2006-01-23 - Camp Taqaddum (Iraq) - Light

Beams of light with an extremely slow pulse to it, seen over vast desert and only seemingly visible through NVGs, with a bright glow

Dates and Times are approximate Myself and another Marine were on post on the North side of our base. The base is on a plateau overlooking several small towns and a few other small Forward Operating Bases.

Looking out to the northeast, (where we have seen many other sightings as another I described earlier), I noticed several small beams of light barely noticeable by the naked eye. We are aware of what military/insurgent operations in the area and what types of signs might be present. Looking the night vision and heat sensitive optics, we could see them. With the heat-sensitive optics, not as much.

Myself and the fellow Marine tried to shrug it off as just lights placed by locals or even coalition forces that perhaps we were not aware of. But through night vision, the beams appeared to go up to an extremely high altitude, and near the base had a glow, as noted vaguely through heat-sensitive optics. There were two-four beams at any given time over the early hours of the morning.

As we had to stay aware of base security, we couldn't focus completely on these but they were intriguing. I'm not placing the fact there could be a largely logical reason for these, but it felt weird, and the beams of light had weird characteristics.

This was months ago and I have just found this site, and it's hard to recall all the details, but I do know that they faded sometimes, and would come back brightly at times. This was only really visible through night vision equipment.

And the areas that the beam on the ground was focused gave off heat and a bright glow, and was in areas not completely populated. The area is not like Baghdad, it is mainly vast desert and spotted farmlands and towns.

This was very bizarre to me.


((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the incident is approximate. PD))