United States.Atlantic · a military report likens the object to a balloon

In 2020, on a date and at a point in the Atlantic Ocean that have not been made public, an infrared sensor on a U.S. military platform recorded 32 seconds of video. An infrared sensor builds its image from the heat that objects give off, not from visible light. U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), the military command responsible for the defense of North America, sent the report to the Pentagon office that studies these phenomena, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which filed it as DOW-UAP-PR116. The platform is not identified.

The video came with a follow-up report titled "Range Fouler Debrief" (in military jargon, a range fouler is anything that strays into an area set aside for exercises or tests), filed as DOW-UAP-D091, which describes the object. According to the lines AARO quotes from it, the report described an object of a "darker, maroonish color, approximately 12-15 feet in height" (about 3.7 to 4.6 meters), that was "travel[ing] with the wind" and did not "maneuver or change direction." The report adds that the object appeared similar to a "large, somewhat deformed balloon."

The description of the video that AARO published is brief and does not contradict that reading: for the full 32 seconds, "the sensor zooms and pans to keep an area of contrast generally within the center of the frame." An area of contrast is a patch that stands out from the background. The description flags no sudden maneuvers, no changes of speed and no unusual behavior of any kind, which fits an object drifting with the wind, as the report says.

Despite the balloon comparison, the video was released under the title "Unresolved UAP Report, Atlantic Ocean, 2020," and the release's data index, the table that matches each video with its documents, pairs it with document D091. The video description, like every one in the series, warns that it is provided for informational purposes only and must not be read as an analytical judgment, an investigative conclusion or a determination about the nature of the event. AARO does not explain why it gave the video that title, so the release contains no AARO assessment against the balloon reading. AARO released the video on July 10, 2026, in the fourth batch of its PURSUE release program.

The follow-up report itself offered the simplest conventional explanation: a large, deformed balloon, drifting with the wind, not maneuvering. AARO's description, a sensor calmly tracking an area of contrast for 32 seconds with nothing unusual flagged, does not contradict it at any point.

Besides the video, the case comes with a report that describes the object, giving its color, its size and the way it moved, and that description points to something conventional. The lines AARO quotes do not say whether anyone went on to identify the balloon or where it had come from, and the "unresolved" title comes with no explanation.

By this entry's own reasoning, not the report's, which does not analyze it: an object that travels with the wind and does not change direction behaves like something with no propulsion of its own, carried along by the air; a size of 12 to 15 feet would be consistent with large weather or research balloons, which can reach several meters in diameter as they expand at altitude, and the maroonish color with the pigmented material of some sounding balloons (balloons that carry instruments to measure the upper air), which often visibly degrade or deform after launch. No source for the case makes that comparison.