Six Points Without a Place

What the mission report says

The report is an eight-page mission report headed “Misrep prod-dod-11604218”, from the 65th Special Operations Squadron (“Originator (Unit or Squadron): 65 SOS”, “Mission Wing: 1 SOW”, “Major Command (MAJCOM): AFSOC”). USCENTCOM declassified it on 10 July 2026. The operation is “INHERENT RESOLVE”, the command “USCENTCOM”. Blacked out are the call sign, the aircraft’s type, tail number and bases, the sensors, every position, the unit supported (“DATA MASKED”) and the names; only “Number of Aircraft: 1” survives of the aircraft.

The narrative gives the flight in outline (p. 1): take-off at 17:34Z on 29 July, “PROCEEDED TO FRAGGED TASKING”, and then:

“AT 292022:00ZJUL25 […] OBSERVED AN UAP (SEE UAP 1).”

The aircraft reached its station at 22:36Z (p. 4), took a new tasking at 09:31Z on 30 July, landed at 14:11Z and shut down its engine at 14:26Z. The sighting thus fell on the way to the tasking, 2 hours 14 minutes before the aircraft arrived. The account in the UAP section confirms it, in the only words of it left unredacted: “WHILE TRANSITING TO […] TGT […] PERFORMED SCANS ON THE GROUND WHILE ENROUTE TO SUPPORT […]” (pp. 7–8). Two full lines after that are blacked out.

The UAP section (pp. 6–7) fills in:

• “Initial Contact DTG: 292022:32ZJUL25”
• “UAP Description (e.g., size, shape, color, markings, recognizable features): 6X SMALL SPHERICAL OBJECTS GROUPED TOGETHER”
• “UAP Maneuverability Observations: SEEMED TO BE AGILE, FREQUENTLY CHNAGING DIRECTION”
• “UAP Anomalous Characteristics/ Behaviors: ABLE TO CHANGE DIRECTIONS QUICKLY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY”
• “UAP Reaction to Observation, Interrogation, Engagement (…): NONE. FOLLOWED OF OWN ACCORD UNTIL LIST. REPORTED AFTERWARDS”
• “UAP Response to Observer Actions: NONE”; “UAP Physical State: Solid”; “UAP Propulsion Means: UNKNOWN”
• “UAP Under Intelligent Control: UNKNOWN”; “UAP Advanced Capabilities And/Or Materials: NO”
• “UAP Effects on Persons: NO”; “UAP Effects on Equipment: NONE”
• “Kinetic Altitude: FL220”, “Kinetic Velocity: 48OMPH” and “Kinetic Trajectory: SE”, each marked “Estimated”
• “Friendly Aircraft Trajectory: NW”; “Friendly Aircraft Speed: 120 KIAS”
• “Observation Interrogation of UAP (yes/no; if yes list sensor(s) and returns): NO”

The observer’s rank is given as “SSGT/E5”. The field “Number of UAP Sighted” is empty, though the description says six. The field “Third-party Observers and/or Reporters” is not empty: its content is blacked out as personal data, “(b)(6)”. The field “Observer Assessment of UAP” is blacked out as “(b)(1)(B)”. The weather was “(UNCLASSIFIED) CLEAR WX”, with “No Impact” (p. 5).

The report disagrees with itself once. The narrative says the crew “WAS 7-LINED TO SUPPORT DATA MASKED” at “291554:00ZJUL25”, 15:54Z, an hour and forty minutes before the take-off it gives as 17:34Z, both in the narrative and in the timeline.

Where it was: we cannot say

Every position in the report is blacked out in full: “Friendly Aircraft Location”, “First Coordinate”, “Last Coordinate”, “Tasked Start Point” and “Location (MGRS)”. Unlike other reports in the release, not one digit survives, so there is nothing to measure and nothing to convert. The fields “UAP First Seen Location” and “UAP Last Seen Location” are empty. The report places the mission only in Operation INHERENT RESOLVE, under USCENTCOM; the publisher titles it “Middle East, 2025”.

A pin in the middle of an operation’s area would claim knowledge we do not have, so the case has none.

The time is known: 20:22:32Z. The recording released with it is in infrared throughout.

480 mph, estimated

The speed stands in one field, spelled with a letter O between the 8 and the M: “Kinetic Velocity: 48OMPH”, with “Kinetic Velocity Accuracy: Estimated”. The report does not say how it was estimated. Nothing measured the objects: “Observation Interrogation of UAP: NO”. The report gives no range to them, and the aircraft’s own height is blacked out. The flight level 220 of the objects is “Estimated” in the same way.

A camera without a range gives angles, not speeds or heights. The recording, with every data field of its overlay blacked out, carries neither range nor field of view. The 480 mph does not follow from any other figure in the report, so it can be neither repeated nor refuted. By our conversion it is about 417 knots; the aircraft flew at 120 knots, about 138 mph, heading north-west, and the objects, by the report’s estimate, south-east.

What the recording shows

The recording is DOW-UAP-PR135, in the release 06 video bundle as DOD_111985782.mp4 and on the publisher’s video page. It runs one minute, 1280 × 720 pixels at 29.97 frames a second, in infrared only.

Much on the screen is not an object. The overlay leaves a crosshair, four corner marks, a small “N” and black boxes at the edges, where its data fields were. The optics leave a bright patch in the middle of the frame, darker corners, vertical streaks and a faint bright arc in the lower half, all of which stay put whatever the camera looks at. The sensor leaves about a dozen tiny specks, each always in the same place. We found those specks as bright spots present at the same position in more than a quarter of the frames, and removed them before counting points.

For the first 4.5 seconds a line of text is burned into the picture:

“Public disclosure of this information is postponed in accordance with 44 U.S.C. § 2107 Section 1843, UAP Postponement Code E.O. 13526”

By our viewing and measurement of the file:

• 0:00–0:10.5. A lattice tower on a flat, elongated patch with a bright spot near its foot, on an even grey ground. The scene drifts slowly across the frame. The tower is not an object of the report; it is what the camera was looking at.
• 0:06.5–0:09.0. Three to five blurred points cross the frame from the upper right down to the lower left, past the tower (next section).
• 0:10.5–0:11.5. The camera leaves the tower, which slides out at the top of the frame. From here on the background is an even grey without texture.
• 0:12.4–0:48.0. A group of small bright points, each some 5–7 pixels across, wanders over the frame: near the top at 0:15.6–0:18.4, at the left edge at 0:44–0:45, near the bottom at 0:47.8.
• 0:48.0. A single transitional frame, half white, half black.
• 0:48.5 to the end. A smaller reticle with a box around it, a change of magnification, and blurred patches; we found no points.

Past the tower in a straight line

For two and a half seconds the points cross a scene that has texture, the tower and the ground around it, and that scene barely moves: it drifts about 10 pixels a second. We followed the group every half second: its middle runs from about (834, 84) at 0:06.5 through (801, 180), (762, 276), (718, 373) and (685, 472) to (642, 572) at 0:09.0. That is a straight line at an even rate of about 208 pixels a second. On the only stretch where the background lets us check it, the group does not change direction.

Six points that rearrange themselves

Six separate points are in view almost without a break from 0:39.8 to 0:48.0, and for a moment at 0:37.2. Before that we count mostly five, at moments four; a sixth may have merged with its neighbour or stayed below our threshold.

The points move against one another. The width of the group on the screen, from its leftmost to its rightmost point:

• 0:13.6. 29 pixels.
• 0:16.0. 41 pixels.
• 0:23.2. 50 pixels.
• 0:25.6. 68 pixels.
• 0:32.4. 80 pixels.
• 0:35.0. 122 pixels.
• 0:40.0. Two threes, one at 681–699 pixels across the frame, the other at 762–776.
• 0:42.4. 177 pixels, still two threes.
• 0:46.0. 39 pixels, one cluster again.

A swing of the camera moves all the points together, and a change of magnification changes every distance between them in the same proportion; neither splits a group into two threes and joins them again. This is the one movement in the recording that is the points’ own for certain. It is also the only part of “ABLE TO CHANGE DIRECTIONS QUICKLY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY” that the recording can speak to, and only in part: for a few seconds the two threes move separately, not simultaneously. Without a range we do not know whether these distances are metres or kilometres.

What a blank background does not allow

From 0:12 to 0:48 the group swings about the screen, up, down, left and right. Whether those are its turns or the camera’s, the recording does not let us say. We tried the method we used on another recording in the release, following strips of the background through time: here the background has no texture, the strips show nothing but the points and a flicker of brightness, and matching whole frames locks onto the sensor’s own fixed pattern, which does not move by definition. The publisher itself says the sensor “pans to track the areas of contrast”. So the “FREQUENTLY CHNAGING DIRECTION” of the report can be neither confirmed nor refuted from the picture.

What the release says about small objects in groups

One report in the release sorts small objects crossing a sensor’s view. In DOW-UAP-D10, from 6 May 2022, another crew writes: “FROM 1514Z to 1934Z, […] OBSERVED 5X UAP FLY ACROSS THE SCREEN. AT 1514Z […] OBSERVED A UAP WITH THE VISRECCE OF A POSSIBLE […] MISSILE FLY ACROSS THE FOV […] PROCEEDED TO SEE 4X OTHER UAPS IN THEIR FOV UNTIL 1934Z. ALL 4X REMAINING UAP FIT CLOSER TO THE PROFILE OF POSSIBLE BIRDS.” (p. 6). It sorts them without a range too.

DOW-UAP-D106, from 5 May 2022, has a crew seeing “UAPS FLYING SPORATICALLY” of “APPROXIMATELY 1-2 METERS” at “80-180 MPH”, and files what it saw under “Observed Activity Description: UAS” (p. 6). That is its own judgement about its own sighting; D108 does not say anything of the kind.

What the publisher got wrong

The page gives the date taken as “01.01.2025”, 1 January 2025, and the identifier begins with 250101; the report puts the event on 29 July 2025.

The description opens a quotation mark before “six small spherical objects grouped together” and never closes it.

For 0:11–0:47 it says the sensor pans to track the areas of contrast, “keeping them generally within the center of the frame”. By our measurement the group reaches the upper part of the frame at 0:15.6–0:18.4, the left edge at 0:44–0:45 and the bottom at 0:47.8.

The page’s poster is the first frame of the recording, which shows the tower and no objects.

It gets 0:05–0:10 right: “Several areas of contrast transit the sensor field-of-view, entering from the top of the frame and exiting from the bottom.” By our measurement the points cross from the top of the frame downwards at 0:06.5–0:09.0. It also pairs the recording with the right report: six points, infrared, a report about six spheres.

Why this scores where it does

Witnesses score 2: one crew, trained to watch through its sensors, with the observer’s rank given; the third-party observers the report lists are withheld, so we cannot count them. Radar scores 0: nothing interrogated the objects. Optics scores 2: a minute of infrared in which six points are seen separately for eight seconds and their rearrangement can be measured; but every overlay that would give range or field of view is blacked out, and for most of the recording the background has no texture. Physical trace scores 0.

Multi-channel scores 1: the report and the recording come from the same crew and the same sensor. Documentation scores 2: times to the second, the aircraft’s heading and speed; but no position at all, the aircraft’s height blacked out, the account itself blacked out after its first words, an empty field for the number of objects, and a tasking logged before the take-off. Anomaly scores 1: 480 mph and flight level 220 are estimates without a method; the rearrangement is real in the picture but has no scale; the report itself answers “NO” on advanced capabilities and “UNKNOWN” on intelligent control. Data today scores 1: the report and the recording are public, but without a place the event cannot be reconstructed or set against anything else.

That puts the case at 1.1 overall, class D, with the status insufficient data.

What would settle it

The positions without their redactions. The aircraft’s, the objects’ first and last, and the aircraft’s height. They would give the case a place, and with the pointing angle a range.

The two blacked-out lines of the account, and the field “Observer Assessment of UAP”. The crew’s own judgement may stand there.

The overlay blacked out on the recording. The field of view, the slant range and where the sensor pointed, frame by frame, would turn the points’ spacing and movement into metres, and would show which of the group’s turns were the camera’s.

How the 480 mph and the flight level 220 were estimated. The report does not say.

The third-party observers, whose names the report withholds, and what they reported.