Islamabad UFO Seen for over 2 hours

Rocky

Active Member
A man by the name of Arslan Warraich filmed a video above the city of Islamabad during the day for over 2 hours. Can anyone say what this may be?
Link to story and video...
Islamabad UFO
 
From the video, the object is consistent with a dark colored delta kite, such as kids might make from an old umbrella or black trash bag. However, the quality of the video that I got to play is too low to be able to say definitively that is what it is. Could be, though.
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A man by the name of Arslan Warraich filmed a video above the city of Islamabad during the day for over 2 hours.
You can tell from this alone that it's not a flying saucer.

Islamabad is a city, with thousands of people closer to the UFO than this observer, yet we have no reports from anyone close enough to get a good look at it during the 2 hours it was up. The obvious explanation is that, from a distance close enough to identify it, it's apparent that it's a common object.

UFOs exist in what I call the Low Information Zone (the LIZ). That's the physical region around you (or your camera) just beyond the distance where you can make out what something is. The LIZ is a curious thing in that it expands and contracts based on the lighting conditions, the size and shape of the object, the quality of your eyesight, the presence of optical aids like telescopes, and the resolution and zoom of your camera. [...]

So, regardless of any belief about aliens or secret technology of some sort, whenever you detect something flying in the LIZ, then that's automatically [...] a UFO simply because there's not enough information to identify it.

If you were to suddenly change the size of the LIZ, to expand it by getting out your 10x binoculars, then the UFO often becomes an IFO. Sometimes the expansion does not work, because the object is still in the Low Information Zone, the LIZ.

See also https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ufo-acronym-defnitions.11742/
 
I think it could be a kite related to Pakistan Basant Festival 2022 in Rawalpindi, adjacent to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad. An article about that Pakistani festival: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/asia/hundreds-defy-ban-to-celebrate-pakistan-kite-festival
Article:
In Arslan’s pictures, the mystifying object is observed putting immobile over the town’s rich DHA 1 district.

Google maps supports this, DHA 1 is fairly close to Rwalpindi, and the perceived location could easily be off by a few km, depending on the observation angle, if the distance is misjudged (a small kite would be closer than a large spacecraft).
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it seems pretty high up to be a kite from miles away.

It seems to have too much volume to be a kite. It's base also seems too horizontal to catch the wind. Screen shot from end of this video by Arslan Warraich.


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his full 13 mins is on youtube. (his own channel). It doesnt add much, but looks like his photos are at end of stream where it then looks a bit more triangular.

He says he was flying his own drone and just landed it when he spotted the dot.

he says he couldn't fly his drone out to it as he was out of battery... and apparently made no attempt to charge his battery. typical. unless they have bad electric in islamabad... like in greece sometimes you have no electric.

my first thought was a kite too but it wasnt one. Yes the drone has 4k camera but it was out of battery unfortunately.
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add: says he was on rooftop. jan 25th (ish unless islamabad has a different day than me in NY area...my youtube says video upload Jan 26th)
Yesterday 2ish hours before the sunset. Saw this from my roof top, will definitely keep an eye out for it.
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ6Sfkqhr8o
 
From the video, the object is consistent with a dark colored delta kite, such as kids might make from an old umbrella or black trash bag.
It's always kites with you jMart!

But here's some boys flying a big black kite in at the Basant festival in Rawalpindi in 2020:

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They manage to get it up there aways:
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43T5tt-0X_o


Same kite was back this year:
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And here you can see other kites quite a ways up:
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And again here:
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQqYb5MZfMo
 
From the video, the object is consistent with a dark colored delta kite, such as kids might make from an old umbrella or black trash bag. However, the quality of the video that I got to play is too low to be able to say definitively that is what it is. Could be, though.
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You and others mention kites, but if there's enough breeze to get a kite airborne, it seems highly unlikely to me that it could remain stationary for two hours.
 
Do we know the observer position?
i was going by your map in post #9.

and he does seem to live near phase 1... you can landmark stuff in his speed motorcycle video ..he almost kills a little doggie :( (of course if the dog didnt stop his run, it would've killed ufo guy too.)
 
I think it could be a kite related to Pakistan Basant Festival 2022 in Rawalpindi, adjacent to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad. An article about that Pakistani festival: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/asia/hundreds-defy-ban-to-celebrate-pakistan-kite-festival
Possibly, but those kites would be fighters, spinning in place then darting off in different directions. Pakistani fighters are larger than Indian fighters, so are a bit less nimble. But still don't hover much. I'd also expect more kites in the sky during the festival.


Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bx7k7OU2LK0
 
The object in Arslan Warraich's video below seems much higher than the kites in the next video.


Source: https://youtu.be/pZ6Sfkqhr8o&t=364s

Video of kites flying at the Rawalpindi Basant festival near Islamabad


Source: https://youtu.be/QM-NY1EddXc

Screenshot without zoom of a large kite in red circle and location of highest kite in blue circle. Comparing this screenshot with Warraich's video, as he pans up from the ground in non-zoom mode, makes me think that the UFO is much higher than these kites.

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You and others mention kites, but if there's enough breeze to get a kite airborne, it seems highly unlikely to me that it could remain stationary for two hours.

I dunno. I think that having enough breeze to get the kite airborne is essential for it to remain stationary for 2 hours.

This may seem obvious, but the kite’s motion relative to a fixed point depends on fluctuations in wind speed and direction more than the magnitude of wind speed. A ship at anchor in the swiftest current won’t appear to move unless the current changes.

I’m not sure a kite fits, but I think breezes that can bear kites are favorable to a kite explanation. Such breezes bring out kite flyers, in my experience.
 
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I'd also expect more kites in the sky during the festival.

Were they not saying it was related to the festival - ie, there must be a lot of people around there who fly large kites and who fly them at other times - rather than it being during?

Festival was last week, I think (Feb 18th) whereas video was last month (Jan 25th).
 
Also a shame that he didn't think during those two hours
it seems highly unlikely to me that it could remain stationary for two hours
Maybe I'm missing something. The first video in deirdre's post #3 is 1:24, with the last :24 just an ad for another video. Then deirdre found the YouTube video which is 13:13, so the 2 hours is just his claim? There is obviously some cuts in the 13:13 version, but I didn't see anything like a time stamp.

And is it just me, but after the 11:11 point in the main video after it changes to landscape, does it look like he's just panning on still shots, AKA using the Ken Burns effect? If so, then there is only ~11:00 of this 2 hour encounter. Which also would have been enough time to get some charge in the drone battery.

On another note, it looks like whatever it is, it's not something close to the camera. Somewhere around 6:40 there is what appears to be an out of focus and I'm thinking close to the camera insect fly by. It only lasts for 6 frames, so a fraction of a second:
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Maybe I'm missing something. The first video in deirdre's post #3 is 1:24, with the last :24 just an ad for another video. Then deirdre found the YouTube video which is 13:13, so the 2 hours is just his claim? There is obviously some cuts in the 13:13 version, but I didn't see anything like a time stamp. ....

On another note, it looks like whatever it is, it's not something close to the camera. Somewhere around 6:40 there is what appears to be an out of focus and I'm thinking close to the camera insect fly by. It only lasts for 6 frames, so a fraction of a second:


Very true, the "two hours" is an unverified claim.

But your conclusion, "it's not something close to the camera" is problematic, and possibly boils down to the ambiguity of comparing "close" to "closer". Camera focus varies wildly between, say, something moving at six inches and something stationary at six feet.
 
his full 13 mins is on youtube. (his own channel). It doesnt add much, but looks like his photos are at end of stream where it then looks a bit more triangular.

He says he was flying his own drone and just landed it when he spotted the dot.

he says he couldn't fly his drone out to it as he was out of battery... and apparently made no attempt to charge his battery. typical. unless they have bad electric in islamabad... like in greece sometimes you have no electric.

my first thought was a kite too but it wasnt one. Yes the drone has 4k camera but it was out of battery unfortunately.
Content from External Source

add: says he was on rooftop. jan 25th (ish unless islamabad has a different day than me in NY area...my youtube says video upload Jan 26th)
Yesterday 2ish hours before the sunset. Saw this from my roof top, will definitely keep an eye out for it.
Content from External Source

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ6Sfkqhr8o

So how many rooftops in the US have an electrical outlet? I grew up in a major US city and we hung out on rooftops and I never saw an electrical outlet. What a ridiculous comment. He may be purposely deceiving everyone but wouldn't he be aware of the kite festival there? I would believe it to be a common site if that were the case. Finally, that is extremely high up. The line would be very long. Any kite experts out there that would be able to confirm if kite flying at this height is common? I wish we had some measurements to compare.
 
So how many rooftops in the US have an electrical outlet? I grew up in a major US city and we hung out on rooftops and I never saw an electrical outlet. What a ridiculous comment.
i didnt know he was on the roof until i did the research for you.

(maybe he spent the full 2 hours on the roof..he said he saw it when landing his drone, doesnt mean he didnt move to an indoor space)

and yes some rooftops ,esp those designed for residents to use, have outlets. but i never assumed his rooftop had an outlet.

He may be purposely deceiving everyone but wouldn't he be aware of the kite festival there? I would believe it to be a common site if that were the case.
I didnt say it was a kite. in fact i said it looked too high to be from the festival location.
 
So how many rooftops in the US have an electrical outlet? I grew up in a major US city and we hung out on rooftops and I never saw an electrical outlet. What a ridiculous comment. He may be purposely deceiving everyone but wouldn't he be aware of the kite festival there? I would believe it to be a common site if that were the case. Finally, that is extremely high up. The line would be very long. Any kite experts out there that would be able to confirm if kite flying at this height is common? I wish we had some measurements to compare.
I think the idea is that, if he's on a rooftop without an outlet, but the UFO hovered around for 2 hours, he could have made a quick run down stairs to charge up his 4K drone battery. He is claiming this is some sort of UFO and then throwing out the usual "oh the batteries in my good camera were dead so this is all I could get...for two hours".

He may very well have been aware that there was a big kite festival coming up, but may be counting on the fact that his YouTube audience was not.

I agree it looks awfully high up there for a kite, but I'm not a kite guy. This is a question for @JMartJr, our resident kite whisperer.

I guess I'm thinking if this is an alien UFO hanging out in plain site for 2 hours, why is he the only guy to see it so far?
 
Comparing this screenshot with Warraich's video, as he pans up from the ground in non-zoom mode, makes me think that the UFO is much higher than these kites.
I don't understand this reasoning. If there's a kite in the air on a steady breeze, there's a point underneath the kite from which an observer would see the kite as directly above. This is independent of the altitude of the kite.

The elevation angle only means something in terms of altitude when you know distance, or when you know the size, which gives you the distance indirectly.

The useful thing to do in that situation is to call some acquaintances and get them to find and photograph the UAP from different positions (aka where they happen to be) so you can plot the sight lines on a map and get an idea of where it is.
 
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So how many rooftops in the US have an electrical outlet?
Those with a patio or deck up there might.
During kite festival in India, people spend many hours up on the roof. Some number of them will have either an outlet or the just run an extension cord up there. Presumably during the essentially similar fest in Islamabad, where they also fly from the rooftops, there will also be, on at least some roofs, provisions for electricity. At the very least, this would not surprise me at all.
... but wouldn't he be aware of the kite festival there?
It would be nearly impossible for anybody in Islamabad not to know about the kite festival. It would be like somebody in, say, New York not knowing about Christmas. It's a big deal.
But I really want to stress how unlikely it is that this would be a kite of the sort flown at the festival. They are, by intent, not stable. They tend to spin/circle in place until the pilot pulls sharply on the line which causes them to move rapidly forward in a more-or-less straight line. The festival is for fighter kites, they do not dwell in place for minutes at a time, much less the claimed two hours. (The engineering of that is ingenious, but off topic here.)
Finally, that is extremely high up. The line would be very long.
Yep, the less so if the kite was smaller, more so if it were larger, of course. To be that stable in an urban environment, it is going to have to be pretty high to get into clear winds.
Any kite experts out there that would be able to confirm if kite flying at this height is common? I wish we had some measurements to compare.
Well, since you asked, yeah, lots of folks fly their kites up to the point where you can barely see it. For them, that's the point, "Look how high it is!" I like to keep mine lower where you can see them clearly, but that's not universal by any means.

i didnt know he was on the roof until i did the research for you.
To confirm, during kite events in that part of the world, flying from the rooftop during the ,kite festival is most definitely a thing. Every year, some number of people fall off the roof while running around to maneuver their kite. (The festivals are for fighter kites, darting around and cutting down other kites is the game. The cutting-string they used, called manjha, is very thin and coated with a sandpapery-textured ground glass, and winds up draped all over the place and is a serious menace to birds, cyclists, children running around, etc. This dangerous residue from the festival, along with the folks who die falling off a roof, is why the fighter-kite festivals are now banned in some places.
 
To confirm, during kite events in that part of the world, flying from the rooftop during the ,kite festival is most definitely a thing.
the camera man wasnt flying a kite (assuming we believe his narration).

Every year, some number of people fall off the roof while running around to maneuver their kite.
dont kites "pull" you a bit too, esp ones up as high as this video "kite"? i'm small so my perception of what "pull" a body can safely tolerate (on a roof) is pretty small, ive had wind gusts hit me just holding an umbrella that almost knock me over :)
 
the camera man wasnt flying a kite (assuming we believe his narration).
Assuming he's not hoaxing, he would not need to be the one flying the kite. Might be a roof or two behind him. And that's assuming it is a kite -- my view is that it could be a kite, there is nothing I've seen that says "not a kite." But it might be something else. But in cities like Islamabad, the place from which one usually flies a kite is the roof. And folks spend enough time up there that it would not surprise me that Our Videographer would have some access to electricity up there, for use during the festival or for just general using the roof as a patio.

dont kites "pull" you a bit too, esp ones up as high as this video "kite"? i'm small so my perception of what "pull" a body can safely tolerate (on a roof) is pretty small, ive had wind gusts hit me just holding an umbrella that almost knock me over :)
Indeed, though the pull from a fighter kite is usually not significant. And if the original post UFO is a kite, I'd judge it to be in the neighborhood of t-3 meters across -- capable of pulling pretty good but flyable by hand without getting dragged around too badly. (Other than kites specifically designed for "traction kiting," the kite designer wants the thing to go up, and not break apart from the pressure, so they are usually designed to generate lift but not too much drag/pull. You'd need a pretty big kite to drag you around.

MUSINGS, KITE RELATED, SKIP IF ALL YOU ARE INTERESTED IN IS THE UFO -- For what it is worth, I have been lifted from the ground by a stack of very large kites -- we had 6 or 7 of them tied off to an anchor (normal for flying "maxis") and the wind picked up, so 10 or 12 of us started wlaking down the line -- where you leave it tied to the anchor, and the mass of folks walks toward the kite, pulling it downward as you go but not trying to take in line to be loose behind you. The guy behind me lost his grip when it was my turn at the head of the group, and it got away from guys behind him like a zipper -- though I am NOT small, I went 4-5 feet up before falling off. When flying what was then the then Guiness record biggest kite, a friend was lofted maybe 15 feet up and suffered minor injuries when he fell. A person was lofted and killed in an earlier record attempt, but that was before I got involved with big kites. But these are monsterous-big kites, not the sort of thing one would fly from a roof or mistake for a UFO. And I guess my Big Giant Kite anecdotes are moving well off topic, so I'll hush up...
 
For what it is worth, I have been lifted from the ground by a stack of very large kites -- we had 6 or 7 of them tied off to an anchor (normal for flying "maxis") and the wind picked up, so 10 or 12 of us started wlaking down the line -- where you leave it tied to the anchor, and the mass of folks walks toward the kite, pulling it downward as you go but not trying to take in line to be loose behind you. The guy behind me lost his grip when it was my turn at the head of the group, and it got away from guys behind him like a zipper -- though I am NOT small, I went 4-5 feet up before falling off. When flying what was then the then Guiness record biggest kite, a friend was lofted maybe 15 feet up and suffered minor injuries when he fell. A person was lofted and killed in an earlier record attempt, but that was before I got involved with big kites. But these are monsterous-big kites, not the sort of thing one would fly from a roof or mistake for a UFO. And I guess my Big Giant Kite anecdotes are moving well off topic, so I'll hush up...
I often wonder about possible backstory when I see someone's avatar. Now yours makes sense!
 
So how many rooftops in the US have an electrical outlet? I grew up in a major US city and we hung out on rooftops and I never saw an electrical outlet. What a ridiculous comment
Speaking of ridiculous comments, who said he had to use a rooftop outlet?
 
I don't understand this reasoning. If there's a kite in the air on a steady breeze, there's a point underneath the kite from which an observer would see the kite as directly above. This is independent of the altitude of the kite.

The elevation angle only means something in terms of altitude when you know distance, or when you know the size, which gives you the distance indirectly.

I would have thought that Warraich would have noticed if it was a kite tethered close to him. Especially if he had been flying a drone in the area.
 
I would have thought that Warraich would have noticed if it was a kite tethered close to him
I have almost never seen a kite string, especially on a cloudy day.

And he says he didn't notice the UAP itself. I believe most single-person drone operators use the drone camera to navigate most of the time. It doesn't zoom and it doesn't look up.
 
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