THE SOURCE
DOW-UAP-PR042 and DOW-UAP-PR044, two long infrared video clips from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 01, published at war.gov/ufo on 8 May 2026. Both submitted by U.S. Central Command to AARO. Both recorded by infrared sensors on U.S. military platforms in 2020, over the Arabian Gulf. PR042 runs 4 minutes 53 seconds; PR044 runs 5 minutes 11 seconds. Neither reporter provided an oral or written description.
What this briefing is
PR42 and PR44 are the two longest substantive clips in Release 01. Together they amount to roughly ten minutes of infrared footage of objects U.S. military sensors tracked but could not identify. They are also, in a specific way, the most lonely clips in the release: both come with the AARO note that the reporter provided no description.
That combination, very long footage and a silent reporter, is a useful pair for asking what length itself gives a viewer in the absence of words. It is the question Release 02 Briefing 11 asked about the four April 2021 clips, applied here to the two longest single clips in the older release. The general grounding for infrared footage is in Release 01 Briefing 3.
TL;DR
PR42 is a 4-minute 53-second clip. AARO’s description has an area of contrast entering the sensor field of view from the lower left and the sensor panning to track it; the area then “intermittently loses distinctiveness against the background”, an area of contrast exits the field of view at 00:42 to 00:52, and from 00:53 the sensor “pans erratically, with an area of contrast appearing in a relatively fixed position to the left and slightly below the center of the frame”, where it appears for the rest of the clip apart from about 20 seconds after the sensor switches imaging modalities at 02:09. PR44 is 5 minutes 11 seconds: after 30 seconds of no content, the sensor tracks an area of contrast from 00:31 until, at 04:50, it “stops tracking the area of contrast, at which point it exits the frame”, with no content from 04:55 to the end. Both clips were recorded in 2020, over the Arabian Gulf, and were submitted by U.S. Central Command. In neither case did the reporter add any written or spoken context.
The two clips together are labelled source tier 2 footage. Across those roughly ten minutes, AARO’s descriptions record tracking in PR44 from 00:31 to 04:50 and, in PR42, tracking at the start and then an area of contrast in the relatively fixed position described above. Neither clip carries telemetry or aircrew context; without those, length on its own does not produce the measurements that would identify the object.
What the length actually buys
Release 02 Briefing 11 made the case for the four April 2021 clips. The point repeats here in a sharper form because PR42 and PR44 are even longer.
A long clip can record more than a brief one, and here the two long clips record different things. In PR44, AARO’s description has the sensor tracking the area of contrast “for approximately three minutes” from 00:31, then continuing to track it through changes of reticle and a zoom-out until it stops tracking at 04:50. In PR42, the description records tracking only at the start. After an area of contrast exits the field of view at 00:42 to 00:52, the sensor pans erratically while an area of contrast appears in a relatively fixed position in the frame; when the sensor switches imaging modalities at 02:09 the area appears to the right of and slightly above centre, and at the next switch, at 02:30, it “returns to its previous position”. AARO’s description does not interpret that pattern.
So what the length of PR42 and PR44 adds, on AARO’s descriptions, is a track running from 00:31 to 04:50 in PR44 and, in PR42, the four minutes from 00:53 described above. That is the evidentiary content of their length.
What the length does not buy
Here is the part that matters. Length alone does not turn into identification.
What identifies an object in a sensor clip is the numbers, the telemetry that gives altitude, range, time, sensor mode, slant distance, the records that let an analyst translate on-screen behaviour into real-world size and speed. Without those numbers, ten minutes of footage of an unmeasured object is ten minutes of footage of an unmeasured object. The clip cannot tell you whether the contact was a hundred metres across or a metre across, whether it was moving at five knots or five hundred, whether it was a kilometre away or fifty. All of those depend on data the clip does not visibly carry.
PR42 and PR44 also lack the second source of identification in this series, the aircrew’s own written description in the paired mission report. The short clips covered in Release 01 Briefing 22 carry that. The aircrew called PR019’s contact a “possible missile” and PR021’s a “probable SU-27/35”, and those one-line notes carry more identification weight than long silent footage because they reflect what trained observers on the platform thought they were looking at. PR42 and PR44 do not have that. The reporters added nothing.
Two of the longest, most visually substantial clips in the release are, at the same time, two of the analytically lightest. There is a great deal of footage and very little knowledge.
What the file says
They establish that U.S. military infrared sensors over the Arabian Gulf in 2020 recorded two clips of about five minutes each: in PR44, a track of an area of contrast from 00:31 until the sensor stops tracking at 04:50; in PR42, tracking at the start, then an area of contrast in the relatively fixed position described above. They establish that the U.S. Central Command logged both encounters through the normal AARO channel and that the U.S. government has now released them through PURSUE. As prolonged tier 2 sensor footage of unresolved contacts, they come with AARO’s timecoded descriptions of what is on screen, which AARO says should not be read as “an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination”.
What the file does not say
It does not establish what the objects were. Length is not identification, and these clips carry no visible telemetry that would supply size, speed, altitude or distance.
It does not bring the analytical anchor of an aircrew description. Both reporters provided none, so the on-platform judgement that gives the short clips much of their weight is absent here.
It does not, on its own, support reading “ten minutes of footage” as a stronger evidentiary claim than the shorter clips with aircrew context. Duration and identification are different things; one of them is present in PR42 and PR44, and the other is not.
And it does not rise above tier 2. The two long clips are honest and substantial. Their lesson, plainly stated, is that the most-watched footage in Release 01 is also some of the least-explained.
What to watch
Ten minutes of footage goes as far as what the sensors showed, and stops, because duration and identification are different quantities and only one is on the screen. If a later tranche pairs PR42 or PR44 with telemetry or an aircrew account, the footage is ready to mean more than it currently can.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-PR042 and DOW-UAP-PR044, “Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2020”, 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, www.aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 01 Briefing 3, on how to read infrared sensor footage; Release 01 Briefing 22, on the aircrew description in the short clips; Release 02 Briefing 11, on what multi-clip and long-duration footage adds and what it does not