Iraq.Mosul Orb · metallic sphere over Iraq (2016)

On April 16, 2016, during coalition operations against the Islamic State, a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft recorded a spherical, metallic-looking object over Mosul, in northern Iraq, according to journalist and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell. According to Corbell and Knapp, the platform was an MC-12, a twin-engine turboprop for medium-to-low-altitude reconnaissance. What is public is a still image that Corbell and George Knapp obtained and released on their Weaponized program in January 2023, and that Corbell shared with Fox News Digital in a February interview that year. Neither the video nor the platform, the sensor or the length of the recording has been released. It is what has since become known as the 'Mosul Orb'. The Pentagon then told The Black Vault it would not comment on remarks by unnamed sources alleging leaks from a classified report, and in June 2023 it denied in full that outlet's FOIA request 23-F-0389 on the case: the records were withheld as classified for national security reasons and as related to an ongoing law enforcement proceeding.

The case is often linked to the public hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on April 19, 2023, but what the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Sean Kirkpatrick, presented there was a different video: a metallic-looking sphere filmed by an MQ-9 drone in the Middle East in 2022, captured, he specified, with electro-optical sensors, not infrared. Of that video, not the Mosul one, he said 'this is essentially all the data we have of this event' and that 'it's going to be virtually impossible to fully identify that just based off that video'; he presented it as an unresolved case, with 'no demonstration of enigmatic technical capabilities' and consistent with 'other metallic orb observations in the region'. Corbell said afterwards that the admission made him think of the Mosul image. A Fox News photo caption attributes to Kirkpatrick that the Mosul sphere 'is still being studied', but the body of the same article applies that status to the 2022 case. At the hearing Kirkpatrick also noted that 52% of the reports AARO receives describe spherical objects, and that the office 'has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics.'

The framing has to be cautious. What is known about the Mosul sphere comes from an image released by two journalists, with no published telemetry, concurrent radar, or speed or altitude measurement; the only official trace is the refusal to release records the Department of Defense treats as classified. The mundane readings remain open: EarthSky's coverage of the hearing asked of these spheres whether they could be balloons or drones, and answered 'possibly'.

AARO published two pieces from that hearing on DVIDS. The first is the full 59-minute recording of the session, which shows Kirkpatrick's presentation in its entirety. The second is the video of the 2022 sphere filmed by the MQ-9, whose official DVIDS record adds a nuance quoted here directly because it summarizes AARO's evidentiary standard well: 'AARO assesses the object in the clip is not exhibiting anomalous behavior, [but] the object remains unidentified […] This video is a representative example of many of the cases AARO receives where there is limited data surrounding the observation. These cases are retained in AARO's active archive pending the discovery of additional information/data that may lead to case resolution.' In other words: 'not anomalous' and 'unidentified' are not contradictory categories for the office itself: they are the default position given insufficient evidence.

Its value lies not in its provenance (it is an image released by journalists, not footage published by the Pentagon) but in being the most-cited specimen of the most frequent class of reports in the Pentagon's dataset: 'spheres' or 'orbs', 52% of the reports AARO receives according to Kirkpatrick's 2023 presentation. That makes it a type specimen of an entire class, even though the individual datum is poor.

It is also a case that serves as a calibrator, for two reasons. The first is that it circulated as the video AARO showed the Senate, and it was not: the hearing showed a similar 2022 sphere, and the Mosul one entered the coverage by association. The second is that the strongest mundane readings, a balloon or a small drone (friendly, allied or adversary) over a war zone saturated with unmanned platforms, remain fully alive, and without sensor data there is no way to test them. It is therefore included with the conclusion deliberately open.