The Mt. Etna Object, Mediterranean Sea, 2018

December 2018. Mount Etna, on the island of Sicily, was erupting. A new fissure opened on its flank on December 24, and ash plumes disrupted Catania airport.

Far out over the Mediterranean Sea, an uncrewed U.S. Air Force platform was watching. Its forward-looking infrared sensor was trained on the volcano's plume. The U.S. military UAS operators flying it have never been named.

Something crossed the frame. On the thermal image it was round. The operators reported it moving at 345 mph, at an altitude of 500 feet.

Then it did something strange. The object appeared to fly straight into the plume of superheated gas and ash, and out again. The plume, Jon Kosloski would later say, was superheated to between 900 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet the object showed, in the words of the official slides, "no apparent impact to its performance, altitude and bearing."

The footage stayed out of public view for almost six years. Then, on November 19, 2024, Kosloski, director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. The chair, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, asked which cases merited further analysis. He chose this one. "An interesting case, which I don't believe the public is familiar with, is captured in 2018 from a UAV flying in the Mediterranean watching Mount Etna as it was erupting." He added: "And it appears that that object is flying through the plume of superheated gas and ash." That same day the video appeared on DVIDS, released alongside AARO's resolutions of the GoFast and Puerto Rico cases.

AARO called its work an interagency and international analytical effort, with intelligence community and science and technology partners. It even reached out to a volcanologist. The analysts used full-motion video analysis software, 3D modeling, pixel examination and novel speed and distance calculation techniques. One test compared the luminosity of the object's pixels with a sample range of pixels immediately around it. AARO said this disproved the idea that the object flew through the ash plume.

The verdict, with moderate confidence, was "a balloon drifting with the wind approximately 170 kilometers from the volcano." AARO assessed with high confidence that the object showed no anomalous behaviour. Its apparent speed was put down to motion parallax from the moving drone. Its assessed altitude was 15,000 feet. Optical effects from the intense atmospheric conditions near the volcano, AARO said, made it appear to transit the plume. The formal case resolution report followed on April 28, 2025.

Not everyone inside the government agreed. According to one summary of the report, AARO acknowledged that at least two partner agencies reached substantially different conclusions. One estimated "a hypersonic speed of nearly Mach 5." Speaking on StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kosloski said the independent analyses came to four separate conclusions. Even the distance wavered. In spoken testimony Kosloski said the object was "170 meters" from the plume. The written record says about 170 kilometers from the volcano.

No one has claimed the footage is fake. It is authenticated military sensor video, and the argument is entirely about what it shows. The Mt. Etna Object now sits beside other AARO releases of spherical objects filmed from drones over the Middle East, cases picked apart on Metabunk. One summary called it a case study in analytical divergence. A balloon, officially. But only at moderate confidence.