THE SOURCE
DOW-UAP-PR28, “Unresolved UAP Report, Greece, January 2024”. A 66-second infrared sensor clip, 1920 by 1080, released in PURSUE Release 01 by the U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov. The release catalogue gives the runtime as one minute and five seconds, describes footage captured via multiple sensor modalities, and names an accompanying mission report that called the UAP “diamond-shaped”, moving at approximately 434 knots and detectable only on a short-wave infrared (SWIR) sensor.
Why this one is worth your time
This is the second briefing in the series to take a single piece of footage rather than a document. Release 01 Briefing 3 did the groundwork for all the video briefings: it explained how a targeting-pod feed actually works, the tracking reticle, the telemetry fields, the redaction blocks, why infrared inverts hot and cold, and why a single frame proves very little. The Greece clip is short, 66 seconds, and the catalogue entry carries two layers at once: AARO’s own timed description of the footage, and a mission report that called the object diamond-shaped and put it at about 434 knots. Reading the clip against both of them is the whole reason to sit with it.
What the file says
PR28 is a 66-second infrared clip from a military sensor, tagged Greece, January 2024. It shows a small, bright, compact object held near the centre of a tracking reticle while the sensor pans across a sky that is partly clear and partly filled with a large cloud bank. The sensor cycles through modes during the clip, and AARO’s catalogue entry sets out the order: the screen is split for the first ten seconds, the right side showing electro-optical footage and the left side short-wave infrared; at 00:10 the display shifts to a full-screen view of the SWIR feed; at 00:56 the operator switches to the visible spectrum and loses the subject; from 00:57 to 01:05 the operator switches to SWIR black-hot and does not reacquire it. The object stays small and bright for as long as it is held, and the cloud bank drifts behind it. This briefing is evidence tier 2, primary footage. Watching the full clip, the sequence is as follows.
The split-screen opening. It opens split down the middle, and stays that way for about ten seconds. AARO puts electro-optical footage on the right and short-wave infrared on the left, and the two panels do not match: one is a smooth, washed-out field, the other carries the cloud bank in detail. A tracking reticle sits in each panel. AARO’s description marks 00:04 as the moment an area of contrast becomes distinguishable against the background in the centre of the right frame. Heavy black redaction blocks cover the telemetry fields in every corner, as expected and as explained in Release 01 Briefing 3.
The full-screen infrared view. At ten seconds the display drops the split and shifts to the SWIR feed alone. Here the object is clearest: a small, round, bright white point of light, held just to the side of the reticle by the tracking system. The background through this section is mostly a smooth, hazy grey, the look of infrared sky, with a large soft bright region that is the cloud bank. The object stays compact and bright, and it does not pulse or flare. It is not quite a bare dot either. From about fifty seconds a faint narrow tail hangs below the bright head, and AARO’s description of the frame at 00:55 calls the area of contrast an “inverted teardrop with a vertically linear trailing mass suspended below”.
The cloud bank passing behind. As the clip continues the cloud bank passes behind the object. At several points the bright point is silhouetted against, or set just in front of, the brighter mass of cloud. This shows the object is being tracked against a real, textured background and is not simply a fixed blemish on the sensor, and it gives a parallax cue that, with telemetry, an analyst could use to bound the object’s distance.
The mode changes at the end. At 00:56 the operator switches the sensor to the visible spectrum. The frame turns an even blue and, in AARO’s words, the operator loses “the subject against the background”. From 00:57 the sensor goes to SWIR black-hot, where the sky reads dark and textured cloud fills the frame, and AARO records that the operator “does not reacquire” the object. Those closing seconds of black-hot cloud, not the blue frame, are where the clip ends.
The apparent motion. A targeting pod locks onto a contact and keeps it near the reticle by slewing the camera. On screen this makes the object look nearly stationary while the background sweeps past, and when the background appears to rush, that can be the camera slewing rather than the object accelerating. The 434 knots in the mission report is the operator’s estimate, made with data the public clip does not carry. The object’s brightness in white-hot mode means it was warmer than the sky around it, or more reflective, or both; that holds of an aircraft, a drone, a glint off a balloon or a light aircraft, a hot engine or exhaust.
What the file does not say
The object’s shape, beyond the outline the sensor drew. At the object’s size on the sensor the released clip carries a bright head and a faint trailing mass, and that is as far as AARO’s own description goes. The “diamond” with a non-manoeuvring probe is the mission report’s wording, not something the released footage settles. An analyst with the full-resolution sensor feed, zoom control and telemetry may well have had more to work from; the compressed, redacted public clip does not preserve it.
The object’s speed, size, altitude or distance. All of those depend on the telemetry, which is redacted out of the public clip. A bright point in front of a cloud could be close and small or distant and large, and the unaided viewer cannot tell the difference. The 434 knots is the operator’s reading of data the viewer does not have.
What the object was. “Unresolved” means the military’s analysts did not reach a conclusion; the object was not identified. A bright, compact, infrared-bright object tracked for about a minute against cloud is consistent with a range of ordinary explanations, an aircraft, a drone, a balloon, a glint, and the clip does not contain the information needed to rule them out.
Anything an analyst could conclude from the clip alone. Sixty-six seconds of footage with the data fields blacked out is a record that something was there and was tracked. It is not a record of what that something was. As set out in Release 01 Briefing 3, a clip like this is a starting point for analysis.
From the record
“Unresolved UAP Report, Greece, January 2024”
The clip’s catalogue title, DOW-UAP-PR28
“00:55: The area of contrast remains generally within the center of the sensor field-of-view. The area of contrast visually resembles an inverted teardrop with a vertically linear trailing mass suspended below.”
AARO’s video description for PR28, at the point where the object is drawn most fully
“An accompanying mission report, DoW-UAP-D7, described the UAP as “diamond-shaped” and moving at approximately 434 knots.”
The catalogue entry for PR28. D7 is a 2020 Arabian Gulf mission report about an object described as “look[ing] like a balloon”; the diamond, the 434 knots and the SWIR-only line are in DOW-UAP-D25, the Greece mission report of January 2024
“Unresolved”
The first word of the clip’s catalogue title, the release’s own label for the case, meaning the analysts reached no conclusion
Where the case connects
This is the second footage briefing in the series, and it rests on Release 01 Briefing 3, which sets out how a targeting-pod feed works, the tracking reticle, the telemetry fields, the redaction blocks, why infrared inverts hot and cold, and why a single frame resolves little. Release 01 Briefing 1 covers Release 01 as a whole and the evidence tier system.
The file also leaves its own loose ends, stated as facts. The telemetry fields are redacted in every corner, so the object’s true speed, size, altitude and distance are not on the public clip, and the diamond the mission report records is not the shape the released image settles. The release states the footage is one short clip; whether a fuller-resolution feed, the telemetry, or any analyst’s determination exists is not part of what was published. Any later tranche that releases more of the PR28 record lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
The clip, DOW-UAP-PR28, “Unresolved UAP Report, Greece, January 2024”, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 01.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
References and further reading
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- Source clip: DOW-UAP-PR28, Unresolved UAP Report, Greece, January 2024, PURSUE Release 01, hosted at war.gov
- Release 01 Briefing 3, How to read infrared sensor footage, and the eight-pointed star
- Release 01 Briefing 1, The filing cabinet opens, what is actually inside the first UAP document drop
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, www.aaro.mil/UAP-Records