The "Jellyfish" UAP over Al-Taqaddum Air Base, Iraq

Al-Taqaddum Air Base lies near Habbaniyah in Anbar Province, Iraq. Jeremy Corbell calls it a "United States joint operations base." Above it hung a tethered aerostat, a blimp-like balloon anchored over the installation. Its camera was an MX-20 thermal sensor, a forward looking infrared system that images heat. Marines said it picked up quadcopter drone threats almost weekly. One recording was different.

The date is disputed. Corbell, George Knapp and most early coverage said October 2018. Former Marine Michael Cincoski said fall 2017. It was night.

In the black and white image, a blob drifts across the base. Dark and light at once, with tentacle-like parts hanging below. Its heat signature shifts from black to grey to white. Global News called it "fluctuating wildly, from searing white to frigid black and back again." It moves at a steady rate in one direction while the camera zooms and pans by hand.

According to Corbell and Knapp, eyewitnesses familiar with the raw footage said it was invisible through night-vision goggles and seemed to jam the targeting system. Then, they say, it "actuated a controlled descent and submerged into the water." About seventeen minutes later it "reemerged from the body of water and shot-off at an extreme rate of speed." No released footage shows that part.

January 2024. Corbell and Knapp published the footage, promoted through the Tubi series TMZ Presents: UFO Revolution. They described "a military filmed UAP incursion" with "transmedium capability," able to move between air and water. Unverified claims followed. The live feed was cut. Recordings were confiscated. Personnel signed non-disclosure agreements. A second clip, 92 seconds long, looked south from the aerostat.

Michael Cincoski, a former Marine sergeant and ISR tactical controller at the base from 2018, spoke to NewsNation and to journalist Steven Greenstreet. He confirmed the footage was real. "It kind of just ended up being like the ghost story of the base," he said. Troops called it the Spaghetti Monster.

But he disputed the dive. "At no point did it ever shoot out," he said. He thought a prosaic explanation was likely, possibly an "artifact on the lens."

The Pentagon neither confirmed nor denied it. Spokesperson Sue Gough said the department does "not comment on the authenticity of alleged DOD material that may have been leaked." The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office issued no conclusion. Physics professor Matthew Szydagis doubted a lens smudge, because the object changed size with the zoom. "It's not possible for any known objects to change temperature that fast," he said.

Mick West and the Metabunk forum favoured a balloon or group of balloons. Wind flags in the video showed wind blowing roughly in the object's direction of travel. Kyle McDonald put the temperature swings down to the camera auto-ranging. The elevation readout placed the object over land, not over Lake Habbaniyah. The MUFON Photo Analysis Team, in an analysis by Bob Spearing, found "no evidence of alien intervention" and ranked a balloon cluster first.

Nick Pope, once of the Ministry of Defence UFO desk, urged patience: "We'll have to wait and see if this further footage emerges, if it's verifiably part of the same incident." Corbell has said the extended video runs about 30 minutes. Nobody has shown the footage was faked. The argument is over what it shows. A balloon on the wind. Or something that went into the water and came back out.