A bizarre, jellyfish-shaped object filmed moving through the sky near a major U.S. military base in Anchorage, Alaska, has sparked online speculation, but the Pentagon’s former top UFO investigator says there may be a much simpler explanation.
Video recorded June 15 shows a dark object appearing to hover along a mountainside near a rainbow, with several long strands dangling beneath it.
The object appears to pulse and shift in the air as the strands rise, fall and wave beneath it. As it moves toward the left side of the frame, the strands trail behind before the object moves back toward the right.
Sara Jane Osborn recorded the unusual sighting and posted the video to Facebook the following day.
“It looks like a friggin alien. I don’t like it,” Osborn says as she records the object.
“It’s moving very weirdly.”
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson confirmed to Fox News Digital that officials are aware of the footage.
“We are aware of a video circulating on social media regarding a reported aerial sighting near Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson from June 15, 2026, but have no additional information to provide at this time,” the base’s 673d Air Base Wing Public Affairs office said in a statement.
Sean Kirkpatrick, who led the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which investigates unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, cautioned against relying on social media footage to assess unexplained sightings.
“I don’t usually make any assessment from an online video,” Kirkpatrick told Fox News Digital. “First, as I’ve said many times, social media is not a good source of data for anything, let alone UAP sightings.
“The video, if authentic and not generated, is compressed and cannot be used for data analysis. It’s too easy to make up video now and cover your signatures.”
Kirkpatrick said the footage alone does not provide enough information to determine the object’s size, altitude, distance or actual movement.
He did, however, point to a possible explanation for what appears in the video.
“The motion is similar to a kite with streamers, particularly the waves,” Kirkpatrick said.
