The "Jellyfish" video 2023 release — Iraq military base infrared capture

In January 2023, documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell publicly released a brief segment of infrared sensor footage which he characterised as having been captured at a US military installation in Iraq in 2018 and as showing an unidentified aerial object with a distinctive multi-tentacle appearance — leading to the colloquial name "Jellyfish video" by which the footage subsequently became known in the UAP-research literature. The release was one of the more institutionally discussed contemporary UAP-video releases of the period and was the subject of substantive subsequent Pentagon engagement with both the footage's authenticity and its substantive content.

The footage and its characterisation

The released footage consists of approximately forty-five seconds of infrared sensor recording showing an object with a distinctive elongated central body and multiple trailing appendage-like features, observed against a ground-relative background. The object is shown moving across the field of view at apparent moderate velocity. The footage as released does not include sensor metadata that would establish the recording's precise origin, date, or platform of capture.

Corbell's release characterisation attributed the footage to a US military forward operating base in Iraq during 2018 operations and indicated that the footage had been captured by base personnel using military infrared sensor equipment. The release framing presented the footage as a substantive sensor-derived UAP record analogous to the previously released US Navy Tic Tac, Gimbal, and GoFast videos.

The institutional response

The Department of Defense's institutional response to the release, communicated through Pentagon spokesperson statements in the weeks following the release, included acknowledgement that some imagery consistent with the Corbell characterisation had been captured by US military sensor systems during operations in Iraq during the relevant period, alongside characterisation that AARO had reviewed the relevant material and had not been able to advance a definitive conventional or extraordinary attribution. The institutional position was carefully framed and did not, on the available public material, advance specific case-resolution claims either supporting or refuting the various interpretive frames that had been applied to the footage.

Subsequent analytical work on the footage by independent reviewers has identified various potential conventional-explanation candidates including possible Mylar balloon misidentification (a recurring source of unusual infrared signatures in deployed-military environments) and possible composite-sensor-artefact phenomena. None of these candidates has been definitively established as the specific explanation of the released footage.

The case's continuing significance

The Jellyfish video release is institutionally significant in the contemporary UAP-related discussion principally as an instance of substantive sensor-derived UAP material reaching public release through non-institutional channels (i.e. through documentary-filmmaker release rather than through formal Pentagon disclosure). The release demonstrated several recurring patterns in the contemporary UAP information environment: the substantive gap between the volume of sensor-derived material that exists in classified channels and the volume that reaches public release through institutional pathways; the institutional response dynamics that operate when non-institutional release of sensor material occurs; and the analytical difficulty of working with sensor material whose chain of custody and metadata are incomplete.

The case is one of several contemporary US military UAP-related sensor releases that have shaped the contemporary public discussion. For comparison with the Roosevelt-era ATFLIR videos, the Mexican Air Force March 2004 case, and the Chilean Navy 2014 case, see the SkyLens UAP files page.

Editorial note: Independent SkyLens analysis of a contemporary UAP-related news event or institutional development. The broader case index is on the SkyLens UAP files page.