United States.U.S. East Coast · a report describes a small metallic object

In 2020, an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform recorded an object over the U.S. East Coast. An infrared sensor builds its image from the heat of what it points at, not from visible light. U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) sent the video to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Pentagon office that studies these phenomena, which cataloged it as DOW-UAP-PR106. The official description speaks of 11 seconds of footage, but the published clip runs 5. The DVIDS page does not explain the difference, and its second-by-second description runs only to second 4, within the length of the published clip. The exact location, the platform and the date within 2020 have not been made public.

The video came with a form titled "Range Fouler Debrief" and identified as DOW-UAP-D089; in military slang, a range fouler is anything that intrudes into reserved airspace. It was filled out by a pilot with the rank of O-4, after a daytime detection. The pilot's name, squadron, the date, the time and the location are blacked out in the published copy, which the Department of the Navy released in part on May 19, 2026. The pilot checked the boxes "Metallic" and "Reflective" and answered that the contact was moving. In the pilot's words, the object "appeared quite small" and "continued in constant direction"; the estimated speed is blacked out. The shape was "indiscernible but the bottom was reflective."

The second-by-second visual description AARO published with the video opens with a warning: "this media was digitally altered before being reported to AARO, and is presented as received." During the first second, an area of contrast, a patch lighter or darker than the background, is visible above the center of the frame. Between seconds 2 and 4, the sensor switches operating mode and, with the switch, the patch moves rapidly about the image until it leaves the frame at the top. The object is therefore visible for about four seconds: one before the mode switch and three during it. AARO attributes that rapid movement to the sensor's mode switch, not to the object, and its description does not say that the sensor ever tracked it.

The video was published on July 10, 2026, on DVIDS, the Defense Department's public media archive, as part of the fourth release of the PURSUE program.

The written report describes far more than the video shows. It speaks of an object with a metallic appearance and a reflective underside, moving in a constant direction. The video, in its four useful seconds, shows only a patch of contrast: AARO's description gives it no shape, texture or shine, and the only fast movement comes from the sensor's mode switch. Nor does it allow any judgment of the object's size or heading: the only direction it shows is the exit through the top of the frame, caused by that mode switch. Between the paper and the image there is no contradiction, but no confirmation either.

That gap does not invalidate the report. Its author may have watched the object longer than the sensor kept it in frame, by eye or with other equipment, or from a different platform than the one that recorded the clip; the published record says nothing about this. But the video, on its own, cannot corroborate the metallic appearance or the reflective underside, and it reached AARO digitally altered.

No source proposes a cause: AARO, in its record, describes the video and quotes the report without assessing the object. Our own reasoning, which no source makes, points to the most direct conventional reading, given how little the instrument supports: an aircraft or other vehicle seen for a moment before it blended into the background or left the sensor's range during the mode switch. It would be an event too brief for the system to settle into stable tracking. Without more flight data, and with the speed, date and location blacked out in report D089, there is no way to check it.