PURSUE Record — DOW-UAP-PR46, Unresolved UAP Report, INDOPACOM, 2024: East China Sea

DOW-UAP-PR46 is a nine-second infrared sensor video submitted to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) and released by the Department of War on May 8, 2026, as part of PURSUE Release 01. The case is classified as unresolved — meaning the object observed has not been identified — and was captured from an unspecified U.S. military platform operating in the East China Sea in 2024. No specific incident date, witness statement, or written operator description accompanies the footage in the public release.

What this record contains

The record is a single video file — one part, nine seconds of runtime — sourced from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform. The releasing agency is the Department of War, and the incident location is listed as the East China Sea. No finer-grained incident date within 2024 is provided in the public release metadata; the field is listed as N/A.

The official description states that the sensor focuses on an area of contrast resembling a football-shaped body with three radial projections: one oriented vertically, and two oriented downward at a 45-degree angle relative to the major axis of the main mass. The Department of War is explicit that this characterization is "provided for informational purposes only" and does not reflect any analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination about the event's nature or significance. Notably, the reporter did not provide any oral or written description of the observation — the only available record is the footage itself.

Sensor & operational context

Infrared sensors detect differences in thermal radiation rather than visible light. They are standard equipment on U.S. military surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, capable of producing imagery in low-visibility conditions — at night, through haze, and at long standoff distances. What the official description calls a "football-shaped body with three radial projections" is a thermal signature: the sensor is reading temperature differentials between an object and its background, not capturing a photograph of its physical surface or material composition. Radial projections in infrared imagery can result from actual physical appendages, thermal exhaust plumes, sensor bloom around a bright point source, or optical and processing artifacts depending on the platform's sensor generation and gain settings. Without knowing the sensor's resolution, the platform's altitude and range to the object, or atmospheric conditions at the time, the geometry of the signature cannot be reliably mapped to a physical object's true dimensions.

INDOPACOM covers the Indo-Pacific theater, which encompasses the East China Sea — a region of sustained U.S. military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activity. U.S. platforms routinely monitor this area given its strategic significance. Nothing in the public release specifies the platform type, its heading, or how the object entered the sensor's field of view, which are the baseline variables any technical analyst would need to begin characterizing the target.

What this does and does not prove

What the record documents is narrow: a nine-second infrared video was captured, formally submitted through INDOPACOM reporting channels to AARO, and has not been resolved with available data. The thermal contrast pattern was sufficiently notable to trigger an official UAP report. What the record does not establish — and what no part of the official release claims — is that the object is anomalous in origin, extraordinary in capability, or inexplicable in principle. AARO's designation of "unresolved" reflects an evidentiary gap, not a positive finding of the unknown. The absence of any operator description compounds that gap: without a written account, investigators had only nine seconds of single-sensor imagery and no ground truth about observing conditions, reporter context, or the original observer's own assessment of what they saw.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

DOW-UAP-PR46 is one of 28 videos included in the PURSUE Release 01 package — a 162-document set released May 8, 2026 by the Department of War, coordinated through AARO. The video cases represent the contemporary military mission-report strand of the collection, distinct from the historic FBI archive files dating to 1947 and the NASA imagery also included in the release. The full catalog, including resolved cases attributed to balloons, birds, and sensor artifacts, is indexed on the SkyLens UAP files page. Coverage of additional Department of War sensor video cases from the same release is available throughout the PURSUE blog series.

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.