PURSUE Record — DOW-UAP-PR36, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, May 2020: Middle East

DOW-UAP-PR36 is a declassified military sensor video submitted to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office by U.S. Central Command and released by the Department of War on May 8, 2026, as part of PURSUE Release 01. The footage was captured over the Middle East in 2020. The case remains officially unresolved — meaning analysts have not identified a conventional explanation for what the infrared sensor recorded. That is the full boundary of what the record establishes.

What this record contains

The single-part file runs two minutes and 17 seconds, captured by an infrared sensor aboard an unspecified U.S. military platform operating in the Middle East in 2020. The releasing agency is the Department of War; the record was coordinated through AARO, the office established to centralize UAP reporting across the U.S. government. An accompanying Range Fouler report, DoW-UAP-D38, characterized the object as "a solid white object making erratic movements above the water" — a qualitative description from the operational report filed at the time of the encounter, not from subsequent laboratory analysis.

The official video description catalogs sensor behavior timestamp by timestamp. At five seconds, an area of contrast briefly enters the field of view from the left. The sensor then pans away while cycling contrast settings and zoom levels — standard operator behavior when reacquiring an object of interest. The area of contrast re-enters the frame near the top center at the 19-second mark and remains generally within the field of view through 1:15. The operator zooms in twice: first at 1:16, again at 1:56. At 2:10 a blue targeting reticle briefly appears but fails to acquire a lock on the area of contrast. Notably, the official published description ends mid-sentence at the 2:15–2:17 timestamp, stating only that "the sensor switches to a different modality and loses track of the" — the text is cut off in the public release, leaving the final seconds undescribed.

Sensor & operational context

Infrared sensors detect thermal contrast rather than visible light, rendering objects as bright or dark depending on whether they radiate more or less heat than their surroundings. A "solid white object" in infrared means the object registered warmer than the background — consistent with a wide range of mundane explanations: hot exhaust, a sun-warmed surface at altitude, or reflective material. Infrared imagers are also subject to well-documented artifacts including atmospheric shimmer, gain-switching distortion, and bloom from bright sources. The cycling of contrast settings and zoom levels described between the 6- and 18-second marks is exactly the kind of operator adjustment that can introduce or amplify apparent anomalies in the recorded image.

The operational setting is U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility. A Range Fouler report is typically filed when an unidentified object enters controlled airspace or a designated range without authorization — its existence here indicates the object's presence was operationally significant to the crew at the time, but the report category is administrative, not analytical.

What this does and does not prove

The documented facts are narrow: a U.S. military infrared sensor recorded a thermally distinct area over water in the Middle East in 2020; operators tracked it long enough to attempt a targeting lock; the sensor failed to acquire that lock before losing the object at the end of the clip. What the record does not establish is the object's identity, altitude, size, speed, or origin. "Erratic movements" is a crew observation from an operational report, not a measured flight parameter derived from telemetry. The case is marked unresolved because no conventional explanation has been officially confirmed — not because the available evidence points toward something extraordinary. Sensor artifacts, atmospheric effects, and incomplete data all remain live hypotheses that the public release does not eliminate.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

DOW-UAP-PR36 sits within the Department of War's contemporary sensor-video tranche of the PURSUE Release 01 package, which comprises 28 videos among 162 total records released on May 8, 2026. Like the other unresolved Department of War submissions, it represents a case where a military crew filed a report, CENTCOM forwarded it to AARO, and the available data proved insufficient to reach a conclusion. The full PURSUE Release 01 catalogue on the SkyLens UAP files page places this record alongside both resolved cases — where analysts identified balloons, birds, or sensor artifacts — and other unresolved submissions, together illustrating the complete spectrum of what AARO received and what it could and could not determine. For broader context on how Department of War sensor videos compare across the release, see our wider 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.