PURSUE Record — PURSUE Case PR-023: Iraq 2022: U.S. Department of War / AARO · Infrared sensor, 10 sec. Short thermal clip from a Central Command encounter. | U

PURSUE Case PR-023 is a ten-second infrared sensor video recorded during a U.S. Central Command operation in Iraq in 2022. It was declassified and released on May 8, 2026 as part of PURSUE Release 01 — the inaugural tranche of UAP-related materials published by the U.S. Department of War and coordinated through AARO, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. The case carries an official status of Unresolved, meaning no explanation has been formally assigned to it. A single file part constitutes the complete public record.

What this record contains

The releasing agency is the U.S. Department of War, with AARO serving as the coordinating body for the disclosure. The incident date is documented as 2022, and the operational theater is Iraq — placing this squarely within U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility during that period. The record type is VID: a military sensor video captured on an infrared imager rather than a conventional optical camera. Its total runtime is ten seconds. The official description characterizes it as a "short thermal clip from a Central Command encounter," and the public metadata offers no further granularity on altitude, platform type, sensor model, or the circumstances that caused the object or phenomenon to be flagged for review. One file part was released; the public record does not indicate whether additional footage exists but was withheld.

The full metadata for this case, as catalogued in the SkyLens UAP files page, does not include coordinates, crew statements, or sensor telemetry beyond what is noted above. The public release is sparse for this case — a candid acknowledgment rather than a criticism. AARO's disclosure framework for Release 01 was designed to publish what exists, not to construct narratives around it.

Sensor & operational context

Infrared sensors — the class of instrument that produced this clip — detect emitted thermal radiation rather than reflected visible light. They do not "see" in the conventional sense; they render temperature differentials as luminance gradients, with warmer objects typically appearing bright against cooler backgrounds, or vice versa depending on polarity settings. At the altitudes and standoff distances common to CENTCOM ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) operations, a ten-second thermal clip can capture a great deal of angular data but relatively little absolute information without accompanying radar tracks, laser range-finding data, or inertial navigation overlays. The brevity of this clip — ten seconds — is notable: it suggests either that the sensor operator's dwell time was short, that the encounter was transient, or that a longer recording was not retained or declassified for this release.

Central Command's Iraq operational environment in 2022 involved a mixture of manned and unmanned platforms conducting surveillance and force-protection missions. Thermal sensors on those platforms routinely record atmospheric phenomena, ground traffic, airborne debris, and occasionally objects that don't resolve neatly into known categories. That operational density is part of why CENTCOM-sourced UAP reports warrant careful, context-aware analysis.

What this does and does not prove

The unresolved designation on PR-023 means precisely one thing: analysts have not formally attributed the object or phenomenon in this clip to a known cause. It does not mean the object is extraterrestrial, structurally anomalous, or incapable of mundane explanation. Ten seconds of thermal imagery, absent corroborating sensor data, leaves substantial interpretive room. Without knowing the sensor's field of view, the platform's velocity and altitude, the atmospheric conditions, or whether the object was tracked on radar, it is not possible to draw reliable conclusions about the subject's size, speed, or nature. What the record documents is an encounter that Central Command considered worth flagging — and that AARO considered worth releasing. Those are meaningful facts. Everything beyond them is speculation.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

PR-023 is one of 28 videos included in PURSUE Release 01's 162-document set, which also spans 14 images and 120 PDFs drawn from sources ranging from historic FBI files dating to 1947 through contemporary Department of War mission reports. As a recent, operationally sourced infrared video, it represents the modern end of AARO's mandate — the kind of current-era military sensor encounter that the office was specifically stood up to investigate and, where possible, explain. Readers interested in how this case compares to other unresolved video records in the same release can browse the full catalogue on the SkyLens UAP files page, or explore broader editorial analysis across our PURSUE coverage.

Editorial note: This analysis is independent commentary on a publicly released document. The original record, source links, and full release metadata are catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page alongside every other case in the PURSUE Release 01 set.