In footage from Iraq, a spot moves diagonally across the screen, then slips out of frame.
Footage from a military sensor in Iraq shows a spot moving diagonally before leaving the frame. The record neither identifies it nor offers explanations that have been tested.
Declassified ~10.7 second 1920x1080 H.264 video at 30 fps (DVIDS ID 1006062) released by the U.S. Department of War as DOW-UAP-PR23, the public-release counterpart to USCENTCOM mission report DoW-UAP-D18 (Iraq, December 2022; paired finding slug 038). The clip is a high-zoom airborne infrared (IR) sensor view of a dense urban Iraqi neighborhood — clearly Baghdad rooftops/streets per the paired MISREP — recorded mid-day with the sensor reticle centered over a residential courtyard with palm tree. The released frame is heavily HUD-masked: opaque black rectangles cover every position where a classification banner, time/date, lat/lon, FL/altitude, heading, sensor mode, polarity, and slant range would appear; only the cyan center crosshair reticle, four cyan corner FOV brackets, and a cyan 'N' compass indicator (located on a bright building rooftop in the upper-center of the field of view) are visible. Per the DVIDS description, an area of contrast moves from the bottom-left to the top-right of the sensor field of view and leaves the frame near the top-right corner at approximately the 6-second mark; the matching MISREP characterizes this as '1x possible UAP/UAV flying west to east' observed at 1620Z on 1 DEC 2022 in the vicinity of MGRS 38S MB 4_8_3_, with the ISR aircraft declining to follow.
Airborne IR sensor footage of a dense urban Iraqi neighborhood (rooftops, courtyards, palm trees, streets and parked vehicles visible in mid-frame to right side; left side dominated by a large mosque-like structure with a distinct vaulted/arched portal). The sensor reticle is centered on a residential courtyard. Per the DVIDS description, an area of contrast moves from the bottom-left to the top-right of the field of view and exits the frame near the top-right corner at approximately the 6-second mark. The keyframes (sampled at 1.8s, 3.6s, 5.4s, 7.2s, 8.9s) show only very subtle frame-to-frame shifts of the cyan 'N' indicator and small parallax of objects, consistent with a stable high-altitude airborne sensor holding tracking on the scene; the contrast feature itself is not unambiguously distinguishable in the static keyframes against the high spatial-frequency urban texture, consistent with a small/fast object transiting briefly across the FOV. The paired MISREP records that the aircraft did not follow the object and the mission continued as tasked.
Baghdad (urban area depicted, per paired MISREP), Iraq
IVO MGRS 38S MB 4_8_3_ (UAP first-seen location, partially redacted, per paired MISREP), Iraq
Airborne infrared (IR) targeting/surveillance sensor (FMV per paired MISREP)
sensor
U.S. military ISR platform (asset type, callsign, and tail redacted; ISR sortie OKAS-OKAS, 19h17m mission, per paired MISREP)
aircraft
Top-of-frame classification/status banner area — wide opaque black rectangle spanning a large portion of the upper edge plus several smaller blocks across the top
Likely reason: Classification banner and sensor-system identifiers (typical USCENTCOM MISREP video redaction style)
Top-left and top-right corner blocks
Likely reason: Sensor model / aircraft tail identifiers or time-code
Mid-left tall vertical black block
Likely reason: HUD telemetry strip — likely sensor mode, polarity (WHT/BLK HOT), slant range, or laser status
Mid-right small black block
Likely reason: HUD telemetry — likely target azimuth / elevation / heading
Bottom-right large block and bottom-left small block
Likely reason: Lat/lon, FL/altitude, ground speed, sensor mode, time — the standard MISREP HUD strip
PR-23 (slug 082) is the video pairing for DoW-UAP-D18 MISREP (slug 038, Iraq, 1 DEC 2022). The MISREP narrative is the load-bearing source for the UAP characterization ('1x possible UAP/UAV flying west to east' at 1620Z); the video itself, in the keyframes sampled, primarily shows the dense urban Baghdad scene with the cyan reticle locked over a residential courtyard, with no clearly resolvable airborne object visible in the static keyframes — the moving 'area of contrast' described by DVIDS most likely transits the FOV between sampled frames (the DVIDS description places its FOV-exit at ~6s, between keyframes 03 at 5.4s and 04 at 7.2s). Verbatim HUD/banner text could not be captured because every telemetry region is opaquely redacted. The cyan letter 'N' is the only visible on-screen text element.
An area that looks different from its surroundings moves diagonally across the screen and leaves the frame.
The record does not mention any explanations that were investigated, and it does not identify the spot.
In footage from Iraq, a spot appears on a military sensor’s screen. It moves from the lower-left corner toward the upper-right.
The movement is clear, but the footage does not reveal what the spot is. It continues to the edge of the image and disappears, leaving whatever lies in its path out of view.
The footage runs for 10 seconds. It was recorded in 2022 by an infrared sensor, which detects heat, aboard a U.S. military aircraft. The official description calls the spot an area of contrast: a region that looks different from its surroundings in the image.
The footage shows the area moving diagonally within the sensor’s field of view. After about six seconds, it leaves the frame near the upper-right corner. That is where the footage stops tracking it. There is no view beyond the frame, so it is impossible to tell whether the spot continues moving after it disappears.
An accompanying mission report described the movement as west to east. That is the direction recorded in the report; in the image itself, the spot moves diagonally across the screen. Both descriptions refer to the same movement, but the report provides no image of the area the spot moved into.
U.S. Central Command forwarded the report to a U.S. office that investigates anomalous phenomena. The submission included the footage and a description of the movement. Parts of the record were redacted, so not all of its information is publicly available.
The record does not identify the spot or offer possible explanations that have been tested. It describes what appears in the footage but does not determine what the object was or what caused it to move.
The spot leaves through the screen’s upper corner. Whatever lies beyond remains out of view.