Ukrainian Military In-Line Formation of Four Spherical UAP

Since 2023, a special order has required Ukrainian military units to track unidentified aerial objects. In 2024 a research laboratory was set up to analyse the reports. Reports are only accepted with photo, video or other supporting material. Each one passes through three stages. Detection. Primary identification, a quick threat assessment. Then final identification, a quantitative and qualitative analysis by specialists. Parameters very unlikely to match known objects are recorded as "anomaly factors".

28 March 2024. The Ukrainian war zone. No oblast, front sector or unit is given. A DJI Mavic 3T drone was in the air, its thermal imaging camera running. Four spheres appeared in the frame. They flew one behind another, in a straight line. They held their formation. They did not change course.

"Each object measured about 2 m in diameter and moved at a speed of about 100 m/s." The paper's summary table gives ranges of 2 to 2.9 m across, 76.2 to 110.8 m/s, and an altitude of 100 to 150 m. That is roughly 275 to 400 km/h. The objects existed only as thermal signatures. No visible-light description and no sound are recorded. The drone operators are not named.

The case reached Dr Artem Bilyk and Dr Kyrylo Nikolaiev of the Defense Intelligence Research Institute in Kyiv. The verdict was clear. "Final identification analysis classified the objects as UAP due to the anomaly factors, including small size, unusual shape, group formation, high velocity, straight trajectory," along with low altitude.

Bilyk and Nikolaiev published it as Figure 9a in CTX, a journal of the US Naval Postgraduate School. Its Spring 2026 special issue on UAP was produced "in close partnership with AARO", the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. The authors noted that their cases matched US reports in size, 1 to 4 m, and in mostly spherical shape. They read this as a possible sign of a global phenomenon with a common origin, and raised a "potentially non-human" presence as a possibility. They stressed security too: misidentification, friendly fire, and the need for coordinated airspace monitoring.

The paper names mundane causes for many reports. Glare, optical aberrations, sensor defects and software errors. Natural processes. Drones, balloons and clouds. Objects are classed UAP only after these are ruled out. The authors also warn that Russia may disguise drones as natural phenomena or UAP, and may use "unknown drones" for reconnaissance and to cause panic. Telepolis added radar-absorbing coatings, decoy targets and heat traps.

Range is the open question. A single thermal camera cannot measure distance directly, so size, altitude and speed all rest on an assumed range. Change it, and all three change together. Earlier analyses by Zhilyaev and colleagues at the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences were attacked on exactly this point. Without knowing how the range was fixed here, nearer and slower warm objects, such as birds in line formation or small drones, cannot be ruled out. No hoax claims have been made. Telepolis noted that it quoted no outside sceptics.

The case is one of six 2023 and 2024 military cases in the paper that remain unexplained. Its siblings include a wedge of five spheres, a hovering object about 30 m across, and a vertical cigar caught by a Bayraktar thermal camera in 2023. Andreas Müller published an authorised German translation on GreWi.de, which says Bilyk chairs the civilian UFO research group ZOND. No public copy of the thermal video has been found. For now, four warm spheres in single file remain a figure in a journal, and an open question.