AARO concluded with high confidence that the Jellyfish video, filmed over Al Taqaddum Air Base in Iraq in October 2017 and leaked in January 2024, shows a cluster of balloons drifting with the wind. The full video does not show it entering water.
Case 002Oct 2017Al Taqaddum, IraqExplained
File CSE-002 / The Jellyfish UFO / UnclassifiedReleased in partCivilian copy
Case file CSE-002Summary sheet
Case summary
Date
23 October 2017, per AARO. Early press reports in 2024 gave 2018.
Place
Al Taqaddum Air Base, Iraq.
Witnesses
Base personnel watching a sensor feed. One former Marine controller at the base has spoken publicly about what he saw.
Duration
The full video AARO released runs 17 minutes 27 seconds.
Evidence
Thermal infrared video from a sensor on a force-protection aerostat, a tethered surveillance balloon, operating at 2,700 feet.
Official finding
AARO case resolution, 8 September 2025: AARO assesses with high confidence that the Al Taqaddum object did not exhibit anomalous behavior or capabilities.(aaro.mil)
Status
Explained
AARO matched the object to a balloon cluster moving with the wind and released the full video. The water claim has no support in it.
What happened
On 23 October 2017, a thermal camera watching over Al Taqaddum Air Base in Iraq recorded a dark, lumpy object with dangling shapes beneath it, drifting across the frame. The camera sat on a tethered surveillance balloon about 2,700 feet up. Those details come from AARO’s case resolution.
Nobody outside the military saw the clip until January 2024. Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and journalist George Knapp posted it on their Weaponized site on 8 January 2024, and it aired in a TMZ documentary on Tubi from 9 January. It was quickly nicknamed the Jellyfish. Press coverage at the time dated it to 2018.
Corbell claims the object made a controlled descent into water, stayed under for about 17 minutes, then left at speed. He calls it “transmedium.” A Department of Defense spokesperson told reporters in January 2024 that the department does not comment on the authenticity of allegedly leaked material.
AARO announced its answer on 29 April 2025: balloons. The same day it posted the full 17-minute video on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, marked public domain. The written case resolution followed on 8 September 2025.
What the evidence is
The evidence is one thermal video, now public in full. The official video page is the place to watch it. This file links to it instead of reproducing frames.
AARO’s analysis puts the object between 850 and 2,200 feet, moving 4 to 14 mph from east to west, within the range of the wind that day. It describes the shape as consistent with a cluster of fully and partly inflated balloons with visible dangling strings. The object shifts between dark and light in the video. AARO attributes that to the camera readjusting its grayscale, not to the object changing.
The rest is testimony. Former Marine Michael Cincoski, who worked as a surveillance controller at the base, said the object never shot out of the lake or into the sky, as Arab News also reported. No record found for this file shows the video was presented to Congress. The transcript of the September 2025 House task force hearing does not mention it.
The explanations on the table
Two explanations have been argued. One is now the official finding.
A cluster of balloons
AARO concluded with high confidence that the object is consistent with party-style balloons, some fully and some partly inflated, drifting with the wind. Before the report, Mick West at Metabunk argued in January 2024 for balloons a few thousand feet up, and for the camera, not the object, causing the dark-to-light switching. AARO’s report describes the same grayscale effect.
The counter: Corbell’s claim that the object entered and left water. The full video AARO released does not show that, and AARO’s report does not address water at all.
Corbell presents the object as something that can move through air and water. Physicist Matthew Szydagis told Global News in January 2024 that the colour changes were unexplained.
The counter: the only witness who has spoken on record said the object did not come out of the water, and the full video shows drift consistent with the wind.
Whether any longer footage exists. Corbell describes more than was released. No official source addresses it.
Corbell’s claim that the military formally designated the object a UAP has not been confirmed by any official source.
The Pentagon’s 2026 file releases list no record by this name, as far as this file could check. That does not prove it is absent from them.
What a civilian can learn from it
A leak is not the whole record. The clip that went viral was a slice. The full 17 minutes, released later, told a plainer story. If you film something, keep the whole file, from before it appears to after it leaves.
Cameras change the picture. Thermal and night modes readjust brightness on their own, so a target can seem to glow, fade or flip colour. Note your camera settings with your clip. The night filming file covers the settings that matter.
Balloons fool trained people. They drift, tumble and hang strings that look like limbs. The misidentification filter starts with the wind.
