The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has released declassified infrared sensor footage submitted by U.S. Central Command depicting an unidentified anomalous phenomenon observed from a military platform over the Middle East in 2013, designating the case unresolved under report number DOW-UAP-PR38. The footage runs one minute and 46 seconds and has been made available without an accompanying analytical conclusion regarding the object's nature or origin.
What the Footage Shows
According to the Department of War's official case record, the video was captured by an infrared sensor aboard an unspecified U.S. military platform. The imagery depicts what AARO describes as "an area of contrast resembling an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length" — an unusual morphology that does not correspond to standard signatures of known aircraft, ordnance, or atmospheric phenomena in publicly available reference material, though no such comparison is drawn in the official record.
The case record provides a timestamped breakdown of the footage. At the ten-second mark, the sensor's field of view narrows as it zooms toward the object. Between 11 and 29 seconds, the area of contrast moves within the frame and is accompanied by a visible trail. At 30 seconds, the object exits the sensor field of view at the lower right of the screen. Following what the case record describes as "an apparent cut," the footage resumes at the 35-second mark, with the object generally remaining within the sensor frame before exiting through the upper left quarter of the screen at the one-minute-and-44-second point.
The official case record includes a standard disclaimer: the video description is "provided for informational purposes only" and should not be interpreted as reflecting "an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination regarding the described event's validity, nature, or significance."
Reporting Gaps and Investigative Limitations
A notable limitation of this case is the absence of any supplementary reporting from the original observer. According to the Department of War's case summary, "the reporter did not provide any oral or written description of the observation." This gap is consequential: without crew testimony, altitude estimates, speed calculations, or behavioral context from the sensor operator, analysts are left to work from imagery alone — a constraint that substantially narrows the range of conclusions available to investigators.
AARO has not publicly disclosed the platform type, the precise geographic location within the Middle East, or the operational context in which the footage was captured. The year of the incident, 2013, predates both the formal establishment of AARO in 2022 and the earlier UAP Task Force stood up in 2020, meaning the footage was held within the defense enterprise for roughly a decade before being submitted for formal review and public release.
The ten-year gap between the observation and its submission to AARO is consistent with a broader pattern documented in congressional testimony and inspector general reporting: that legacy UAP reports were inconsistently catalogued across combatant commands and often not routed through any centralized collection mechanism until recent legislative mandates required it.
Context Within the AARO Public Release Program
DOW-UAP-PR38 is part of AARO's ongoing effort to declassify and publish case records in response to congressional direction. The office has released a growing number of such reports spanning multiple geographic regions and sensor modalities, with the majority remaining unresolved — meaning investigators have been unable to attribute the observed phenomenon to a known aircraft, natural phenomenon, sensor artifact, or foreign capability.
The Middle East designation is consistent with the operational tempo of U.S. Central Command, which has maintained persistent ISR coverage across the region for more than two decades. UAP incidents from that theater have appeared in prior AARO releases, though the office does not aggregate regional statistics in its public-facing case library.
The eight-pointed star morphology noted in this case is not a commonly documented signature in AARO's published case descriptions, which more frequently reference spherical, cylindrical, or oblong shapes. Whether that morphology reflects a genuine physical characteristic of the object, an artifact of the infrared sensor's rendering of thermal contrast, or a function of the object's orientation relative to the sensor is not addressed in the available record.
AARO has not indicated whether the case remains under active investigation or has been closed without resolution. The office's standard practice is to mark cases as unresolved when insufficient data prevents a definitive attribution, without specifying whether additional collection efforts are planned.