THE SOURCE
DOW-UAP-PR034 and DOW-UAP-PR035, two infrared video clips from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 01, published at war.gov/ufo on 8 May 2026. PR034 runs 2 minutes 57 seconds; PR035 runs 24 seconds. Both were recorded over Greece in October 2023 by infrared sensors on U.S. military platforms, and both were submitted by U.S. Central Command to AARO. PR034 is paired with mission report DOW-UAP-D33.
What this briefing is
Release 01 Briefing 5 already covered Greek airspace through PR028, a 66-second clip from January 2024. This briefing covers what came before that: two Greek clips recorded three months earlier, in October 2023, that have not yet had their own treatment. PR034 in particular carries one of the most specific aircrew behavioural and speed descriptions in either tranche, in the language Release 01 Briefing 22 has shown to be the most useful single line in any short clip. The general grounding for infrared footage is in Release 01 Briefing 3.
TL;DR
The Greek airspace in autumn 2023 generated at least two separate reports that made it into Release 01. PR034 is the longer and more substantive of the pair, almost three minutes of infrared footage of an area of contrast entering the lower left of the frame and moving back and forth across the screen. PR035 is much shorter, twenty-four seconds. Both were submitted by U.S. Central Command rather than European Command, which is the small command-routing oddity to note in this set, the kind already flagged in Release 01 Briefing 29 for the NORTHCOM-submitted Gulf of Oman clip.
The substantive line in this briefing comes from PR034’s paired mission report, D33. The aircrew described the UAP as flying near the surface of the ocean, making multiple “90-degree turns”, at approximately 80 miles per hour. That is a remarkably specific behavioural and speed claim by trained military observers, written in their own words at the time of the encounter.
Taken together: a Greek-airspace cluster from October 2023, three months before the PR028 clip in Release 01 Briefing 5, and a paired mission-report description that names sharp-angle manoeuvring at a stated speed near the sea surface. Tier 2 source. Modern small drones can produce that profile; the description is specific and is carried forward here.
The aircrew description, kept proportional
PR034’s value is mostly in what the aircrew wrote, and that line deserves a careful read.
“Near the surface of the ocean”, “multiple ‘90-degree turns’”, and “approximately 80 miles per hour” together describe a specific operational profile: a low-altitude object, with sharp lateral course changes, at a moderate speed. Each of those three pieces individually is a falsifiable observation. The aircrew did not say the object did anything impossible. They named a behaviour and a speed.
Eighty miles per hour is roughly 70 knots. That is well within the speed range of small unmanned aircraft systems, loitering munitions and many commercial-grade drones. Sharp 90-degree turns are likewise within the manoeuvring envelope of small electric multi-rotor drones and of fixed-wing UAS with high control authority. Low-altitude flight over water is a textbook UAS profile for surveillance, reconnaissance, and a number of strike applications. The aircrew’s described behaviour is, in 2023, fully consistent with a small drone of some kind, friendly or otherwise, in Greek airspace.
That does not identify PR034 as a known drone. A small unmanned aircraft is among the candidates consistent with a low, fast, sharp-turning small object over the Mediterranean in October 2023. The clip and the description together leave the identification open.
As Release 01 Briefing 22 set out, an aircrew’s own words are some of the most detailed content the file carries. They can also be a description that fits an ordinary candidate.
The CENTCOM submission for a Greek clip
The smaller oddity, worth a paragraph, is the routing. Greece sits in the U.S. European Command area. A Greek airspace clip would normally be submitted through EUCOM. PR034 and PR035 were submitted through Central Command instead.
The likely explanation is a U.S. Central Command-assigned platform transiting Greek airspace, en route to or from the Middle East. CENTCOM aircraft routinely cross the Mediterranean and could pick up a contact over Greece during such a transit; that aircraft’s encounter would then be reported through its parent command rather than the geographic one. As Release 01 Briefing 29 noted for PR029’s NORTHCOM submission from the Gulf of Oman, the routing path inside PURSUE is not always the geographic one, and recording these small mismatches when they appear is part of reading the file carefully.
PR035, the short companion
PR035 is the briefer half of the pair, twenty-four seconds, no extensive aircrew narrative in what is published in the release. It sits alongside PR034 as evidence that the October 2023 Greek encounter was not a single isolated event; the kind of small encounter that, on its own, would have fit naturally into Release 01 Briefing 22’s grouped short clips, but that lands here because it pairs with PR034 in the same place and month. As primary footage, PR035 is what it appears to be: a brief tracked contact whose substantive content is the company it keeps with PR034.
What the file says
They establish that in October 2023, U.S. military infrared sensors over Greece recorded at least two separate encounters with unidentified objects, and that both were routed through the official AARO channel via U.S. Central Command. They establish that PR034’s paired mission report, D33, contains a specific aircrew behavioural and speed description: an object near the ocean surface, making 90-degree turns, at approximately 80 mph. They establish a precursor to the January 2024 Greek footage in Release 01 Briefing 5, three months earlier than the previously briefed clip. As tier 2 primary material with a paired observer description, PR034 in particular is one of the more analytically useful single clips not yet briefed.
What the file does not say
It does not establish that the objects were anomalous. PR034’s aircrew description, taken at face value, is fully consistent with a small unmanned aircraft system of the kind routinely active in 2023 airspace.
It does not let PR034’s clip alone confirm or refute the aircrew’s 80-mph and 90-degree-turn description, because no telemetry is visible in the footage. The numbers come from the aircrew, not from the clip’s pixels.
It does not establish that the two Greek encounters share an object or a type. They share a theatre and a month, and the routing pathway through CENTCOM.
It does not, with the routing detail, reach for any conclusion beyond the practical: that the encounter happened to a CENTCOM-assigned platform working over Greek airspace.
And it does not rise above tier 2. PR034 and PR035 are honest, useful additions to the Greek cluster Release 01 Briefing 5 began.
What to watch
Release 01 Briefing 5 began the Greek cluster; Briefing 22 covers aircrew descriptions in short clips.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-PR034 and DOW-UAP-PR035, PURSUE Release 01, 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 5, on the January 2024 Greek clip PR028; Release 01 Briefing 22, on aircrew descriptions in short clips; Release 01 Briefing 29, on the NORTHCOM submission anomaly for PR029