Afghanistan.The sphere that moved in and out of the clouds over Afghanistan

This 47-second clip, catalogued as DOW-UAP-PR055, is part of the 50-video batch AARO located on a classified network in 2026 while responding to a FOIA request from eight members of Congress for 51 potentially UAP-related records — a batch AARO warns that 'many of these materials lack a substantiated chain-of-custody.'

The title 'Spherical UAP over AFG in and out of clouds 23 Nov 2020' is, per AARO's own assessment, a 'user-defined' title assigned by whoever uploaded the file to the classified network in June 2024 — not a Department of War designation. AARO assesses as 'likely,' without confirming, that the footage derives from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform operating within CENTCOM's area of responsibility in November 2020.

One detail changes the nature of the file: the official record notes that 'this media was digitally altered prior to its upload to a classified network, and is presented as received.' The timestamped visual description documents that alteration directly: between 0:00 and 0:02 a black screen appears reading 'zoomed in'; between 0:03 and 0:10 an area of contrast becomes visible near the top left corner, transiting left to right before losing distinctiveness against the background; between 0:11 and 0:12 another black screen appears reading 'sharpened, zoomed, motion tracked, contrast enhanced, slow to 60% speed'; between 0:12 and 0:28 the video replays at reduced speed and increased zoom; between 0:28 and 0:29 a third black screen appears reading 'original video'; and between 0:30 and 0:47 an area of contrast appears near the top center of the frame, transiting down to the left, then right, before losing distinctiveness against the background. The clip is, in other words, a three-segment edit —zoom, slow-motion enhanced version, 'original' video— assembled by a third party before entering the classified network, not an unedited sensor recording.

No coordinates, platform, unit, or crew statement are identified in the public record. The material was uploaded to DVIDS on May 22, 2026, within PURSUE's second drop, under public domain license.

This file is a good reminder of why, in Release 02's 50-video batch, the full provenance record needs to be read, not just the evocative title. 'Spherical UAP... in and out of clouds' describes a specific behavior that would in principle be verifiable against weather data; but the Department of War did not write that title — an anonymous third party did, in 2024 — and the file itself declares it was 'digitally altered' before being uploaded to the classified network. AARO's official visual description does not describe a spherical silhouette: it describes 'an area of contrast' transiting the frame in two segments separated by editing title cards ('zoomed in', 'sharpened... slow to 60% speed', 'original video'). In other words, what circulates publicly is already a product edited by an unknown third party, not the original sensor footage — an additional layer of uncertainty no earlier version of this case acknowledged.

With that caveat, the most direct prosaic reading remains a weather or high-altitude balloon adrift, or a conventional uncrewed aircraft seen at distance — Afghanistan in 2020 was an active theater of operations with dense military air traffic. What is still missing to precisely weigh that reading hasn't changed: estimated speed, altitude of the object and the cloud layer, type of observing platform. What has changed is that we now know even the available footage is not the unprocessed original.

There is a useful point of comparison within the corpus itself: AARO's 'UAP Case Resolution Reports' series —a completely different program, with reports formally submitted by combatant commands, not a classified-network file with dubious custody— documents with explicit methodology how the office distinguishes a balloon from a bird in similar infrared footage. Neither of those cross-references is available here, and the clip's own edited nature makes that cross-reference even harder to attempt in the future: any speed or trajectory analysis would first have to establish which segments are real footage and which are the slow-motion enhanced version.