Ukrainian army IR-drone operators capture UFO hovering over warzone

A disc-shaped, completely silent UFO was caught on camera by Ukrainian troops in the war-torn country, in footage shared exclusively with DailyMail.com.

‘What the f-[expletive] is this? Why isn’t it moving?’ the men with Ukraine‘s 406th Battalion can be heard debating as they witnessed the deadly calm UFO hovering over their warzone.

While the size, altitude, and shape of the object remain a mystery, the drone’s own altitude indicates that the apparent object could be a large craft over 30 miles away.

The eerie footage was captured by the 406th Battalion this month via one of the over 300 ‘heat vision’ quadcopter drones used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) in their effort to defend the nation from a now two-years long invasion by Russia.

Based on the thermal-imaging drone’s temperature range, the UFO was warmer than its surroundings (‘black hot’), although a red ‘error message’ on the drone’s control interface leaves key details unresolved, as experts told DailyMail.com.

The incident is just the latest UFO case over Ukraine’s war-torn soil, fueling decades of speculation on the possible intent of the airborne mysteries and adding weight to the testimony of military witnesses who have seen UFOs disable nuclear weapons.

One member of the 406th declares that the object is ‘a UFO, for sure.’

‘It is staying in place, on the screen. Zoom in more,’ the troops continue debating.

‘It’s standing still, do you see?’

Their conversation, spoken in their native Ukrainian, was translated and confirmed by several translators, who reviewed the footage on behalf of DailyMail.com. 

The mysterious, airborne object, while still unidentified, bears a striking resemblance to the ‘Baghdad Phantom’ — the skinny, cylindrical object spotted above Iraq in May 2022 by the infrared ‘heat’ camera of a US Air Force Reaper drone.

In the final moments of the 406th’s clip of their Ukrainain UFO encounter, one member can be heard — possibly joking — that they should ‘maybe ram it’ with their tiny, two-pound quadcopter.

Ukraine’s 406th was gifted their commercial DJI brand Mavic 3T thermal-imaging drone via the fundraising efforts of the DeepInspire Foundation, war correspondent Joe Lindsley, who runs the Lviv Lab media center, and other humanitarian activists.

Writing from Kharkiv, Lindsley told DailyMail.com that his team has sent supplies to active duty servicemen with the 406th ‘over the past year.’  

The battalion’s Mavic quadcopter was soaring more than 500 feet above seal level earlier this month when it spotted the UFO.

At that altitude, the horizon visible via the drone’s camera off in the distance would be approximately 30 miles away, meaning that the UFO could be at least that far away, or farther, depending on the object’s own height above land.

As members of the 406th zoomed their drone camera, from what appeared to be 2x’s zoom to 4x’s and back, they can be heard on the video attempting to reason out what the mysterious track might be.

One asked, ‘Why can’t he fire missiles at us? What do you mean?’

In the swearing (‘Holy [expletive]… [expletive]…’) and ensuing excitement (‘What the [expletive] is this?’), a member of the battalion asked, ‘Why isn’t it moving?’

One soldier with the 406th then said, ‘Can’t see anything on the thermal cameras?’ suggesting that additional infrared tech — beyond the drone, which is visibly in infrared mode (IR) mode as it views the UFO itself — was unable to corroborate the sighting.

DailyMail.com has reached out to the battalion via Pavlo Terletsky, a fintech entrepreneur who runs both the DeepInspire tech consultancy and has helped supply aid to the 406th through his DeepInspire Foundation.

‘They are currently sleeping [it] off, after a 48-hour mission,’ Terletsky told DailyMail.com via email, ‘will be able to get back to you tomorrow with more details.’ 

But online UFO skeptics have supplied their own opinions on the 17-second warzone video, with some suggesting that the image is a case of the mirage phenomenon known as ‘Fata Morgana.’

The mirage, named after a sorceress from the legend of King Arthur, occurs when a higher altitude layer of warm air and a lower layer of cold air create an ‘atmospheric duct’ that refracts or curves light creating airborne aerial reflections.

‘This could just be an optical illusion of filming something on a body of water,’ as one Reddit user suggested, ‘of course it’s only a couple seconds as usual.’

However, it’s unclear if the 406th Battalion’s UFO video was recorded near a large body of water, with nothing but inland geography discernable in the 17-second clip. 

Additionally, while Fata Morgana can be seen over both land and sea, aviation safety experts noted that it is rare to see an instance of the phenomena that is as static and unmoving as the UFO spotted by the 406th over Ukraine.

‘Often, a Fata Morgana changes rapidly,’ according to flight safety guide SKYbrary. 

‘The mirage comprises several inverted (upside down) and erect (right side up) images that are stacked on top of one another,’ the guide explained. 

‘Fata Morgana mirages also show alternating compressed and stretched zones.’

Or as Reddit user ‘primalshrew‘ put it: ‘So these drone operators who fly these things everyday and whose lives literally depend on knowing how to operate them, are so stupid that they spent time wondering if a boat on the water is actually a UFO?’ 

From the UFO video, it appears that the infrared footage was in ‘flat field correction’ (FCC) mode — a software feature designed to improve image quality by correcting for errors as they build up during the camera’s operation.

The thermal imaging on the drone had been adjusted to a range of -4 to 302 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 to 150 degrees Celsius) to judge from the available video and the users manual for the Mavic 3T drone.

A spokesperson for Mavic’s manufacturer DJI told DailyMail.com that, while it could not help in explaining what is present in the UFO footage, an equipment error could have played a role. 

‘We did notice that there’s an error message in the footage that you shared,’ the spokesperson wrote. ‘It’s the red bar in the upper left corner.’ 

While the resolution of the red warning message, in this available version of the battalion’s UFO video, is too low to provide certainty, the text appears to say ‘manual control’ (‘Ручне керування’), perhaps related to the drone’s then-current pilot setting. 

UFO sightings have been a recurring feature of the often chaotic conflict in Ukraine, particularly as disinformation efforts have been waged for strategic advantage.

In 2022, astronomers with the Main Astronomical Observatory of the Academy of Science of Ukraine in Kyiv posted a pre-print paper to Cornell’s arXiv reporting that they were seeing ‘a significant number of objects whose nature is not clear.’

‘We see them everywhere,’ wrote the team, which divided their UFOs into bright, light-emitting ‘cosmics’ and darker ‘phantoms’ capable of flying at 33,000 mph.

But the three astronomers’ work was swiftly criticized by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), which released an official statement asserting that the research ‘did not meet the professional requirements for publication.’

‘The processing and interpretation of results were performed at an inappropriate scientific level and with significant errors in determining distances to the observed objects,’ NASU scientists wrote following their investigation.

And, in an earlier phase of the hostilities, years prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, strange formations of lights were documented above the village of Novogradovka in south-western Ukraine’s Odessa Oblast in November 2017.

After the footage stirred UFO rumors online, the Ukrainian army felt compelled to make a statement to calm the situation.

An army spokesman assured residents there was no reason for any concern.

The lights, at least according to the UAF spokesman, were just targets used by Ukrainian Marines during a military drill.

The sheer volume of infrared Mavic 3Ts in Ukraine’s embattled skies would suggest that more videos like 406th’s UFO footage might be out there.

According to a March 2023 announcement by the The Defense Forces of Ukraine, hundreds of DJI Mavic 3T thermal-imaging drones have been put into deployment alongside countless other unmanned aerial vehicles.

They noted that the drones were sent to the ‘hottest areas of the front.’

‘160 drones were sent to the east, 85 to Zaporizhzhia direction and another 55 to Kherson direction,’ Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said in a post on Telegram.

According to Fedorov’s Ministry, the Mavic drones are used by Ukraine’s forces for reconnaissance, as well as for spotter duties to help aim artillery and destroy Russian military equipment. 

After the first nine months of the Ministry of Digital Transformation’s drone initiative, the Ukrainian government said that it had the financing and the resources to put 3,201 drones in their country’s skies.