The Six Infrared Dots in a Declassified UAP Video is a Flock of Birds

Four consecutive frames of the infrared video DOW-UAP-PR135 show the six objects (A–F) over about one beat of their flicker (44.01–44.11 s). (Image credit: J. Haqq-Misra et al. 2026)One of the most intriguing Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) released by the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) on September 18, 2026, includes six dots in an infrared video recorded from a military aircraft over the Qaruh Island near Kuwait, labeled DOW-UAP-PR135. The mission report describes a group of six small objects moving at an estimated speed of 480 miles per hour.The nature of these six dots has just been identified in a new paper, accessible here, co-authored by members of the UAP Science Advisory Council with Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra as the lead author.The executive summary of the paper is as follows. We measured the brightness of each object in every frame. All six infrared dots brighten and dim steadily at a rate of 7.1–7.9 times per second, each at its own rate and out of step with the others. Tests with constant-brightness objects planted in the video show that neither video compression nor the sensor produce this flicker. We applied the same analysis to recordings from a ground-based array of infrared cameras deployed by the Galileo Project near Las Vegas (as described here). The Galileo Project videos show several examples of birds with steady beats at 3.4–10.0 times per second, within the range of bird wing beats and compatible with the DOW-UAP-PR135 flicker. In addition, our paper shows that the apparent ground-projected speed of 480 miles per hour could be the result of parallax when tracking a nearly stationary group at 60–80% of the camera’s altitude. Given these inferences, we suggest that the six unidentified objects are best explained as a small flock of birds, flying nearer to the aircraft than assumed by the reporting crew. This scientific analysis demonstrates the value of periodic brightness variability for characterizing