Ukrainian Military Wedge-Shaped UAP Formation

Ukraine's skies have been crowded since the full-scale invasion. Drones watch the front around the clock, many of them fitted with thermal cameras. In that flood of footage, some objects did not fit.

Artem Bilyk and Kyrylo Nikolaiev, both associate professors at the Defense Intelligence Research Institute in Kyiv, gathered a set of these military cases from 2023 and 2024. Their article appeared in the Spring 2026 special issue of CTX, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Science and Analysis." It was produced by the US Naval Postgraduate School with the Pentagon's UAP office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

February or March 2024. The exact day is not recorded. Neither is the place, beyond the Ukrainian war zone.

A DJI Mavic 3T drone was flying with its thermal imager running. Five spherical objects appeared on the screen. They moved as one. Figure 8(a) of the article describes "a wedge-shaped formation of five spherical UFOs recorded by a Mavic 3T drone with a thermal imager." The wedge held its shape. The objects flew a straight trajectory.

According to the article's data table, each sphere was between 1.2 and 6 metres across. They flew at 100 to 200 metres. Their speed was put at 7.3 to 36.5 metres per second, with the figure caption reportedly giving about 30 m/s. No lights, colours or sounds are recorded. The drone operators are not named, and neither is their unit.

The authors classified the event as UAP "due to anomaly factors." They listed them plainly: "small size, unusual shape, group formation, regular group formation, high velocity, straight trajectory, and low altitude." It is one of several cases in the article, alongside a vertical cigar shape filmed by a Bayraktar drone in February 2023, a hovering disc or cigar on 24 February 2024, four spheres on 26 March 2024, and four spheres in a line two days later.

Their wider conclusion is that the Ukrainian cases show anomaly factors similar to those reported in the US and elsewhere, "indicating that UAP are a truly global phenomenon." That is their interpretation, not a proven finding.

The thermal footage has never been released publicly. A single still survives in print, as Figure 8(a). No independent check of the data has been published. The same CTX issue carries its own caution: videos AARO receives of "spherical" or "plasmoid" UAP often cannot be verified because the source data is poor quality.

No explanation specific to this case has been published. Ordinary candidates are easy to name. Over a front line, drones or decoys are always possible. A wedge flying straight in early spring also resembles migrating birds, though the reported sizes argue against that. Then again, a single thermal camera cannot measure range reliably.

Bilyk's interest is not new. In 2015, a "PhD A. S. Bilyk" chaired the Ukrainian Research Center for Anomalies "Zond" at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and "stressed the need of this study in terms of national security." That they are the same person is likely but not confirmed. Today the case lives as one row in a table and one caption under a figure, beside a wider Ukrainian story that includes the Main Astronomical Observatory of Ukraine and its studies of objects over Kyiv. Five spheres. One wedge. Still unidentified.