A ‘jellyfish UFO’ seen flying over a US military base in Iraq should not be dismissed as balloons or a faulty lens, according to a former ministry of defence (MoD) investigator.
Footage taken in 2018 shows a mysterious round object with what appear to be dangling legs floating across the Middle East, changing colour from white to grey to black.
The video was revealed by investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who said sources ‘risked getting it’ to him.
He also alleged the unidentified anomalous phenomenon, (UAP, the new term for UFOs) dived into a lake and stayed there for 17 minutes, before shooting back into the sky at a 45-degree angle.
Eyewitnesses allegedly said they were unable to detect the object unless using thermal imaging – the UFO’s changing colour suggesting it was also changing temperature.
However, some have argued they are simply seeing a balloon, or possibly even a smudge on the camera lens.
But Nick Pope, who led the MoD’s UFO investigations desk in the 1990s, has said the answer is not that straightforward.
‘This intriguing footage is hard to categorise,’ he said. ‘Sceptical theories include this being a tangled mass of balloons drifting in the wind, or dirt on the lens or on the protective glass around the camera.
However, if the allegation that there’s footage of this object entering a body of water, reemerging and shooting off at high speed with a change of direction is true, then this would rule out such prosaic explanations.
‘We’ll have to wait and see if this further footage emerges, if it’s verifiably part of the same incident, and if the Pentagon confirms the authenticity of the footage.’
He added that Mr Corbell has previously obtained footage from the military that later turned out to be credible. In 2021, he released a video showing the moment a US Navy attack ship was swarmed by unidentified flying aircraft.
‘I’m fairly confident that this too is authentic,’ said Mr Pope. ‘But many questions remain, including whether this footage is in the database of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and what their assessment is.
‘All this takes place against the background of congressional interest in UAP, so it’s to be expected that this latest story will increase interest, and lead lawmakers to ask the Pentagon some hard questions about this footage and wider US government research and investigation into UAP.’
Mr Pope and other current and former government officials around the world have been calling for greater transparency regarding exactly what information leaders have on UAP, not least due to increasing air safety concerns.
In November, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that a Ryanair flight came within 20 metres of a UFO while taking off from Stansted airport.
In the US, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves has founded the organisation Americans for Safe Aerospace following his own experiences with UAP, which he says are an ‘open secret’ among fighter pilots.
Speaking during a congressional hearing into UAP in September, he said ‘UAP are in our aerospace, but they are grossly underreported.
‘The government knows more about UAP than shared publicly, and excessive classification practises keep crucial information hidden. There’s a lack of transparency around UAP that’s unsettling. Since 2021, all UAP videos are classified as secret or above.
‘This level of secrecy not only impedes our understanding but fuels speculation and mistrust.’
On the ‘jellyfish’ UFO, Mr Pope added that the UK also has questions to answer.
‘The location where this footage was taken was apparently a multinational military base, so it would be interesting to know whether there was a UK presence, whether the MoD has any information on this incident, and whether UK military surveillance systems have captured UAP images in other locations worldwide,’ he said.
‘These are questions that MPs should be putting to the defence committee, not least because we know from the US government that the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance has discussed UAP, so the UK government must be involved at some level.’
At the opposite end of the scale, earlier this week Mr Pope called the widely-shared conspiracy theory about aliens in a Miami shopping mall as ‘bizarre’.
‘This story – and the reaction to it – is truly bizarre, he said. ‘There’s no credible evidence that anything UFO or alien-related happened, or that this was anything other than the police responding to reports of youths fighting.
‘But on social media in particular, this story has exploded, probably because it’s captured the zeitgeist of America’s current obsession with UFOs.’
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