THE SOURCE
(Unchanged: DOW-UAP-PR069, a 29-second infrared video clip from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 02, published at war.gov/ufo on 22 May 2026. Its uploader-defined title is “F/A-18 FLIR UAP”, and AARO assesses it as likely from an infrared sensor on a U.S. military platform in the U.S. Northern Command area.)
Why this one is worth your time
This is a short briefing for a short clip. PR069 runs less than thirty seconds and there is not a great deal of in-frame action to describe. It earns its own briefing for one reason: the uploader has named the platform. PR069 is described as F/A-18 FLIR footage, that is, infrared captured by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter’s forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor pod, the same platform-and-sensor combination behind the most famous publicly known Navy UAP clips of the past two decades. So a short clip from an F/A-18 FLIR, over the U.S. homeland, is small in duration and not small in lineage. The general grounding for infrared footage is in Release 01 Briefing 3.
What the file says
PR069 is 29 seconds long. The government’s description is simple: a sensor pans to track an area of contrast, a reticle surrounds the object at the 14-second mark, and at the 27-second mark the reticle loses its lock. AARO places the platform in Northern Command airspace, the command that defends North American skies. The uploader names the platform as an F/A-18.
The platform and its lineage. The F/A-18 Super Hornet is the U.S. Navy’s frontline fighter, and its targeting pod has, in the past, recorded the best-known publicly released UAP footage in modern American history. Naming the platform places PR069 inside that lineage. The technical pedigree of the platform and sensor named here is the same as that of those earlier clips. PR069 itself has 29 seconds, no visible telemetry, no precise date in its metadata, and a single sequence of acquire-and-lose-track.
The acquire-and-lose-track. The substantive moment in the clip is the reticle surrounding the area of contrast at 14 seconds and losing its track at 27 seconds. That is the behaviour of an automatic targeting system: the sensor acquires the contact, the algorithm closes a tracking gate around it, and a little later the gate slips off. As Release 02 Briefing 6 set out for this kind of event, a tracker losing lock is consistent with an object whose performance outruns the system; it is also consistent with a low-contrast object, with the object crossing too fast at close range, or with the system’s own limits in low-information conditions. The clip does not, by itself, distinguish those. The lock and the loss are in the footage; the cause is not.
What the file does not say
It does not say what the object was. Twenty-nine seconds and no telemetry yield no identification.
It does not record any telemetry, any precise date in its metadata, or any kinematic data on the object. It carries the acquire-and-lose-track sequence and little measurable content beyond it.
It does not establish the cause of the lost track. The reticle losing its track has ordinary explanations as well as exotic ones, and the clip cannot tell them apart, as Release 02 Briefing 6 sets out for the Coast Guard pair.
It does not come with a guaranteed clean provenance. Given the Release 02 chain-of-custody caveat from Release 02 Briefing 1, what accompanies the clip is AARO’s sensor-origin assessment, not a documented chain of custody.
From the record
“F/A-18 FLIR UAP.” The uploader-defined title of the clip
Likely from an infrared sensor on a U.S. military platform in the U.S. Northern Command area. AARO’s assessment of the clip’s origin
A reticle surrounds the object at the 14-second mark; at the 27-second mark the reticle loses its lock. The government’s description of the 29-second sequence
Where the case connects
PR069 belongs alongside Release 02 Briefing 13 as a second homeland clip, and beside the Coast Guard tracker-failure footage in Release 02 Briefing 6, which sets out how an acquire-and-lose-track event reads. The named F/A-18 FLIR pod is the same platform-and-sensor family behind the most famous publicly released Navy clips of the past two decades, a longer and better-documented body of footage than this one. Release 01 Briefing 3 covers infrared footage in general, and Release 02 Briefing 1 covers the Release 02 chain-of-custody caveat.
The file also leaves its own loose ends. There is no telemetry and no precise date in the metadata; the chain of custody is not documented, only AARO’s sensor-origin assessment; and the tracker’s loss of lock is in the footage without its cause. Any later tranche that releases telemetry, metadata or provenance for PR069 lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-PR069, “F/A-18 FLIR UAP”, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 02, the full 29-second clip with the acquire-and-lose-track sequence.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-PR069, “F/A-18 FLIR UAP”, PURSUE Release 02, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 01 Briefing 3, on infrared footage; Release 02 Briefing 6, on the “unable to track” reading; Release 02 Briefing 13, on the rest of the homeland set