DOW-UAP-PR104 — Yellow Sea 2025: Five Minutes of Sensor Footage That Progressively Degrades

Among the video files in PURSUE Release 04, one stands out for a peculiar sensor behavior. DOW-UAP-PR104 — an "Unresolved UAP Report" from the Yellow Sea, 2025 — contains 4 min 57 sec of dual-sensor footage (electro-optical + infrared), and the official record notes that the imagery "gets progressively worse over time."

The unusual sensor behavior

Sensor degradation during an encounter is not itself paranormal — it can be caused by mundane factors: atmospheric conditions (heat haze, cloud, precipitation), sensor overheating during long focus, target moving out of optimal lens range, EO/IR crossover confusion, or a hardware fault. But the PURSUE record specifically highlighting this behaviour — noting it in the file summary — suggests investigators considered it worth flagging. Whether the degradation was environmental, hardware-side, or associated with the object's own behaviour is not resolved in the public materials.

Geographic and geopolitical context

The Yellow Sea sits between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula. U.S. Navy operations in this region regularly involve P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, F/A-18 Super Hornets from carrier strike groups, and MQ-4C Triton unmanned surveillance drones — any of which could be the sensor platform. The area is contested airspace with intensive Chinese and North Korean military activity. Alternative explanations for sensor footage in this region include Chinese balloons (multiple documented in 2023), commercial drones, foreign military test flights, or coastal atmospheric refraction anomalies (the Yellow Sea is known for temperature inversions).

The East Asia Pacific cluster in Release 04

PR104 is joined by DOW-UAP-PR105 — an East China Sea 2025 encounter. Together, the two files establish an East Asia Pacific cluster of Release 04 modern-era additions. Both are officially unresolved. Whether they are related events (same object, different theaters) or independent cases is not stated in the public materials.

What's not in the public record yet

• Which sensor platform captured the footage
• Range and altitude of the object
• Whether radar contact accompanied the visual capture
• Whether the sensor degradation is confirmed as environmental, hardware, or unexplained

For Release 04's full inventory, see the SkyLens overview. The original video is on war.gov/ufo.