Official · Video · Department of War
Two Shapes Move Together in Iraq Video
A report suggested they might be a Russian fighter jet. The video itself doesn’t reveal what it captured.
Released to the public May 8, 20262 min readALIENS editorial
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A report suggested they might be a Russian fighter jet. The video itself doesn’t reveal what it captured.
A brief military video from Iraq shows two shapes moving together. A mission report suggested they might be a Russian fighter jet, but offered no explanation.
Declassified ten-second 1920x1080 H.264 video at 30 fps (DVIDS ID 1006059) released by the U.S. Department of War as DOW-UAP-PR21, the public-release counterpart to USCENTCOM mission report DoW-UAP-D14 (Iraq, May 2022). The clip is airborne IR/FLIR sensor footage centered on a heavily clouded mid-grey sky at altitude; throughout the 10.27-second runtime two small bright point-source contrasts remain locked together a few pixels apart, just to the right of the central cyan crosshair. The frame is heavily redacted: opaque black rectangles cover every HUD/telemetry region (classification banner, lat/lon, time, altitude/FL, heading, ground speed, slant range, sensor mode, polarity), leaving only the cyan center reticle, four corner FOV brackets, a cyan 'N' compass indicator left of center, and the two bright candidate-object pixels visible. The DVIDS description characterizes the paired MISREP DoW-UAP-D14 as a 'probable SU-27/35,' an AARO note adds that SU-27/35 are Russian Aerospace Forces fighter designations; the paired MISREP also documents a separate small-UAP entry at 0117Z flying north-to-northeast — that small-UAP entry is NOT what this clip depicts (the two co-moving contrasts here align with the SU-27/35 landing-observation FMV described in the same MISREP).
Ten-second airborne IR-sensor clip showing two small co-located point-source contrasts holding station close together a few pixels right of the cyan center reticle, with no perceptible relative motion between them across the runtime. The cloud/scene background drifts beneath the (relatively) stabilized track box: at ~1.7s and ~5.1s the background shows banded mid-grey cloud structure; by ~6.8s the sensor has descended/closed in such that low-altitude/ground texture is visible (mottled mid-tones suggesting terrain or a runway environment); by ~8.6s the background again resembles open sky. This evolution is consistent with the paired MISREP's FMV observation of a 'probable SU-27/35 LANDING' (a track persistently held on a target as it descends through cloud onto an airfield) rather than with the same MISREP's separate 'one possible small UAP' line at 0117Z flying north-to-northeast.
Iraq
Airborne infrared (IR/FLIR) targeting/surveillance sensor (FMV)
sensor
SU-27 / SU-35 (probable, per paired MISREP DoW-UAP-D14)
aircraft
Top-of-frame classification / status banner — one wide rectangle and three smaller rectangles spanning the upper edge across roughly 40-90% horizontal extent
Likely reason: Classification banner and sensor-system identifiers (typical USCENTCOM MISREP redaction pattern)
Top-left and top-right corner blocks
Likely reason: Sensor model / aircraft tail identifiers or time-code
Mid-left tall vertical block (T-shaped) and mid-right small block
Likely reason: HUD telemetry: likely target range / azimuth / elevation / heading / sensor mode
Small black rectangle directly below the central cyan crosshair (target-data callout position)
Likely reason: Targeting-pod target data block (range / track / designation)
Bottom-right large block and bottom-left small block
Likely reason: Lat/lon, FL/altitude, ground speed, sensor mode/polarity, time — the standard MISREP HUD strip
This is the video PR21 paired with the D14 MISREP PDF (slug 036). The orchestrator should treat the cross_ref to slug 036 as the primary pairing and 035 (D12) as a secondary/co-located cross-ref only — DVIDS verbatim 'probable SU-27/35' phrasing matches D14, not D12. Footage shows two co-moving bright IR contrasts near the centered crosshair throughout the 10.27 s runtime; sampling was 5 keyframes (1.7 / 3.4 / 5.1 / 6.8 / 8.6 s) plus the thumbnail. No HUD text is recoverable from the released frames — every banner/strip/corner is opaquely masked. Confidence is held at 0.66 because (a) the per-pixel object identification is qualitative only, (b) the title-vs-narrative geographic discrepancy carried over from D14 is unresolved at the video level, and (c) audio_present=true is reported by ffprobe but no audio analysis was performed.
Two areas that look different from the background and move together near the center of the frame.
The accompanying report proposed the possibility but did not explain what led to it.
A U.S. military platform in Iraq filmed two shapes moving together. They appear near the center of the frame and remain there throughout the video.
The footage lasts 10 seconds. An accompanying mission report suggested the shapes were probably a Russian fighter jet. But the video description says only what appears on screen, not how the report arrived at that conclusion.
The footage was recorded in 2022 with a thermal imaging device. Two areas that look different from the surrounding background appear near the center of the frame. They move together until the video ends.
That is all the video description says: two shapes moving together. It does not describe a chase or a change in their movement. U.S. Central Command submitted the report, with the video attached.
The accompanying mission report described what appears in the video as probably a Russian fighter jet. It named two possible models but did not explain why those models were proposed.
From the description alone, it is impossible to know what led the report’s author to consider a Russian aircraft. The viewer gets a description of two shapes moving together, alongside a proposed identification. The description offers no further details connecting the two.
The report was submitted to a U.S. agency that investigates unidentified phenomena. The record was released to the public, but parts of it were redacted. The description of the movement and the report’s suggestion are visible, but the incident is not fully explained.
It is not known exactly what appears in the video or what prompted the report to suggest Russian aircraft models. The report presents the aircraft as only one possibility; the record does not confirm that it was an aircraft.
Two shapes pass together through the center of the frame. An aircraft’s name appears alongside them, but the video does not reveal whether it fits.