After nearly two minutes of blank screen, a spot appears on the right. A military sensor turns toward it and zooms in.
The footage runs for nearly five minutes, but never reveals what the spot is. The sensor loses it again and again, then finds it anew. What looks like a brief tracking sequence becomes a story with no clear answer.
Who Released the Footage?
The U.S. Department of War released the footage to the public. U.S. Central Command submitted the report to a U.S. office that investigates anomalous phenomena. According to an accompanying report, the phenomenon was observed during a mission in the United Arab Emirates in 2023.
The footage was recorded by an infrared sensor, which detects radiation invisible to the naked eye, aboard a U.S. military platform. This is not a conventional camera image. The first nearly two minutes are blank; then an area that looks different from the background appears.
The Sensor Zooms In, Then Loses It
The sensor shifts the display to center the spot. Shortly afterward, it zooms in, showing a smaller portion of the image. For a while, the spot stays roughly in the center.
Later, the sensor’s movement makes the spot travel irregularly across the screen. The official description attributes the movement to the sensor; it does not say the spot itself moved that way. As the display shifts, the sensor loses the spot, then finds it again. This happens several times, and the tracking continues.
Parts of the report were redacted. The footage and accompanying report describe what appeared on the screen but do not identify the spot.
What We Still Don’t Know
It is not known what the spot was or what caused it to appear on the display. The report offers no conventional explanation or conclusion about the incident.
The sensor finds the spot again and again. But what was actually out there, beyond the screen?