The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office received an unresolved unidentified anomalous phenomenon report from U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in 2024, consisting of nine seconds of infrared sensor footage captured from an unspecified U.S. military platform. The submitting reporter provided no oral or written description of the observation, leaving the video record as the sole evidentiary basis for the case.
What the Footage Shows
According to the Department of War document designated DOW-UAP-PR46, the infrared sensor captured an area of contrast that analysts described as resembling a football-shaped body with three radial projections: one oriented vertically and two oriented downward at approximately 45-degree angles relative to the object's major axis. The footage runs from the zero-second mark through the nine-second mark without interruption or supplemental framing data noted in the report.
The department's published description of the video carries an explicit disclaimer: readers are instructed not to interpret any part of the description as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination regarding the event's validity, nature, or significance. That caveat is standard language in AARO-processed case documents, but its inclusion here is particularly salient given the absence of any corroborating crew account.
Gaps in the Evidentiary Record
The absence of an accompanying written or oral statement from the reporting personnel represents a notable gap in the case file. Standard military UAP reporting protocols, as outlined in guidance issued following the establishment of AARO under the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, encourage observers to provide qualitative descriptions alongside sensor data — including estimated range, observed behavior, and environmental conditions. None of that contextual information appears in the DOW-UAP-PR46 filing.
Without crew testimony, analysts working the case cannot cross-reference the sensor return against a human observer's account of apparent size, speed, or maneuver. Infrared footage alone, particularly at nine seconds' duration, leaves open a wide range of prosaic explanations — including sensor artifacts, atmospheric optical phenomena, or conventional aircraft at oblique aspect angles that could produce an irregular thermal signature. Equally, the record does not permit those explanations to be confirmed.
The platform type and precise geographic coordinates within the INDOPACOM area of responsibility are not disclosed in the public-facing document, limiting independent assessment of the operating environment at the time of the observation.
Context Within AARO's Caseload
AARO, which serves as the U.S. government's primary office for detecting, identifying, and attributing UAP, has publicly acknowledged that a significant portion of its unresolved cases suffer from insufficient data — either because sensor coverage was brief, because multiple sensor modalities were not simultaneously engaged, or because observer reports were not filed. The DOW-UAP-PR46 case appears to fall into at least two of those categories.
INDOPACOM covers a vast operational theater spanning more than 100 million square miles, encompassing airspace over the Pacific and Indian Oceans where both state and non-state actors operate a range of aerial platforms. UAP reports originating from that command have featured in prior AARO annual reports to Congress, though specific cases are rarely attributed to named geographic subregions in unclassified disclosures.
The document's trust provenance warrants transparency: UFOPress rates the war.gov source at 50 percent confidence, reflecting uncertainty about the document's full chain of custody and whether the published video description constitutes a complete or selective rendering of the underlying case file. Readers should weigh that limitation when assessing the significance of the reported object's described shape. The football-shaped body with radial projections is, on its own, an unusual morphology for known conventional aircraft as seen in infrared — but unusual is not anomalous in any scientifically meaningful sense without additional data.
The case is listed as unresolved. AARO has not, as of this publication, issued a public determination regarding DOW-UAP-PR46's probable cause or attribution category.