The “Jellyfish UAP” is one of the more recent additions to the official record — footage from 2023, captured not by a fighter jet’s targeting pod but by a U.S. military MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Iraq/Syria border region, showing an object whose translucent, undulating appearance in infrared gave the case its nickname.
What the Footage Shows
The footage was captured using the Reaper’s onboard infrared sensor package during a standard surveillance operation. The object in the frame has an irregular, semi-translucent visual signature that — in infrared, at the drone’s altitude and viewing angle — resembles a jellyfish or similarly amorphous shape, moving in a manner distinct from a fixed-wing aircraft, balloon, or typical drone. This footage is part of the broader tranche of records released through the PURSUE program’s ongoing declassification effort, which has made public over 300 DoD UAP-related files as of 2026, rather than being an isolated release like the 2020 Navy videos.
Why Drone-Captured Footage Is a Different Evidentiary Category
It’s worth understanding a real technical distinction between this case and the 2004-2015 Navy videos: MQ-9 Reaper sensor footage comes from a different sensor architecture and altitude profile than a fighter jet’s ATFLIR pod, and infrared “blooming” — where a heat source appears larger, more diffuse, or oddly shaped than its actual physical size, especially against certain backgrounds or at certain distances — is a well-documented phenomenon in thermal imaging generally. This is a genuine, honest consideration for interpreting the Jellyfish footage’s unusual visual shape, not a dismissal of the case — it’s exactly the kind of technical nuance that separates careful analysis from speculation, and it’s a live consideration in how AARO evaluates infrared footage across many cases, not just this one.
What Makes This Case Notable
Unlike the widely-circulated 2020 Navy videos, the Jellyfish UAP footage is part of a larger, less individually publicized batch of records released through the PURSUE program rather than a standalone high-profile announcement. That’s a meaningful difference in how it entered the public record: it reflects the newer, more routine (if still limited) declassification pipeline established after the 2022 creation of AARO and the broader post-2020 push toward regular UAP-related disclosure, rather than a one-off high-visibility event.
Current Status
As with the other cases covered on this site, official classification information is the authoritative status — check AARO’s current public case reporting directly for the most up-to-date classification, since newer PURSUE-released cases like this one are still being actively catalogued and assessed as records continue to be added.
Primary Sources
This footage is part of the PURSUE program’s declassified file releases — see our PURSUE Program explainer for the broader context of that release, and our Reader’s Guide to the National Archives’ RG 615 UAP Collection for where these records are being catalogued long-term.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is “infrared blooming” a confirmed explanation for this footage?
No official source has issued blooming as a confirmed explanation specifically for this case — it’s a well-documented general phenomenon in thermal imaging that’s a relevant, honest consideration when evaluating any infrared UAP footage, this one included, but it hasn’t been formally applied as a resolution to this specific case.
Why was this footage captured by a drone instead of a fighter jet?
MQ-9 Reapers are commonly used for extended surveillance operations over regions like the Iraq/Syria border area, which is a routine mission profile — the object was captured incidentally during that kind of standard operation rather than a dedicated intercept mission like the 2004 Tic Tac case.
Are more PURSUE program cases like this expected to be released?
Yes — PURSUE is an ongoing declassification effort, and the National Archives’ RG 615 collection is explicitly designed to receive records on a rolling basis rather than as a single completed release, so more cases from this pipeline are a reasonable expectation going forward.