PR100: Drone? Flying Car?

[Hwy666]

So I looked at this clip and I've always been wary of heat imaging because the visual doesn't usually match the physical shape of the object.

If you fly a quadcopter at full throttle, it'll assume an upright, almost 90 degree position. The motors will get warm and may generate enough heat to travel along the arms of the quadcopter. In this clip the heat signature, especially when it zooms in around the middle of the video, seems to be uniform across the entire object.

But it's real life context that hurts this explanation. If the quadcopter is electric battery powered, it wouldn't be able to maintain that high speed stance for 4 minutes. To cover that much distance it would be much more efficient(and logical) to use a fixed-wing aircraft flying in a horizontal stance.

I wondered if it might some type of antenna array attached to a craft that isn't putting off heat or has some kind of stealth tech to hide the thermal signature of it's propulsion system. But if the VTX is that hot, it kind of defeats the purpose.

1:06 in the video: Looks like it might be some kind of oblong balloon but I'm having trouble understanding how the heat signature correlates to a balloon. I've taken thermal imaging of a hot air balloon and the heat image exactly matched the balloon's shape.

Heat signature of a hot air balloon(white hot):

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfeA2SrMujc

 

[RobertBillyBob]

That's PR100, could you edit thread title so people can find it when searching for this video?

As for the shape it could be a bunch of balloons tied together or balloons with an exotic 3D shape. See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/balloon-shapes.12857/ for examples of balloon shapes. To me it looks like a teddy bear with spread arms and legs but that's probably pareidolia.

 

[John J.]

As @RobertBillyBob said,
"DOW-UAP-PR100, Unresolved UAP Report, Yellow Sea, 2023", https://www.war.gov/UFO/release/04/...P-PR100-Unresolved-UAP-Report-Yellow-Sea-2023

The thread Naming convention for PR videos: PR000 might understandably not have been seen by @Hwy666 (and others);
maybe make it a sticky for "UFO Reports from the US Military and Government" @Mick West?

If the quadcopter is electric battery powered, it wouldn't be able to maintain that high speed stance for 4 minutes. To cover that much distance it would be much more efficient(and logical) to use a fixed-wing aircraft flying in a horizontal stance.

So it might be a fixed-wing aircraft.
I don't know what is shown in the video, but if it were a drone, there are fixed-wing drones with significantly greater speed, endurance and ranges than hobby quadcopters in widespread use, particularly by various militaries but also by civil operators.

There are quite a few twin-engined fixed-wing drones of 'conventional' aeroplane shape, e.g. the Koncern Granit Os-25-R
("Russia introduces new twin-engine tactical drone", Defence Blog website https://defence-blog.com/russia-introduces-new-twin-engine-tactical-drone/ 11 October 2025); also search "twin engine drone" for others;

There's also a number of twin-boom, twin engine designs, e.g. China's Sichuan Tengden TB-001 (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengden_TB-001);

-also the Ukrainian "twin-fuselage" Blitz-2, Militanyi website https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukraine-develops-blitz-2-twin-fuselage-drone/

There are fixed-wing hybrid drones that combine hydrocarbon propellor engines with rotors on booms/ outriggers,
e.g. the Chengfee CF-20, "UAV Drone Shop" website https://www.oemuavdrone.com/product...-drone-survey-terrain-fixed-wing-uav-unmanned,

I'm not suggesting PR-100 is any of these, or even like any of these, but fixed-wing drones that outperform small quadcopters (and which might have multiple "hot points") are not massively rare. There are probably some types (and possibly architectures) we're not aware of, particularly in Chinese use.

As @RobertBillyBob pointed out, we might not be able to rule out balloons, which at a glance might seem far-fetched but they're pretty ubiquitous (thread Balloons, how many are there?).
Parallax effects have previously made what was probably a balloon filmed in IR from a US platform seem to move at great speed
("Pentagon UFO video" GOFAST, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos- couldn't find a dedicated Metabunk thread but it is discussed). The strange-shaped subject of thread Jellyfish UFO from TMZ's 'UFO Revolution' might be a cluster of party balloons.
We don't know what temperature the brightest areas visible in PR-100 correspond to, they might be cooler than the heat from electric motors or combustion engines.

 

[Mick West]

The thread Naming convention for PR videos: PR000 might understandably not have been seen by @Hwy666 (and others);
maybe make it a sticky for "UFO Reports from the US Military and Government" @Mick West?

Stickied.

 

[Ann K]

That's PR100, could you edit thread title so people can find it when searching for this video?

As for the shape it could be a bunch of balloons tied together or balloons with an exotic 3D shape. See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/balloon-shapes.12857/ for examples of balloon shapes. To me it looks like a teddy bear with spread arms and legs but that's probably pareidolia.

That was my thought, balloons in company with our old friend, parallax. There is also one black spot on the object as well (maybe strings of the balloons, tied together), and some smaller dark bits that are sometimes seen. It would appear that the light is coming from the left and slightly behind the thing, so that balloons might look "white-hot" on the sunlit portion with cooler portions in the shadow.

That can be more easily seen toward the end of the video (from about the three minute mark) where the thing is seen more closely.

 

[JMartJr]

It sure looks like a JAB (Just Anther Balloon) right on the edge of LIZ. In any case, since it does not do anything but drift along, I am unable to see how it is anomalous. It has an odd shape, as balloons often do. It floats along and doesn't do anything, as balloons do. On what grounds would anybody think "Wow, this is an unidentifiable anomalous phenomenon right here!"

Maybe it is something else. Maybe it can fly at hypersonic speeds and utilizes technology that would seem to defy physics. Maybe it's just bad luck that we only got a bit of video when it isn't doing any of that cool stuff. But there is no reason to think so.

Or maybe its a balloon...

 

[Hwy666]

It sure looks like a JAB (Just Anther Balloon) right on the edge of LIZ. In any case, since it does not do anything but drift along, I am unable to see how it is anomalous. It has an odd shape, as balloons often do. It floats along and doesn't do anything, as balloons do. On what grounds would anybody think "Wow, this is an unidentifiable anomalous phenomenon right here!"

Maybe it is something else. Maybe it can fly at hypersonic speeds and utilizes technology that would seem to defy physics. Maybe it's just bad luck that we only got a bit of video when it isn't doing any of that cool stuff. But there is no reason to think so.

Or maybe its a balloon...

Balloons are very attainable for a pretty low price. Even with helium in them.

Bearing that in mind, I can't seem to find any thermal imaging of a balloon that looks remotely similar to the object in the video.

If there is I'd love to see it.

 

[Hwy666]

As @RobertBillyBob said,
"DOW-UAP-PR100, Unresolved UAP Report, Yellow Sea, 2023", https://www.war.gov/UFO/release/04/...P-PR100-Unresolved-UAP-Report-Yellow-Sea-2023

The thread Naming convention for PR videos: PR000 might understandably not have been seen by @Hwy666 (and others);
maybe make it a sticky for "UFO Reports from the US Military and Government" @Mick West?



So it might be a fixed-wing aircraft.
I don't know what is shown in the video, but if it were a drone, there are fixed-wing drones with significantly greater speed, endurance and ranges than hobby quadcopters in widespread use, particularly by various militaries but also by civil operators.

There are quite a few twin-engined fixed-wing drones of 'conventional' aeroplane shape, e.g. the Koncern Granit Os-25-R

Yeah you can have a pre-built long range hybrid drone delivered to you door or you could build one yourself.

I just don't see that angle of attack being of any use. It doesn't make any sense aerodynamically and if it's ISR you wouldn't want to increase the aircraft's radar signature with that upright stance.

Pivotal's flying car adopts a similar stance at times but I haven't seen any thermal imaging to compare it with the PR100 object. It may look totally different.

Another problem is I don't see any bloom effect associated with thermal imaging of powered aircraft. The amount of thrust needed to maintain that stance...again it's problematic. Unless its recreational RC or a civilian aircraft, rearing up like that would go against the stealth goal of an ISR aircraft.

 

[John J.]

I just don't see that angle of attack being of any use.

We don't know the feature's angle of attack because we don't know its actual shape, or even if it is an aircraft that could be said to have an AOA.
As you said in the opening post, IR imagery doesn't always tally with visual appearance.

...if it's ISR you wouldn't want to increase the aircraft's radar signature...

Sort of agree, but we don't know if its an ISR (intel, surveillance, recce) asset, and again if it is a powered aircraft I feel AOA isn't clear.
Many drones (and the majority of crewed intelligence-gathering platforms) do not have inherently stealthy designs.
Commercially available drones might be used by a military operator (just as, for instance, many maritime patrol and ELINT aircraft are based on civil passenger aircraft).
And if it is a drone, it might belong to a civilian authority or private operator; an agency checking for oil spills or monitoring fishing boats might not be too worried about low observables. We have very little context for the footage; we don't know proximity to land (and which land that might be), ships/ boats or off-shore infrastructure in the area, or what the viewing platform was doing there.

Another problem is I don't see any bloom effect associated with thermal imaging of powered aircraft.

Bright IR sources can cause glare, diffraction spikes etc. and hot exhaust might be visible, but this isn't always the case.

@TheCholla posted this video from YouTube channel Outbound Course, uploaded 2021; I've timestamped it to start with (what I think is) IR footage of a Predator UAV, briefly from approx. 12 mins 52 secs IR there's footage of another UAV. Some manned aircraft follow, even when viewing the tailpipes end-on there isn't massive glare. Admittedly this vid isn't a great source, but search "IR footage of aircraft" and there are examples with lots of glare, others with very little.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyefSnLxjXk&t=766s

I don't know (or have a favorite theory) about what PR100 shows, but I'm not sure we can exclude a drone or balloons.
I suspect that if we could see the object clearly in the visible spectrum, it might appear very different to the impression given by the tiny image in the IR footage, but that's just a hunch.

 

[JMartJr]

Bearing that in mind, I can't seem to find any thermal imaging of a balloon that looks remotely similar to the object in the video.

If there is I'd love to see it.

There are a huge number of balloon shapes, and an almost infinite number of shapes that could arise from a bunch of two, three, four or more balloons. Sometimes we've been able to find the specific balloon design, when there is enough detail. I am not sure there is sufficient detail in this video.

Edit for accidental premature posting before typing the following.

However, there is some resemblance to things like: