Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2023

This Central Command report, published in the fifth PURSUE release in August 2026, contains 30 seconds of infrared footage from a U.S. military platform in the Middle East in 2023. It comes with no written account quoted in the release, and parts of it are redacted. What makes it distinctive is that the platform keeps getting in its own way.

What the footage shows

During the first eight seconds the sensor pans to hold a patch roughly in the center, but a component of the platform itself passes in front of the lens and partly hides the background. In the remaining time the operator zooms in, and a reticle briefly frames the patch before part of the platform again blocks the view, this time covering the display.

Why this matters for analysis

On some aircraft, parts of the airframe or other equipment can come into a camera turret’s line of sight at certain angles. When that happens the target is lost and the picture can be dominated by the obstruction, which makes short clips like this especially hard to interpret. AARO’s description identifies the obstruction as part of the platform but draws no conclusion about the patch being tracked, and the case is listed as unresolved. “Area of contrast” is AARO’s deliberately neutral phrase for anything that stands out from the background in a sensor image; on an infrared camera that usually means something warmer or cooler than its surroundings.