AARO 'Eglin UAP' Case Resolution: A Pilot's Cone and a Balloon

The pilot’s account has several features that make a UAP report hard to dismiss. There were four radar returns flying in formation, a gray object shaped like a space capsule, a shimmer of “blurry air” beneath it, and a radar that went dead as the aircraft closed to within 4,000 feet. AARO’s seven-page case resolution goes through each of these in turn.

What this record is

This is the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s (AARO) case resolution “Eglin UAP,” dated 14 October 2023. The National Archives catalog lists it as “Pensacola Case Resolution (Eglin).” It has four pages of text followed by three pages of figures: an infrared image, an electro-optical image, and a photograph of a commercial lighting balloon set side by side; the pilot’s own sketch of the object; and a reconstruction of the pilot’s view that plots the sun’s position. AARO’s Chief of Staff reviewed it on 6 February 2025 under the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act and released it in full as case number 330UAP000018. The file reached the National Archives as part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s UAP series. The catalog title mentions Pensacola, but the document itself names only Eglin Air Force Base and the Florida coast.

What it says

On 26 January 2023, a military pilot flying in the Eglin Air Force Base training range off the coast of Florida reported four possible UAP. The aircraft’s radar showed four objects between 16,000 and 18,000 feet that seemed to be flying in formation. The pilot saw only one of them, at 16,000 feet, and took two still images with the aircraft’s electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor. There was no video, because the aircraft’s recording equipment had been broken before the flight. The pilot reported the object as a possible flight safety hazard and an incursion into a sensitive training range.

The pilot described the object as gray with a paneled surface and an orange-red color at its center. The bottom half was rounded, and the top half was a three-dimensional cone, like the shape of the “Apollo spacecraft.” Heat seemed to come off the bottom as “blurry air.” In a later conversation with AARO, the pilot estimated the object at about 12 feet across and said it was moving very slowly or not at all. The pilot also mentioned, for the first time, what seemed to be a vertical engine on the side of the object, almost as tall as the object itself. That feature does not show in either still image, and AARO notes it has no data to confirm it. The pilot said the radar failed when the aircraft closed to within 4,000 feet and stayed off for the rest of the exercise, and that the object then sank into the cloud deck.

AARO concluded that the object “very likely was an ordinary object” and did not behave in any anomalous way. It assesses, with moderate confidence, that it was a lighter-than-air object. The candidates it lists are a large balloon, a weather balloon, a large Mylar balloon, or a large helium-filled commercial lighting balloon. The radar failure had a mundane cause: a circuit breaker had tripped, and the same breaker on that aircraft had tripped three times in the previous months. AARO therefore called the failure coincidental. The object’s slow drift matched the wind speed and direction at that altitude. AARO bought or rented one of the lighting balloons and tested it. These balloons have a black upper half lined with reflective material and a white lower half, and seams that could look like panels. AARO found the balloon could reproduce parts of the pilot’s description and noted that such balloons can be converted to battery power.

An Intelligence Community partner and a science-and-technology partner each reviewed the case separately, and both concluded with high confidence that the object was not anomalous and was very likely a balloon of some kind. The IC partner rebuilt the viewing geometry and showed that the sun would have lit the lower half of the object in the way the infrared image shows, with sun glint accounting for the orange-red center. The S&T partner said the image was consistent with a Mylar balloon seen from above with its underside lit by light reflected off clouds or the ground, which it called “Earth shine.” It added that many large balloons have red tether points that could explain the colored center. The “blurry air” might have been a tether hanging below the balloon, or blur caused by motion.

Context

The Florida Gulf coast has a long history of reported sightings, most famously the Gulf Breeze wave of the late 1980s. Eglin’s training ranges also produced the 2023 MQ-9 “orb” footage on this site, a separate case (see Eglin AFB Orb Footage), and another aircrew report the following month (see the 13 February 2023 aircrew video). This resolution differs from many AARO case files because it says clearly how thin the evidence is. It had two still images, no video, no sensor data on three of the four radar returns, and a pilot’s account that gained details in the follow-up interview. AARO rated its confidence moderate for that reason. It did not claim to know what the object was. It narrowed the possibilities to a category and tested one example.

Status

AARO lists the case as “Resolved; very likely a lighter-than-air object, such as a large commercial lighting balloon,” with moderate confidence. Two parts of the report are left open. The three radar returns that were never seen or imaged cannot be assessed at all, and the engine the pilot mentioned later has no support in the record. The central claim is that the imaged object was a balloon and that the radar failure was coincidental. It is backed by a reconstruction of the sun angle, the breaker’s maintenance history, and laboratory testing, and two partner reviews reached the same conclusion independently. The two stills are printed in the document and anyone can compare them with the photograph of the lighting balloon.

Sources

• National Archives catalog entry: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/499915950
• PDF of the record: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/493468580/018_Eglin.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