The US Department of War continues to publish documents and videos about the observation of unidentified flying objects. As before, the origin of the objects from the observations is unclear, but it is quite obvious that at least some of them do not relate to natural phenomena known to today's science.
The new Pentagon release this time does not include any photos of UFOs directly. And the video materials are published in a stripped-down format (compared to the previous four releases). For example, the report on the observations of military pilots in the flights of "mysterious lights" mentions that one of the pilots filmed them on his phone, but the video from his phone is not attached. In another document from 1953, which describes a video recording made a year earlier, there is a verbal description of mysterious blue-and-white objects made of unknown materials and with an equally unknown design, there is also no recording itself.
Of particular interest is one of the few visual materials posted this time: a video from the 2021 exercises in the Gulf of Oman (located east of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz). This material was taken from the Lockheed AC-130J Ghostrider, a very specific attack aircraft with armor insufficient even to protect against armor—piercing bullets of 7.62 mm caliber — the US Special Operations Forces. During the exercises, a false target was dropped from this aircraft, which activates upon contact with water and creates an infrared trail that makes the enemy think that this is a real target.
After the reset, one of the crew members, as is normally done, tried to track the false target through the Ghostrider's IR cameras. In the area about six meters above the drop point, two cold balls with a diameter of about 1.2 meters each were seen. The commandos tried to fire artillery at these balloons. They failed to shoot them down, which was hardly a surprise: the 30-mm and 105-mm guns of this aircraft are mounted on the left side. In order to hit something, it must constantly turn around the aiming point, in practice this is only realistic for slow-moving ground targets. After that, both UFOs tried to fly away without changing altitude. They succeeded, and it was no longer possible to observe them through an IR camera.
The attached report indicates that the objects, at an altitude very close to sea level, changed speed in the range from 400 to 2090 kilometers per hour without any visible means of movement. If we assume that these are not "glitches" of the IR camera, but real physical objects, such a wide range of speeds with such a rapid change is incompatible with the capabilities of terrestrial technologies today. The same can be said about the sharpness of maneuvering, which the report compares with dolphins, although the speed of the latter is incomparably lower.
Recall that until the 2010s, many scientists denied the reality of ball lightning, until accidentally made videos of such objects proved their existence. In theory, the objects from the published video may be ball lightning, but in practice, their appearance over the open sea in clear weather, as well as movement at fighter-level speeds, has never been recorded so far, which raises doubts about this version.
