Spy plane footage obtained by DailyMail.com shows a UFO flying near Baghdad last year.
All six images appear to show a thin cylindrical object over northeastern Iraq, near Baghdad, moving across the screen from left to right.
The images were taken from video shot by a thermal camera on a United States Air Force (USAF) Reaper drone in May 2022, and have been dubbed the ‘Ghost of Baghdad’.
A source with knowledge of the incident said the object was marked at an Air Force warehouse as an “unidentified aerial phenomenon”, the government’s preferred term for UFOs, last year, due to its strange characteristics.
Fast-moving craft run on propulsion systems like rockets or engines that generate heat, but the thermal camera that filmed the object showed it to be colder than its surroundings.
Six images appear to show a thin cylindrical object over northeastern Iraq, near Baghdad, moving across the screen from left to right.
The cylindrical object can be seen on the left of the screen.
The footage was leaked to journalist and documentarian Jeremy Corbell (left) and investigative journalist George Knapp (right), and posted shortly after midnight on Weaponized, their new podcast.
The object also had no visible wings or fins, which likely ruled it out as a glider.
A USAF source said the UFO had no visible propulsion and appeared to be under “intelligent control”.
The footage was leaked to journalist and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and investigative journalist George Knapp, and posted shortly after midnight on armedhis new podcast.
“What George and I have uncovered is Reaper drone footage over an active war zone,” Corbell told DailyMail.com.
‘It shows an anomalous object that has been designated as a UAP by our own air force.
‘Like our government, we as journalists are curious about what can be seen in these images. The object appears to have no flight control surfaces, no traditional reactionary propulsion, and is cooler than its surrounding environment.
What we’re looking at is not your grandmother’s rocket.
The six intriguing images show the elongated object at the bottom of the screen moving from left to right. It appeared darker than its background in the thermal chamber, indicating that it was cooler than its surroundings.
The images appear to show some sort of trail or stream left behind in the ‘Ghost of Baghdad’s wake, though it could be an artifact of the video they were taken from.
The military coordinates at the bottom right of the images give the location of the Reaper Drone video as northeastern Iraq, near Baghdad.
DailyMail.com understands that the USAF did not fire on the UFO because it had no payload, for example a potential bomb, and did not approach ground troops.
The object was designated an ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon’, an official term that has since been replaced by ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon’ (UAP).
The military coordinates at the bottom right of the images give the location of the Reaper Drone video as northeastern Iraq, near Baghdad. The cylindrical object is seen on the right.
The cylindrical object is seen above, left of center.
The images appear to show some sort of trail or flow left behind by the object, though it could be an artifact of the thermal camera video from which they were taken.
The images were taken in May 2022.
It is not yet clear if the object was innocuous, a foreign military ship, or something otherworldly.
Corbell told DailyMail.com the images were leaked by frustrated members of the USAF who claim the Air Force is “burying” a significant number of UFO incidents.
DailyMail.com understands that many of these incidents, including the May 2022 UFO video, were not shared with intelligence agencies or the government’s UFO Office, the All Domains Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
Normally, data from an incident like this near Baghdad would be sent to the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees operations against ISIS in Iraq. But it is not clear if the Command received the video or any other information about the incident.
US law requires AARO to collect information on UAP incidents from the Department of Defense and the intelligence community.
But Christopher Mellon, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, recently criticized the Air Force for allegedly not accepting the foreign object report.
“The Navy was extremely helpful, while the Air Force continued to be remarkably unhelpful, if not hostile, to investigations on the subject,” he wrote in a February 14 statement. blog post.
‘The preliminary assessment provided to Congress [about UFOs in 2021] was almost completely devoid of US Air Force data despite the fact that the Air Force (as a department that also oversees the US Space Force) has many more aircraft and sensor systems than the Navy, as well as the responsibility to support NORAD.
Corbell warned that the alleged lack of information sharing is putting servicemen and women at risk.
“This case represents other UAPs filmed by our Air Force, which have been kept hidden from US taxpayers and our intelligence community,” he told DailyMail.com.
“The brave men and women who serve in our nation’s Air Force are at direct risk if we are unable to effectively and actionably identify, process and share this type of UAP imagery.
“Air Force personnel have told me they are very concerned that this phenomenon will carry an unfortunate stigma that inhibits proper reporting and response within the chain of command. The Air Force is an exemplary branch of our military. We must promote greater transparency of the UAP, for the good of the country and our participating services.
“As journalists, George and I feel a duty to inform the public in situations like this, where our representatives have failed to provide transparency and, in fact, obstructed it.”
Following the launch of a Chinese balloon and three unidentified objects over North American airspace last month, the issue of UFOs threatening US interests and air traffic has become a hot topic in Congress.
Following the ‘shootings’ US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Vice Chairman Marco Rubio said: ‘The last 72 hours revealed to the public what was going on for years, unidentified aircraft routinely operating in US Restricted Airspace’.
An image obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com of what appears to be a metallic-looking orb flying over Mosul, Iraq in April 2016 was included in a classified UFO news video shown to various US government agencies. .
An image obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com of Corbell and Knapp in January of what appears to be a metallic-looking orb flying over Mosul, Iraq in April 2016, was included in a classified UFO news video that was shown to various agencies. US governmental
In January, AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick made a presentation at a conference on aviation security, warning of the “threats to the immediate security of US citizens and government facilities” posed by the UAP.
Slides from his presentation, reported in a DailyMail.com story last month, said the military is finding unidentified anomalous phenomena ‘with increasing frequency in the vicinity of US military installations and areas of operations.’ , which would include conflict zones such as Iraq.
The Air Force began a “six-month pilot program” in November 2020 to collect UFO data, according to a Pentagon spokeswoman, but ended it the following spring.
‘The lessons learned from the pilot were used to improve the support given to the UAPTF and will be used to contribute to AARO’s efforts. If applicable, the data collected in the pilot was provided through command channels to the UAPTF,” Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough said in a statement.
In August 2021, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told Politico: “I’ve thought a lot about defending American airspace, but not against UFOs.” If we are asked to do that, we will. This is something that has been around for many years.
The leaked images from May 2022 follow the release of the ‘Mosul Orb’ image, also obtained by Corbell and Knapp, showing a sphere-shaped UFO filmed by a US spy plane over the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. , in 2016.
The Pentagon has yet to confirm the authenticity of the Mosul image.
Gough said: “I’m not going to comment on whether or not something is part of a classified briefing.”
Corbell called on the public to help analyze and identify the new images he and Knapp obtained.
“I hope that by obtaining and posting images like this, the public can help solve this collective mystery and inspire greater transparency from our Department of Defense,” he said. ‘This is a solvable problem, so let’s do it together.
“The Pentagon’s overclassification is corrosive like acid and has been used as a weapon against the American public’s right and need to know about UFOs.
‘It’s time they earned the trust of the people.’