Was Flight MH370 Teleported?
Before we get started, a quick heads up—this post is about two viral, highly polarizing videos that have been linked by some to the disappearance of MH370.
I’m not here to tell you whether these videos are real or fake. My goal is simply to lay out how they came to light, why they got so much attention, and everything that’s unfolded around them.
The Beginning
The videos originally appeared on YouTube in May and June 2014, but they didn’t draw major attention until 2023. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s worth watching before you read further:
Original Archive.org:
http://web.archive.org/web/20170606182854/https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Ok1A1fSzxY
https://web.archive.org/web/20140827060121/https://youtube.com/watch?v=ShapuD290K0
Combined in-sync:
While I have my own thoughts on whether they’re authentic, my aim here is to outline the timeline, point out the key details, and lay out the facts as clearly as possible so you can decide for yourself.
Are the videos real or fake? That’s up to you to decide.
One thing remains true, no matter where you stand on these videos: MH370 is still missing, and families are still searching for answers. If you or someone close to you was affected by this tragedy, you have my deepest sympathies.
The 'Satellite' Video – May 19, 2014
The first video, titled “Satellite Video: Airliner and UFOs” was uploaded to a YouTube channel by the user 'RegicideAnon' on May 19, 2014. It's also quite important to note (which we will discuss below) that although the video was uploaded on May 19, the video description itself describes, “Received – March 12, 2014, Uploaded – May 19, 2014, Source – Protected”
Keyword metadata (extracted from Youtube): “Flight 370” and “Malaysia Airlines”
The video appears to show a large airliner moving across a cloudy sky. Soon after, three glowing orbs come into view and begin to circle the aircraft, gradually forming a rotating pattern around it. As the orbs complete their rotation, there's a sudden flash, and the plane vanishes from sight.
The video has since been deleted from YouTube, but luckily, it was preserved on Archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20170606182854/https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Ok1A1fSzxY
Why do the dates matter?
They're crucial to the timeline of the videos and the date MH370 disappeared.
MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014. The first video was uploaded on May 19, which is 73 days after the disappearance. That's more than enough time for someone to create a convincing CGI hoax, especially with the technology available in 2014, right? I'm not an expert in video effects, so I'll leave that judgment to you.
But then there's the YouTube description, which claims the footage was “received – March 12, 2014.” If you take RegisideAnon at their word, the video existed just 4 days after MH370 disappeared.
Of course, there's no way to confirm if that's true. The only hard evidence we have is when the video was actually posted, which was 73 days after the plane went missing. That's the timeline we have to work with.
Note: During my research for this post, I found a few Reddit comments from people who remember seeing these videos prior to May 2014. Some mentioned that before RegisideAnon uploaded them to YouTube, they might have come across the videos on a forum or another website. If anyone can dig up evidence that these videos were available online before May 2014, that would be a major breakthrough.
Unwrapped view of the “Satellite” Video:
The 'Drone Video – June 12, 2014
Titled “UAV-Captures Airliner and UFOs”
Uploader: RegisideAnon
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20140827060121/https://youtube.com/watch?v=ShapuD290K0
Description: “Received – June 5th, 2014, Uploaded June 12th, 2014”
“Video shows airliner being followed by 3 unidentifiable spherical objects for a short time. Then airliner and orbs vanish. This appears to be alt angle to previously submitted SAT footage:”
The second video, uploaded to the same channel by the same user, offers a different perspective of the same event. This time, the footage appears to have been 'captured' from a military drone equipped with an infrared or thermal imaging system. The sequence is similar: three orbs encircle the plane, there's a sudden flash, and the aircraft vanishes from sight.
I believe this second video is a significant reason why these clips continue to be debated today. Now, there are two separate videos, both seemingly capturing the same event from different angles, and they line up perfectly. If this is a hoax, it's not just an ordinary one. It would have taken a high level of planning and technical skill to pull off.
Although not much is known about the user: RegisideAnon – we do know that on May 22, 2014 they tweeted a link to the the videos:
“Please spread this video before it is pulled.”
Based on what is publicly available, these uploads and tweets are the only known attempts by the user RegisideAnon to share the videos. Before posting the orb clips, the channel mostly featured generic paranormal and UFO-related content. Judging by the video descriptions, RegisideAnon wasn't the source, but instead received the footage from someone else.
When these videos were first uploaded in 2014, they didn't seem to attract much attention. Still, internet sleuths on Reddit eventually tracked down two additional re-uploads of the same footage, found on both YouTube and Vimeo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS9uL3Omg7o
2023 – Videos Go Viral
Years had passed, and the videos were largely ignored. After all, it's not every day you see two clips claiming to show a plane being seemingly teleported out of the sky by glowing orbs. It's obviously no surprise most people dismissed them as unbelievable. At least at first...
In January 2023, everything changed. A Reddit user stumbled across the videos and posted, “Hey guys, wtf is this?” Suddenly, these clips were getting the attention they'd always lacked.
The conversation kicked off in /r/UFOs, then quickly spread to /r/aliens, /r/UFOB, and eventually inspired the creation of a dedicated subreddit, /r/airlinerabduction2014.
Now, thousands of people were watching and dissecting the footage. Megathreads popped up, activity in the UFO and paranormal subs soared, and the videos underwent intense scrutiny from every angle. Debunkers and believers alike poured over every frame, analyzing the clips down to the pixel.
With all the renewed attention and close scrutiny, people began to spot interesting details that would have required an extraordinary level of planning and effort if the videos were hoaxed.
The Details
Now let’s get into some of the most interesting findings uncovered by Reddit’s crowd of dedicated investigators.
I’ve highlighted a few of the standout discoveries here, but if you want to dig deeper, the megathreads in /r/UFOs and other related subreddits are full of much more detailed analysis.
Credit goes to the sharp-eyed folks in the Reddit and Twitter communities for tracking down all these details.
The Mouse Cursor Explained by Remote Terminal Access
One detail that stood out to many viewers was the visible mouse cursor in the first so-called “satellite” video. The footage appears to be a screen recording of someone remotely connected to a computer or database, with the cursor moving across the screen to follow the plane.
As the discussion grew, people pointed out that the interface closely resembles a Citrix HDX or XenDesktop remote terminal running at 24 frames per second—a setup often used by government or military organizations.
Quotes taken from Reddit
“The cursor is being remotely rendered which is supported by Citrix. Lots of people apparently discuss the jittery mouse and glitches over at /r/citrix. Citrix renders the mouse on the server then sends it back to the client (the client being the screen that is screencapped) and latency can explain the mouse movements.”
“The cursor drift ONLY occurs when the operator is not touching the control interface. How do I know this? All other times the cursor stops in the video, it is used as the point of origin to move the frame; we can assume the operator is pressing some sort of button to select the point, such as the right mouse button. BUT When the mouse drift occurs, it is the only time in the video where the operator “stops” his mouse and DOESN'T use it as a point of origin to move the frame.”
“This actually appears to be a screencap of a remote terminal stream. And that would make sense as it's not like users would be plugged into the satellite or a server, they would be in a SCIF at a secure terminal or perhaps this is from within the datacenter or other contractor remote terminal. This could explain all the subpixel drifting due to streaming from one resolution to another. It would explain the non standard cursor and latency as well. Also this video appears to be enormous (from the panning) and would require quite the custom system for viewing the video.”
“To me, this is way too complex to ever have been thought of by a hoaxer, I mean good god. How did they get this data out of the SCIF is a great question but this scenario is getting more and more plausible, and honestly, very humbling. If this and the UAV video are fabrications, I am floored. If they aren't, well fucking bring on disclosure because I need to know more.”
“The frame rate seemed to be coherent between both the vimeo and the youtube video. The satellite footage being 6 fps and the recording of the screen that's showing the satellite footage and the drone footage being 24 fps”
“It implies either that a real screen recorder recorded playback of a real source video, and the frame rate difference between the two is natural, or that someone went to the specific and deliberate extra effort to render motion of the fake scene at 6 fps and then do fake screen panning at 24 fps.”
In short, what’s being shown appears to be (according to Redditors):
- A screen capture of a remote terminal running at a certain resolution and 30 frames per second
- Streaming a remote or virtual desktop (Likely Citrix software) at a different resolution and 24 frames per second
- Custom video software used for panning across high-resolution footage
- Remote navigation around a massive video file playing at just 6 frames per second
If this is a hoax, adding details like the specific cursor is a pretty deep cut—way more than you’d expect from the average faker. Why would someone put that much effort into nailing technical touches like a Citrix cursor, just to post the video, tweet a few times, and then vanish?
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/15rumgy/airlinervideoartifactsexplainedby_remote/
The Coordinates and Text
Users quickly also noticed a string of numbers and letters along the bottom left of the screen, updating in real time as the cursor moved. It didn’t take long for people to realize these may be coordinates, likely revealing the location captured in the recording.
It’s not completely certain whether the video’s GPS coordinates point to the Northern or Southern Hemisphere. Since MH370 was last tracked in the Southern Hemisphere, the assumption has been that it’s south.
The coordinates visible in the video are: 8.834301, 93.19492. However, some have suggested the latitude may actually be negative—a possibility raised because of a distinctive font where the minus sign appears lower than usual, almost like a baseline hyphen. If that’s the case, the coordinates would be ~ -8.834301, 93.19492.
This puts the location just south of the Nicobar Islands, deep in the eastern Indian Ocean.
What’s notable is that this location lines up almost exactly with the trajectory from military radar plots and the last primary radar contact for MH370. If you follow the path suggested by those radar points, it leads almost directly to these coordinates.
The letters “NROL-22” were also found, which match a real US military satellite: the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) launched on June 28, 2006, also called “USA-184.”
There are several “sister” satellites that work together with NROL-22 as part of a larger network, giving them wide coverage across the globe. Based on this, the video feed is most likely being relayed by one of these satellites:
- USA-223
- USA-229
- NROL-22
- NROL-23
Information about these classified satellites is limited, but what we do know is that they operate in the infrared spectrum, not in visible light. That means they aren’t designed to capture the kind of optical imagery you’d expect to see in a typical satellite video, like what’s apparently shown in the video. This makes it less likely that the footage is directly from one of these satellites. It’s possible the satellite IDs shown in the embedded text aren’t from the actual source of the video, but instead refer to a relay satellite that's simply transmitting images from a different camera or data source.
There are some conflicting views on which satellite the text in the video may be referenced. The term “NROL-22” isn't fully visible in the original uploaded by ‘RegisideAnon’ video; only the last character, “2,” can be seen.
But, In the subsequent occurrence of this video in August 2014, uploaded to Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/104295906, the complete term “NROL-22” became visible.
Users dug into the orbital path of NROL-22 to figure out if it could have been in the right spot at the time and location of the videos. The math behind it gets pretty complex, and there are plenty of deep dives on Reddit and Twitter debating whether this was the relay satellite used for the transmissions.
The general consensus seems to be that NROL-22 was indeed in the correct orbital when MH370 disappeared.
If you want to see how people calculated its position, check out this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/15meo7j/herearenrol22usa184flightdatafrommarch/
The Drone Shown in the Video is an MQ-1L Predator
The drone in the second video seems to match the airframe of a MQ-1L Predator or MQ-1C Gray Eagle (or some variation of this), equipped with two expanded EO/IR payloads in what’s known as the TRICLOPS setup.
Other users pointed out that this is almost certainly a surveillance-only configuration of the Gray Eagle, outfitted with extra sensor pods, which lines up with the camera angles seen in the footage.
Another photo of an MQ-9 Reaper drone equipped with dual wing-mounted cameras, alongside an image of its command center.
The “Zap” Illuminates The Clouds
One detail people picked up on is that when the plane appears to get “zapped” or teleported, the clouds in the scene are backlit.
This creates a real sense of depth—some clouds are illuminated from behind, while the foreground cloud in the bottom right isn’t lit, and another is lit from the front. Both videos, if authentic, appear to have been recorded at night—evidenced by the lack of shadows or any directional lighting on the clouds.
It’s not impossible to pull off with CGI, but it would take a lot of extra effort and attention to detail to fake those subtle lighting differences.
The orb displaces the smoke coming from the plane
A user managed to boost the contrast in the video, revealing an orb passing through the smoke trailing from the plane. You can actually see the orb disturb and displace the smoke, which lines up with how fluid dynamics should work. It’s not impossible to fake, but it’s another layer of detail that a hoaxer would have had to carefully consider.
The First Orb Appears to Punch a Hole in Clouds
A Reddit user boosted the contrast and brightness on the footage and pointed out that when the first “orb” shows up, it seems to punch a hole through one of the clouds, creating a vortex or spiral effect. Debunkers, however, chalk this up to a “video artifact”
The Clouds May Show Movement
Some people claim the clouds in the video are completely still, suggesting the scene was faked with CGI and it’s a static background. But the below images do indeed show subtle signs that the clouds could be moving, and not just in the straightforward, linear way you'd expect from a basic 3D render.
Also, If we assume the footage is real and comes from military surveillance running at just 6-7 frames per second, the low frame rate would make it tough to spot any movement in the clouds over such a short clip.
Not Just Orbiting: The Orbs Are Spinning Too
One interesting detail is that the orbs aren’t just circling the plane; they’re also spinning on their own axes as they move. It’s a small but intricate touch that adds another layer of realism to the footage.
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/15r6zfv/noticedthisstrangedetailthatihavent_seen/
The Cumulus Clouds Suggest the Plane Was at Low Altitude
While digging into this topic, I found out there are official names for different types of clouds. For example, Cumulus clouds typically form at lower altitudes, between about 1,000 and 5,000 feet.
You can actually spot these Cumulus type clouds in the satellite video, which suggests that the plane captured in the footage might be flying much lower than you’d expect.
Looking at publicly available sources, MH370 did drop in altitude quite a bit before disappearing from radar after making a sharp turn. Some reports even mention it got as low as 12,000 feet:
https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane
So did the plane keep descending? It seems possible.
Was the plane pulled from behind?
Someone took a close look at the exact moment when the supposed portal opens in the video, which happens over about nine frames. They used frame stacking to align five consecutive frames on top of each other, then applied the “Difference” effect in Photoshop to highlight the subtle changes between frames. This revealed what looks like an inward dive by the orb right before the disappearance.
Are we seeing a real Wormhole?
Shoutout to the person who really dug into this. I’ve skipped over a lot of the technical steps they used to break it down, so if you want the full deep dive, check out the original post:
https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/15sc8fb/anotherwilddetailobjectsinplaneabduction/
Possible Turbulence?
When you zoom in on the drone video, you can actually see the turbulence affecting the drone’s wing as it flies through the wake and contrails left by the plane above. This subtle detail was first pointed out by a Reddit user.
The “Thermal” Drone Video Matches MH370
As shown below, someone overlaid a photo of the actual MH370 777 with the plane from the ‘Drone’ video. The two images line up almost perfectly.
The Color FLIR in the Drone Video
If the drone or thermal video is authentic, it may be using a specialized type of infrared imaging. Many believe the color FLIR footage was captured with a Northrop Grumman Litening targeting pod, which combines electro-optical and infrared sensors, laser designators, and advanced FLIR tech.
This pod gives aircrews both wide and zoomed-in infrared views, along with real-time data sharing for better coordination.
Source: https://x.com/JustXAshton/status/1929600926127403344
Is there Accurate Heat Distribution in the Thermal Video?
According to the Twitter User Ashton Forbes, what we’re seeing in the subtle thermal color differences is that we’re seeing an accurate representation of what you’d see in the thermal footage.
“A controlled lithium ion battery fire in the forward cargo bay damaging the electronics, causing the forward overflow valve to open.”
Source: https://x.com/JustXAshton/status/1924671390961041506
The Diego Garcia Connection
Diego Garcia is a small, remote atoll located in the central Indian Ocean. It’s part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), though it has a complicated history with both the UK and the US. It’s officially a British Overseas Territory, but leased to the United States for military purposes.
It’s home to one of the most secretive and strategically important US military bases outside the continental United States. The base supports air, naval, and communications operations, and is used for refueling, logistics, and as a launch point for military operations in the Middle East and Asia.
Very little is publicly known about the operations conducted on Diego Garcia, which has fueled a wide range of conspiracy theories, not just those connected to MH370.
So why is this island linked to MH370?
MH370 Passenger, Philip Wood
Philip Wood was a passenger on MH370 and worked as an engineer at IBM. Not long after the plane vanished, a completely black photo with no visible details surfaced on a 4chan thread in 2014. Someone pulled the Exif data from the image and found embedded coordinates. The post that accompanied the photo read:
“I have been held hostage by unknown military personnel after my flight was hijacked (blindfolded). I work for IBM and I have managed to hide my cellphone in my ass during the hijack. I have been separated from the rest of the passengers and I am in a cell. My name is Philip Wood. I think I have been drugged as well and cannot think clearly.”
This message, along with the image’s metadata, quickly became a focal point for online speculation.
If you’re familiar with 4chan, you already know the kind of “interesting” content that shows up there. There’s no way to confirm whether this message was real or just someone role-playing for attention, but it’s worth mentioning since it’s one of the stories that links MH370 to Diego Garcia. As always, take it with a grain of salt.
Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/phone-home-2/
The Mysterious SOS message
A Twitter user reported receiving a bizarre voice message from an unknown number. The message sounded like a string of numbers and letters, but some listeners recognized it as the NATO phonetic alphabet.
When translated, it reportedly said: “S Danger SOS it is dire for you to evacuate be cautious they are not human 042933964230 SOS Danger SOS.”
Some people believe the numbers in the message are actually coordinates pointing to Diego Garcia.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3j78ryw9Yw
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mysterious-voicemail-malaysian-airlines-disappearance/
Diego Garcia Hydrophone Data collection shut down
Hydrophones, which are underwater microphones used to detect sounds in the ocean, didn’t pick up any sign of a crash. Notably, the hydrophone at Diego Garcia was offline for 25 crucial minutes. One of the ocean acoustic recorders that might have captured the sound of MH370 hitting the water missed exactly the window that could have provided answers.
A sound was identified but:
“Rather than an airliner impacting the ocean surface, the sound was more likely “caused by an earthquake, underwater landslide, or volcanic eruption”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/d73dqz/flight-mh370-has-only-gotten-more-missing
To Summarize:
There’s no solid evidence linking Diego Garcia to the disappearance of MH370.
Still, it’s notable that the US military and several other countries were running drills in the South China Sea around that time. With its strategic position, Diego Garcia would have been a logical staging point for such operations.
One thing is certain: Diego Garcia remains a highly secretive place.
Aliens or Secret US Tech?
Ever since these videos surfaced, the big debate has been: if they're real, who’s actually controlling these orbs? That’s the question at the heart of it all. Now check out this clip from a 2001 National Press Club event, where an Area 51 whistleblower describes something eerily similar:
“They coalesced and started rotating in a circle, and then they disappeared.”
Sounds a lot like what’s happening in these videos, doesn’t it?
Was The Plane On Fire?
At first, most people assumed the trails behind the plane were just ordinary engine contrails, as they would appear in infrared. But users quickly pointed out something unusual—a distinct heat signature that was coming not from the engines, but from the body of the plane itself.
This detail matters because it ties directly into many mainstream theories suggesting there may have been a fire on board.
Lithium Ion Batteries in the Cargo Hold
Flight MH370 was carrying lithium-ion batteries in its cargo hold. It was a large shipment and weighed approximately 221 KG. https://eepower.com/news/flight-mh370-cargo-included-lithium-ion-batteries/
The batteries also did not undergo the normal security screening:https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/mh370-carrying-221kg-of-lithium-ion-batteries-what-you-may-not-know-about-the-ubiquitous
One theory had been that the batteries may have reacted to 4.5 tonnes of a tropical fruit called mangosteens that were also on board, producing hazardous fumes or in a worst case scenario caused a short circuit and/or fire.https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6896794/mh370-flight-lithium-batteries-x-ray-fire/
“Mystery Cargo”
Danica Weeks, the wife of Australian MH370 passenger Paul Weeks and mother of their two young sons, confirmed the group was troubled by 2.2 tonnes of cargo described as “radio accessories and chargers” that was mysteriously omitted from the manifest.
Washed Up Fire Suppression Bottle
A fire suppression bottle from a Boeing 777 washed ashore in the Maldives on March 25, 2014. The bottle had a partially visible serial number. Since it was found empty and floating, it’s likely the fire suppressant chemicals had already been discharged, which allowed the bottle to float and eventually reach the shore.
Source: https://maldivesfinest.com/mh370-evidence
Debris with signs of Fire?
Some of the recovered debris appeared to have possible burn marks, along with the characteristic honeycomb structure found in Boeing aircraft components.
Billie Vincent Fire Theory
Former FAA Security Director Billie Vincent put forward a theory that MH370 suffered a fate similar to UPS Flight 6, suggesting the crew of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight died heroically while trying to save the plane from a fire.
Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh370-3254927
Kate Tee
Kate Tee, a British sailor who was near Indonesia when MH370 vanished, says she believes she saw the plane trailing smoke and possibly on fire before it disappeared over the southern Indian Ocean.
“I noticed the outline of a plane and it looked longer than planes usually are. Also, there appeared to be black smoke streaming behind”
She said there were two other planes passing well above it, moving the other way.
“They had normal navigation lights and I remember thinking that if it was a plane on fire, the other aircraft would report it”
Check out this map of her location at the time of the sighting. It aligns closely with both the last official primary radar contact and the approximate position determined from the video coordinates extracted from the video.
You can read Kate Tee’s original account on her blog Saucy Sailoress, where she shares detailed observations from her sighting:https://web.archive.org/web/20141017154637/https://saucysailoress.wordpress.com/
Source: https://theedgemalaysia.com/article/british-sailor-%E2%80%98i-saw-plane-fire-night%E2%80%99
Oil Rig Worker Mike McKay
Mr. McKay, an oil rig worker stationed on the Songa Mercur in the South China Sea, reported seeing an “orange light” in the sky on an unusually clear night. He emailed his employer and Vietnamese authorities about what he saw. His statement was later leaked, revealing his full name, email, passport number, and the details of the company running the rig.
‘‘If it was the aeroplane I saw, then it must have been an external fire. How far would an aeroplane stay in the air after such a fire?’’
China Times Reports “Plane was about to disintegrate”
The China Times reported that a mayday call from MH370 was intercepted by the US Navy, describing the plane breaking apart and attempting an emergency landing at 2:43 a.m. local time (18:43 UTC).
INTERFERENCE – Communications failure?
A pilot claims to have made contact with Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 shortly before it went missing – but all he heard was interference, static and mumbling
The man said he got in touch with the plane via his emergency frequency at the request of Vietnamese aviation authorities, who had been unable to reach it as expected.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-interference-3222529
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1107179/mh370-news-pilot-made-contact-heard-mumbling-spt
Unidentified “blobs on military radar”
2014 press conference. Royal Malaysian Air Force Chief Rodzali Daud speaks of unidentified “blobs” on military radar – right before MH370 vanished.
Full Video:
Freescale Semiconductor Employees
Twenty employees from the US tech firm Freescale Semiconductor, known for making advanced microchips used in everything from consumer electronics to defense, were on board MH370.
Sources: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26503469.amp | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-airlines-freescale-idUSBREA280T020140309
Notably, four of the passengers were listed as co-holders on a newly granted and potentially valuable patent. This Patent was granted just days after the Plane Disappeared, and then ownership appears to assign to Freescale Semiconductor, Inc in 2015:
Patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8671381B1/en
This connection has fueled one of the more persistent conspiracy theories that the plane vanished because of the value of the technology and the patent tied to these passengers. Some point to Jacob Rothschild, who, through Blackstone, owns Freescale Semiconductor. The claim goes that with the co-holders gone, full control of the patent defaulted to the company.
There are plenty of better deep dives out there unpacking this theory. I’m not going into all the details, but it’s one more thread in the MH370 mystery.
It’s “Gorgon Stare”, It’s not actually Satellite Video – 2025
Jump ahead to 2025, and these videos have now been a topic of heated debate for about a year and a half. On the main UFO subreddits, open discussion around the videos is pretty limited, with most threads quickly locked or removed—largely because of the debunks we’ll get into later in this post.
These days, you’ll mostly find the “believer” crowd talking about the videos in private Discord groups or on Twitter. Ashton Forbes of X has taken the lead as the primary investigator, and the whole conversation has become extremely polarized. Still, Ashton and those who support his take haven’t wavered in their belief.
Let’s rewind to where it all began: the first video, simply titled “Satellite Video: Airliner and UFOs.” With a title like that, it’s only natural to assume you’re looking at either genuine or staged footage from a real satellite feed. But then, out of nowhere, the community collectively connects the dots when someone brings up a surveillance system called “Gorgon Stare.
So what is “Gorgon Stare”?
According to Wikipedia:
“Gorgon Stare is a video capture technology developed by the United States military. It’s a spherical array of nine cameras attached to an aerial drone. The US Air Force calls it a ‘wide-area surveillance sensor system,’ or WAMI for short.”
The system uses multiple cameras and sensors mounted on drones to capture wide-area imagery, making it possible to monitor and analyze events across large regions in real time. It’s designed to provide broad-area motion imagery, so users can track movements and study activity over extended periods.
The current theory is that both of these videos were recorded using drone-mounted cameras networked together and relayed through military satellites.
Ashton Forbes who championed this theory, posting on X, suggests that what we’re seeing in the so-called “Satellite” video isn’t satellite footage at all. Instead, it’s a video feed from this Gorgon Stare system. It’s wide-area motion imagery stitched together from two MQ-9 Reaper drones using the Gorgon Stare system.
“The resulting imagery had the appearance of a moving satellite image— like Google Earth, but alive”
According to online researchers, the system in question is likely “Gorgon Stare Increment 2,” which, based on official specs, records at about 6 frames per second. In the video, we’re actually seeing 7FPS footage that’s been upscaled to 24FPS as it’s being screen recorded.
“An MQ-9 Reaper equipped with Gorgon Stare Increment 2 sensor pods under each wing. This wide-area surveillance system provides day/night persistent coverage of a city-sized area.”
“Increment 2’s processor improved this to support up to 48 sub-video feeds depending on bandwidth. In the uploaded footage, this design is reflected by the apparent ~6 FPS update of the large-area image (noticeable as a slight choppiness or momentary “freeze” every few frames), while the on-screen pointer and readouts move smoothly at the capture frame rate (24 FPS)”
So, RegisideAnon, the user who first uploaded this footage, may not have known exactly what they were looking at, but simply the person who received and shared it, as he explains in the video description. Maybe he watched it and made his own assumptions about what it showed. For a long time, most people believed it was raw stereoscopic imagery. That brings us up to where things currently stand with the footage. Now, let’s get into the debunks.
“Debunked” — “It’s VFX” — “Cloud Photos Found”
After weeks of intense scrutiny by thousands of people on Reddit and other forums, several so-called “nail in the coffin” debunks surfaced that seemed to shut down any serious discussion about these videos.
Around this point, subreddits like /r/UFOs started locking threads or steering the conversation away entirely.
Things got increasingly toxic, with a handful of people still insisting the videos might be real, but the general consensus quickly shifted—most people (and maybe you, too, after reading the breakdowns) ended up convinced the videos were an obvious hoax.
Those who still believe have now moved the conversation to dedicated subreddits, Discord and X.
As of now, the general mainstream consensus is that the videos have been “debunked”
VFX Used in “Zap” Found?
The first major debunk is related to the “Zap” effect seen when the plane disappears. When an anonymous reddit user, with a throw away account posts a link to a stock explosion effect from 1998.
The effect in question is called “Pyromania 1” From a series called
“Playing With Fire” which was found in an Archive here:
https://archive.org/details/pyromania-playing-with-fire-quicktime
It was further noticed that the same effect was used in an old video games and movies, for example here is it being used in Diablo 1:
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/15vsaj1/mh370portaleffectusedindiablo1/
So, to summarize -
The Pyromania effect was uploaded to Archive.org by a user going by the name WaveRide3000: https://archive.org/details/@waverider3000
When did WaveRide3000 start uploading vintage VFX CD-ROMs?
2014.
When did the specific Pyromania disc files get uploaded?
January 2023.
Just a total coincidence that these plane videos started trending again right around the same time, right?
So who actually created this effect?
It traces back to a boutique VFX company called VCE Inc. https://vceinc.com
Early on, someone on Reddit took a deep dive into this company and came up with some pretty interesting connections:
Here’s what the Redditor discovered:
“VCE Inc., the small VFX house behind the 1990s Pyromania library, had deep ties to the US Department of Defense and Department of Energy. Its founder, Peter Kuran, was involved in digitizing and restoring declassified nuclear test footage and consulted at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Their effects have been used in DOE materials and documentaries like Trinity and Beyond.”
Another Reddit user even got in touch with Peter Kuran, the founder. Kuran initially replied and offered to help determine if the effect used in the plane videos was one of theirs. Once he realized which videos they meant… he stopped responding. Take from that what you will.
At the end of the day, the entire “VFX debunk” boils down to a single digital upload by a user named “WaveRider3000” who started sharing vintage VFX CD-ROMs back in 2014, and just happened to upload this particular disc in early 2023—right as the plane videos started trending again. What are the chances?
A side note on the username: In DC Comics, Waverider is a time-traveling superhero (Matthew Ryder), famous for navigating the timestream and seeing the future.
And if that’s not enough, WaveRider3000’s Archive.org profile pic? It’s Max Headroom—the same character used in the notorious 1987 TV signal hijacking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaxHeadroomsignal_hijacking
But does it actually match?
While most people pushing the VFX “debunk” only highlight a single frame that lines up closely, another Reddit user took it a step further by overlaying the entire stock explosion effect onto the video. When you compare the full sequence, it doesn’t seem to match up perfectly, but that’s up to your interpretation.
Source:
https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/15w06tq/mh370andshockwvmovdoesnt_match/
It’s possible the hoaxer started with this stock effect and then altered it enough to create what you see in the videos. Although, If you need to heavily modify a stock effect just to get the look you want, what’s the point of using a stock effect in the first place?
Most people agree that the stock VFX effect either matches or comes extremely close. But if you actually go through the footage frame by frame, it’s clear that the effect isn’t a perfect match—there are differences throughout the sequence. What often happens is that those convinced it’s an exact match will highlight only the single frame that lines up best, without showing how the rest of the explosion plays out.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide if it truly matches. And it’s fair to ask—does the origin of this stock effect strike you as odd?
The Stock Cloud Photos Found
Of all the main debunks, the cloud photos are probably the strongest evidence that the first “satellite” video is fake. A user on Reddit tracked down the exact aerial photos used as the video’s background:
They found the original images on textures.com: https://www.textures.com/download/Aerials0028/75131
Quite a dedicated bit of sleuthing eh? Like finding a needle in a Cloud-Stack?
The photographer, Jonas, even stepped forward, confirming the images were taken from a plane over Japan in 2012, and shared the RAW photos he had backed up on is computer.
The album, “Aerials0028” includes five images that clearly match the video’s backgrounds. You can see them on an archived version of the site: https://web.archive.org/web/20160324003312/https://www.textures.com/download/Aerials0028/75131
While the images are stamped 2016, that’s just when the site switched from cgtextures.com to textures.com; the original shots date back to 2012.
However, a look at the textures.com API shows the directory for “Aerials0028” was created in 2012, but the individual files themselves have a “created-at” date of October 2014—after the videos appeared. So while the images themselves are clearly a match, the metadata timeline is a little murky.
Screenshots from the Textures.com API for the photos:
This is where things start drifting into speculation.
Some people believe the cloud images were deliberately planted after the plane videos emerged, pointing out that the file creation dates all postdate the release of the videos.
The theory suggests that someone with access to the original Gorgon Stare footage either pulled the cloud textures straight from the footage and uploaded them to textures.com, or created new images that match the video frame for frame.
Whether that sounds believable or not is up to you. If the videos are real, you’d expect people to go to just about any length to discredit them.
At the end of the day, the big issue is that no one has ever found these specific cloud images in any online archive before 2016. If anyone manages to dig up clear evidence, timestamped and verified, that these cloud images were online before the videos appeared, that would pretty much close the book on this whole debate.
Conclusion
Here’s what it all comes down to: faking something like this back in 2014 would have required serious access to military-grade ISR video standards and a solid grasp of how classified surveillance systems actually work. The footage even shows those 1Hz timing ticks in the background, exactly the kind you’d see on NATO-aligned surveillance systems like Gorgon Stare. That level of detail just isn’t something you can fake with off-the-shelf software.
Even the way the screen recording plays out is strange. The cursor moves smoothly at 24 fps while the background footage runs at 6 fps, which perfectly matches how secure remote desktop sessions behave. That’s a really specific technical quirk for a hoaxer to include, unless they were intimately familiar with this kind of technology.
Then there is the satellite angle. The location shown in the video lines up exactly with where USA-229 was orbiting at the time MH370 vanished. This satellite is thought to be a drone relay platform, and its designation, USA-229, is literally stamped on the footage. That is not the kind of thing you see in your typical internet fake.
And when the videos surfaced? No watermarks, no monetization, no viral push. The uploader posted the footage, sent out a couple tweets, and disappeared. No branding, no hustle, no attempt to milk it for attention or money. It is the complete opposite of what you would expect from a hoax.
Put all this together: the odd technical details, the perfect satellite alignment, and the instant censorship of any real discussion on major UFO forums. It starts to look less like a sloppy internet fake and more like the real deal.
What do you think?
——————————————
Follow me on X for more updates.