South Asia (exact country undisclosed; platform and release are U.S.).South Asia · a drone films an object with an apparent trail

On January 15, 2023, a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone was filming another MQ-9 in South Asia, in a country that was not disclosed. Its forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera then recorded an object crossing the frame from left to right. Behind it trailed what looked like a wake of disturbed air (the official description calls it an "atmospheric wake or cavitation"), the kind of trace that would suggest an object moving at high speed. The published clip lasts nine seconds; a second video, two minutes and ten seconds long, captures the same object at higher magnification (a longer focal length).

The case became public on April 19, 2023, when the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Sean Kirkpatrick, presented it at an open hearing of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. According to the stenographic transcript, he showed only two recently declassified cases: first, an apparently spherical object filmed with electro-optical sensors by an MQ-9 over the Middle East, which he called unresolved because the video was essentially all the data available; then this one. Kirkpatrick acknowledged that the South Asia case showed "some really interesting things that everyone thought was truly anomalous to start with": a high-speed object within the field of regard of two MQ-9s and a trail that, "at first blush", looked like a propulsion trail.

His explanation at the hearing was more concrete than the description posted on DVIDS, the Defense Department's imagery service. The trail, he said, "is actually not a real trail": it is a sensor artifact made of little blobs, each one a representation of the object as it moves, and later in the video, as the camera slews, the trail follows the direction of the camera, not the direction of the object. Having pulled the video apart frame by frame, the office concluded it was a readout overlap of the image, "a shadow image". At the end of the clip the object resolves into an aircraft-shaped blob, and the infrared shows the engine heat of a commuter aircraft flying near the two MQ-9s.

The DVIDS description summarizes the same analysis (full-motion video, longer-focal-length footage and commercial flight data in the region) and attributes the trail to a video compression artifact; in the second video, it adds, the object appears to move back and forth, an artifact of the longer focal length and of the sensor trying to zoom in on the fast-moving object rather than on the other MQ-9.

There is, however, a difference of degree between the two sources. At the hearing, Kirkpatrick stated flatly that the object "actually turns out to be an aircraft" and that this case, unlike the Middle East one, could be resolved. The official description posted the same day is more cautious: it assesses that the object "likely is a commercial aircraft" and records that "case resolution is pending final review". No public source identifies the specific flight or publishes the air traffic data used.

The case shows how a video that looks anomalous gets taken apart. What at first looked like the trail of a very fast object was explained, in the office's assessment, by the imaging system itself, and the object turned out to be an airliner.

The strongest evidence is Kirkpatrick's observation that the trail followed the camera's motion rather than the object's: a physical trail in the air does not change orientation when the sensor slews. The two official sources name the mechanism differently (sensor readout overlap at the hearing, video compression on DVIDS), but both agree that the trail was produced by the imaging system.

Until the flight and the air traffic data are published, the identification rests on the office's word, and the official record itself leaves it "pending final review."