AARO 'Southeast Asia Triangles' Case Resolution: Six Shapes on Water

A black triangle is one of the most familiar shapes in UFO reporting, and a group of six in formation sounds even more striking. In this case, though, the triangles were seen from orbit, they were not moving, and they were in the water.

What this record is

This is the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s (AARO) case resolution titled “Southeast Asia Triangles,” dated 17 March 2023. It runs to three pages: a first page with Key Findings and a Case Essentials sidebar, a second page with the science-and-technology assessment, and a third page with a single figure that sets the original 2017 image beside a second 2017 image of the same area. The Department of Defense prepublication office cleared it for open publication on 4 October 2023. AARO’s Chief of Staff reviewed it on 6 February 2025 under the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act and marked it “Released in Full” as case number 330UAP000019. The Office of the Secretary of Defense later transferred it to the National Archives.

What it says

The Case Essentials sidebar records the basics. On 30 August 2017, satellite imagery of an unnamed location in Southeast Asia showed “six dark triangles” in formation. The sidebar lists the reporter only as “An Intelligence Community Member.” The image was flagged as “potentially anomalous” and as a possible “risk to navigation.” It gives no altitude, which fits objects that were never in the air.

AARO’s key finding is that the triangles “almost certainly are cone-shaped static fishing nets floating on the surface of the ocean.” The rest of the document places them more precisely: one of the supporting analyses refers to fishing nets “on the same river.” Once the case was reopened, analysts found and collected more 2017 imagery of the same area, including a clearer image near the objects. That image showed several triangles that were confirmed to be static, cone-shaped fishing nets. The intelligence team compared the size, shape and location of the originals with this and later imagery, and with libraries of known shapes. It found that all the triangles measured about 11 by 7 meters. The intelligence partners reported high confidence in the identification and said the nets posed no hazard to navigation.

Three science-and-technology partners agreed. The first said the later images were especially clear and that the location and size comparison were decisive. The second obtained imagery of the same area from late 2022 and early 2023 that showed many similar triangles, along with “significant downstream turbidity” (muddy water trailing downstream of the nets), which confirmed they were in the water. The third found stock footage of fishing nets on the same river.

Context

Most public UAP cases start with a pilot, a radar or a camera on an aircraft. This one began with an analyst reviewing overhead imagery. It shows that the government’s reporting system also takes in things spotted in still pictures by people who were never at the scene. That makes the process of resolving a case look different. There was no witness to interview and no flight path to reconstruct. The analysts’ main tools were more images of the same place, taken on other dates.

This is also why the resolution came so easily. A fixed fishing structure stays where it is, so it keeps appearing in pictures. When images from 2017 and from 2022 to 2023 show the same shapes, at the same size, in the same place, the objects cannot be craft that happened to pass through once. The case sits alongside other AARO resolutions that turned out to be ordinary objects seen without context, such as the aircraft in the Western United States case and the sky lanterns AARO proposed for the Aguadilla video.

Status

AARO lists the case as “Resolved; Objects are fishing nets on the ocean surface.” The identification is well supported by what the document describes: three partner organizations came to the same conclusion, the shapes appeared repeatedly in imagery taken years apart, and they matched the sizes of known nets. Two details are left out. The document never names the river or the country, and although the sidebar and key findings say “ocean surface,” the analysts’ own notes point to a river. Neither affects the conclusion. The satellite image itself is only reproduced in the one comparison figure, so outside readers cannot check it in detail, but nothing in the record suggests the triangles were anything other than nets.

Sources

• National Archives catalog entry: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/499915951
• PDF of the record: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/493468580/019_Southeast_Asia_Triangles.pdf
• Series: Records from the Office of the Secretary of Defense Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/493468580
• National Archives, Record Group 615 UAP records: https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/rg-615