UAP flight characteristics: the physics of the observed kinematics, sourced
The physical record of UAP flight characteristics: instantaneous acceleration, hypersonic velocity without sonic boom, trans-medium transition between atmosphere and water, the absence of typical aerodynamic wake. Drawn from named-witness testimony, sensor data, and the peer-reviewed physics literature.
The 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment described the observed UAP flight characteristics in five categories: 'remaining stationary in winds aloft, moving against the wind, manoeuvring abruptly, moving at considerable speed, and not showing identifiable means of propulsion.' Subsequent AARO Historical Record reporting and congressional testimony have repeated and extended that taxonomy.
The peer-reviewed treatment begins with Knuth et al. (2019, 'Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles', published in Entropy), which derives quantitative bounds on the implied accelerations and propulsion power for a small set of well-documented cases. The 2024 AIAA review (Powell et al., 'Reported Shape, Size, Kinematics ... of UAP from Select Reports, 1947–2016') extends the dataset to thousands of cases and provides the statistical baseline.
The Loeb & Kirkpatrick paper. The 2023 Harvard CfA preprint co-authored by Galileo Project founder Avi Loeb and then-AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick ('Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena') is the single most-cited treatment of the question: what envelope can UAP behaviour occupy before requiring physics outside the current standard model? The paper is on the Research library page.
Why this matters. The flight-characteristics record is the part of UAP that is least dependent on cultural interpretation. Either the sensor and witness reports are consistent with conventional aerospace technology, or they aren't. The peer-reviewed literature now treats that question as empirically tractable, not metaphysical.
The sixth tranche of the Trump administration's PURSUE program: 72 files — 56 documents, 15 videos, 1 audio recording — bringing the public corpus to 447 files. Forty-four are the paper trail of AAWSAP, the DIA program behind the 'warp drive and wormhole' studies: 37 of its 38 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents, the 2008 Statement of Objectives, the solicitation and five contract modifications, each published with the Department's own assessment. Also new: the 1952 Tremonton, Utah film and its Project Blue Book case file, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt's March 1952 presentation on tape, the first local law enforcement files in the program, and ten CENTCOM and INDOPACOM sensor videos and stills.
The fifth tranche of the Trump administration's PURSUE program: 41 files — 22 documents, 16 videos, 3 images — published 28 days after Release 04 and bringing the public corpus to 375 files. The organizing theme is triangles: four FBI interviews, each paired with a 2026 digital rendering, spanning a 2002 sighting over Bagram Air Force Base to two independent October 2023 reports from Colorado Springs. The release also contains the first FBI-captured video in the program's history and the first-ever State Department and Executive Office of the President files, tracking a 1963 Brazilian crashed-sphere claim to a fabrication within eleven days.
The third tranche of the Trump administration's PURSUE program: 72 files — 53 documents, 10 images, 6 videos, 3 audio files — bringing the public corpus to 294 files. The FBI dominates with 29 files, anchored by two modern American case clusters: a four-year series of orb sightings in the northeastern U.S. that the Bureau's own agents witnessed first-hand, and the first-person record of the October 2023 Western US Event. Also included: the CIA's 1953 Robertson Panel report in less-redacted form, NASA's Gemini-era crew debriefings, and the 1962 Cronkite–Cooper interview audio.
Exactly 14 days after PURSUE Release 01, the U.S. Department of War publishes a second tranche of declassified UAP records through war.gov/UFO: 51 sensor videos (the DOW-UAP-PR050–PR099 series), 7 NASA crew audio files, and 6 documents. The centerpiece is a first-person USPER narrative from a currently-serving senior U.S. intelligence officer describing a one-hour, multi-witness UAP encounter from a U.S. military helicopter in late 2025.
The Trump administration launches PURSUE — the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters — and the Department of War publishes 160 declassified UAP-related files in the first tranche: 117 PDFs, 29 sensor videos, and 14 photographs spanning 1944 to 2026. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says the goal is 'maximum transparency.'
The most recently dated video in PURSUE Release 01 — DOW-UAP-PR49, captured in 2026 by a U.S. Department of the Army sensor — runs 1 minute 49 seconds and shows infrared tracking of an unresolved aerial object.
FBI-UAP-PR007 is hand-held thermal footage a U.S. Government Special Agent shot himself during a 2026 incident in the western United States — two slow-moving 'black-hot' areas of contrast — making it the first video in the PURSUE program captured by the Bureau rather than submitted to it. A second agent separately reported a thermally elevated aerial object the same year, and two more witnesses to a third sequence of incidents within five hours were interviewed and rendered independently.
For the first time PURSUE pairs U.S. Central Command Mission Reports systematically with their sensor imagery: four MISREPs, two infrared stills and four videos from Iraq and the Middle East. A 2022 operator reported UAP 'flying sporadically within the target area… at various speeds between 80 and 180 miles per hour,' one to two metres across. A 2025 operator described 'a white round orbit… moving as fast as 500 miles per hour.' Another reported 'six small spherical objects grouped together,' agile and frequently changing direction, at an estimated 480 mph.
PURSUE Release 03 declassifies the FBI's investigation of recurring orb phenomena in one sparsely populated area of the northeastern United States: four authenticated eyewitness videos spanning November 2021 to July 2025 — 'Triangle Orbs,' 'Red Orb Rotation,' 'Orbs Over the Pond,' and the 'Northeastern Orb Sighting' — plus seven investigative records. The standout: an FD-1057 documenting two FBI special agents' own first-hand UAP observation during a November 2024 site survey. The Bureau assesses the civilian witnesses as 'highly credible.'
Released May 8, 2026 in PURSUE Release 01, the 65-second AARO video designated DOW-UAP-PR028 (PR-028) records a UAP over Greece that the mission report describes as diamond-shaped and moving at roughly 434 knots — detectable only on short-wave infrared. When the operator switched to the visible spectrum, it was gone.
A local law enforcement officer in Colorado submitted four cell-phone videos to AARO — three from October 2023 and one from January 2024 — describing a 'silent' phenomenon 'featuring red, blue, and green flashing lights,' along with a transcript of his own narration as he recorded. The five files are the first from a local law enforcement agency in the PURSUE program. One clip runs a full fifteen minutes on a single light source. AARO blurred the lower half of each frame, edited the transcript to remove identifying detail, and attached its standing caveat about what phone autofocus does to distant subjects.
A 2-minute-57-second AARO video from a U.S. military sensor records an unidentified object over Greece performing multiple sharp 90-degree turns at speed — flight characteristics that exceed publicly disclosed performance of known aircraft. Released as DOW-UAP-PR34 in PURSUE Release 01.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command's contribution to PURSUE Release 06: six infrared sensor videos recorded aboard U.S. military platforms in 2023 — five over the Yellow Sea, one over the East China Sea — between 19 seconds and one minute 38 seconds long, each tracking a single area of contrast over open water. No mission reports accompany them, and the Department's descriptions are confined to what the sensor does. The shortest, DOW-UAP-PR143, supplies the iconic frame of the release: one black-hot object under the reticle.
Cockpit/sensor footage from the February 12, 2023 U.S. Air National Guard F-16C engagement over Lake Huron, Michigan — the third of four shootdowns that month in the wake of the Chinese surveillance-balloon incident. AARO has characterized the underlying object as 'a benign hobbyist or research balloon' but the engagement footage itself is published for the first time in PURSUE Release 02.
A 20-second infrared sensor recording from a U.S. military platform over CENTCOM waters near Iran, August 26, 2022, showing four areas of contrast moving together — and then a fifth object entering the frame from the top-left. The opening video of the new PR050-PR099 series released in PURSUE Release 02.
The House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation holds the first open congressional hearing on UAP in fifty-three years. Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray testify.
A sensor video from a U.S. Navy platform in March 2022 showing multiple spherical objects moving in and out of the water in close proximity to a surfaced U.S. submarine — the cleanest transmedium/USO (Unidentified Submerged Object) footage AARO has released to date, and the iconic image of PURSUE Release 02.
Six videos from September 8, 2021 show an unidentified object over the Gulf of Oman — every clip a cell-phone recording of the infrared display aboard a Special Operations AC-130J gunship, a limitation the Department of War states plainly for each file. An accompanying Intelligence Information Report, itself unevaluated raw reporting, documents the incident that produced them.
Released as the kinematic standout of PURSUE Release 02, DOW-UAP-PR051 records a 2021 encounter on the Jordan-Syria border in which a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone achieves a weapons-quality lock on an unidentified object before that object exhibits instantaneous acceleration and abrupt directional changes that, per AARO's mission report, exceed the publicly disclosed performance envelope of any known crewed or uncrewed aerial system.
An infrared sensor video from November 23, 2020 over Afghanistan — captured by a U.S. military platform in CENTCOM's area of responsibility — showing a single spherical object moving in and out of cloud cover. The footage was uploaded to a U.S. classified network in June 2024 and declassified in PURSUE Release 02.
A U.S. Navy Range Fouler debrief from May 14, 2020 documents a 'solid white object' performing erratic movements above the water of the Persian Gulf — a close-proximity encounter with active U.S. military training. Released as DOW-UAP-D38 with companion video DOW-UAP-PR36.
The Pentagon publicly releases three U.S. Navy gun-camera videos — 'FLIR1' (2004), 'GIMBAL' (2015), and 'GO FAST' (2015) — and confirms that the objects depicted remain unidentified. The release marks the first formal U.S. government acknowledgment of authentic military UAP imagery.
Infrared sensor footage from a U.S. military platform in U.S. Northern Command's area of responsibility in December 2019, showing a single unidentified object off the U.S. East Coast. Uploaded to a U.S. classified network in September 2020 and declassified in PURSUE Release 02 — a rare NORTHCOM (continental U.S.) entry in the PR-series corpus.
Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean publish a front-page New York Times investigation revealing the existence of the Department of Defense's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The story includes a release of the 'FLIR1' video and on-the-record statements from former AATIP director Luis Elizondo.
A Navy ATFLIR clip appears to show a small object streaking just above the Atlantic. Officially released in April 2020 alongside FLIR1 and GIMBAL, GO FAST became the clearest case study in how sensor geometry can mislead: analyses using the video's own displayed data — including AARO's published assessment — put the object several thousand feet up, moving far slower than it appears.
An F/A-18F crew from the USS Theodore Roosevelt's air wing records an infrared object with no visible exhaust that appears to rotate in flight while the crew reports a formation of additional objects on their situational-awareness display. One of three videos the Pentagon officially confirmed authentic in April 2020 — and the only one of the three with no published resolution.
F/A-18F crews assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 11, operating from Naval Air Station Oceana, report routine encounters with UAP off the U.S. East Coast. Two of the three Pentagon-released videos — 'GIMBAL' and 'GO FAST' — are recorded during this period.
The oldest sensor video in PURSUE Release 01 — a 1-minute-46-second AARO clip from 2013 — shows what military observers described as an 'eight-pointed star formation' of objects over a Middle Eastern theater of operations.
Aircrews from the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group report repeated radar contacts and a daylight visual encounter with a small, white, smooth, Tic Tac–shaped object during a training exercise in the Pacific. One of three Pentagon videos later released by the Department of Defense (FLIR1) documents a portion of the event.
On July 2, 1952, Navy Chief Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse — a Photographer's Mate with more than 1,000 hours of aerial-photography experience — filmed 12 to 14 bright, reflective objects near Tremonton, Utah, on 16mm Kodachrome. The Air Force assessed him as honest, reliable and expert, and never conclusively identified the objects: birds, balloons and mirage early on; 'pillow balloons' after a December 1952 review with General Mills; seabirds reflecting sunlight in later assessments. PURSUE Release 06 publishes the National Archives digitization of the film, the Blue Book case file, the balloon photo file, Newhouse's personnel record, and the Air Force's late-1952 'Flying Discs' compilation.
What flight characteristics does the ODNI describe?
The June 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment lists five recurring characteristics: 'remaining stationary in winds aloft', 'moving against the wind', 'manoeuvring abruptly', 'moving at considerable speed', and 'no identifiable means of propulsion'. The same taxonomy is reproduced in subsequent AARO reporting.
What is the Knuth et al. 2019 paper?
A peer-reviewed paper in Entropy that derives quantitative estimates of the accelerations, velocities, and implied propulsion power for a small set of well-documented UAP cases. It is the first widely-cited physics treatment of the modern record.
What about the Loeb & Kirkpatrick paper?
A 2023 Harvard Center for Astrophysics preprint co-authored by Galileo Project founder Avi Loeb and then-AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick, titled 'Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena'. It establishes the physical envelope inside which observed UAP behaviour can lie before requiring physics outside the standard model.
What does trans-medium mean?
Transition between atmosphere and water (or vice versa) without breaking up. The Navy-pilot record — particularly the 2004 Nimitz Tic Tac case — includes reported observations of UAP entering and exiting water without conventional splash or deceleration profiles. Whether the observations support the physical claim is contested.
Where's the AIAA review?
Powell et al. 2024, 'The Reported Shape, Size, Kinematics, Electromagnetic Effects, and Presence of Sound of UAP from Select Reports, 1947–2016', published in AIAA Aviation 2024. The most comprehensive statistical synthesis to date. Linked from the Research library page.
Canonical reading on this topic
Non-fiction titles by named witnesses, Pentagon insiders, and investigative journalists referenced in this archive.
UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record
U.S. material is the single largest body in the public UAP record, but it isn't the only one. France's GEIPAN has run a transparent case database since 1977; the UK MoD released ~60,000 pages between 2008 and 2017; Japan's evolving track is the program currently moving fastest in 2026. Every state-run UAP-investigation body with a public archive — fifteen countries to date — is catalogued in one place.