checkable: the time to the second, flight level, indicated airspeed, heading, range, the sensor identified and the station that exploited the video; the first crew's contributes an observation of an hour and forty minutes and footage. What checks out points to a drone.

Objects that loitered for an hour and forty minutes around a compound being watched to locate weapons and ammunition depots fit a drone presence at that compound. The dust storm does little for another reading (it degrades the imagery and therefore the size and speed estimates), and the fact that the objects were still there each time the sensor returned speaks of local persistence, not transit.

A residue remains that the reports do not close: they do not identify whose the objects were, and in Iraq in May 2022 there were drones belonging to Iranian-backed militias, to the coalition and to civilian operators in the same airspace. That the crew coded them as UAS says what kind of thing it believed it was seeing, not whose it was. A drone belonging to another state, or to a militia backed by one, is the reading that best fits a compound watched in search of weapons, but a friendly or commercial aircraft remains possible, and the reports do not decide between them. "Did not hinder the mission" closes the operation; attribution stays open.