United Arab Emirates.UAE · an object with a bar beneath it that may be a reflection

In June 2024, an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform recorded 21 seconds of an object over waters off the United Arab Emirates. An infrared sensor builds its image from the heat of what it points at. The video reached the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Pentagon office that studies these phenomena, and its official record gives no coordinates, platform or exact date; the war.gov data index places the video in the Gulf of Oman.

The mission report that matches the video, DoW-UAP-D27 from Central Command (CENTCOM), dates the contact to June 7, 2024, around 04:57 (universal time), during the return to base; the aircraft had taken off the evening before, on June 6 at 21:00. It was flying at 23,999 feet.

The observer saw a "glowing hot spherical" object with a vertical cylindrical pole or bar beneath it, "poss reflection from the object in the water," "flying straight just over the water" at about 140 knots (about 160 mph). The observer assessed it as "benign"; the object did not react to being observed, and the form marks "no" for advanced capabilities and for interrogation by other sensors: no one pointed other equipment on the aircraft, such as a radar, at the object to gather more data. AARO, in the video's record, cites the report as number D8, which in the same release is a 2025 report from Djibouti.

That AARO record summarizes the report as "an object with a vertical pole or bar attached to the bottom of the object," and adds that, according to the observer, "the UAP may instead be a reflection from an object in the water." Its second-by-second visual description says that for the full 21 seconds "an area of contrast visually resembling an inverted teardrop, with a vertically linear trailing mass suspended below, remains generally within the center of the sensor field-of-view." It mentions no change in shape. That the area stays in the center indicates the sensor was tracking it as the object moved.

The record attributes the video's submission to U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), although the UAE lies in Central Command's area and the mission report places the mission under that command: the aircraft took off from and landed at Al Dhafra, in the UAE (code OMAM), and the report was issued by an Air Force special operations squadron under Central Command. The record does not explain the discrepancy, and nothing in the mission report supports the platform belonging to Northern Command. The material was released in the first release of the PURSUE program, on May 8, 2026.

The observer, at the time of the report, wrote down a conventional explanation for part of what he saw: the vertical bar might be the object's reflection in the water. The reflection hypothesis was on record from the start, on the same form that gives the altitude, the speed and the "benign" assessment.

Read that way, the reflection explains the bar, not the object. AARO's summary reads it differently: according to it, the observer said the whole UAP might be a reflection from an object in the water, whereas in the mission report the possible reflection follows the description of the pole. A hot sphere flying in a straight line at about 140 knots just over the water remains unidentified: no one has proposed what it was.

AARO attributes the video to Northern Command and cites the report with a number, D8, that in the same release belongs to another event. Even so, the mission report that matches the video places the event in a specific Central Command mission, with its time, its altitude and the base the aircraft flew from.