PR123
1:04IR-screen recording. A contrast patch fades, returns, then is followed as the sensor pans and zooms.
Somewhere in the Pacific in 2019, U.S. military personnel recorded an infrared track and several lights in the night sky. The Navy's UAP Task Force kept the material, transferred it to AARO in 2022, and the government finally released it in 2026 — still unresolved, but with an unusually important warning attached.
DOW-UAP-PR123 through PR127 are five U.S. military videos recorded contemporaneously somewhere over the Pacific Ocean in 2019. Three are hand-held recordings of an infrared sensor display. Two are hand-held low-light recordings made by a U.S. military service member.
The Navy's UAP Task Force later held the files and transferred them to AARO in 2022. But the public record gives no ship, aircraft type, unit, month, exact time, coordinates, range, altitude, speed, radar record or witness statement.
Every clip also carries the same warning: the media was digitally altered before being reported to AARO and is being shown as AARO received it.
IR-screen recording. A contrast patch fades, returns, then is followed as the sensor pans and zooms.
The sensor zooms on a contrast area before it loses distinctiveness against the background.
A contrast moves left, fades, then another visible contrast is reacquired and tracked.
Low-light hand-held footage with several apparent light sources entering and leaving frame.
Low-light hand-held footage with repeated tracking segments separated by blank intervals.
The sensor pans and zooms to hold a contrast area near centre. This is not native sensor data.
OFFICIAL RECORD →The contrast remains centred while the sensor zooms, then becomes difficult to distinguish.
OFFICIAL RECORD →The Department describes leftward movement, fading and reacquisition.
OFFICIAL RECORD →Several apparent lights are brought into and out of frame as the camera pans and zooms.
OFFICIAL RECORD →The camera repeatedly follows an apparent light source. Blank intervals are labelled simply “No content.”
OFFICIAL RECORD →Five contemporaneous clips are captured. The public release does not identify the platform, unit, ship, month or exact position.
The task force is formally tasked with detecting, analysing and cataloguing UAP that could pose a national-security concern.
All five DVIDS pages explicitly record this transfer.
The Department publishes them as unresolved records seven years after capture.
The Department does not say AARO altered the footage. It says the media had already been altered before it was reported to AARO and is being shown as received.
Other PURSUE records show that “digitally altered” can mean something as simple as a reporter adding a line or circle around an object. But that does not prove the Pacific five were changed in the same way.
For PR123–PR127, the government has not publicly said who made the changes, what was changed, or whether an untouched original survives.
Until the originals or an alteration log are released, this is strong custody but imperfect forensic media.
FOIA-released Navy deck logs document repeated July 2019 encounters off Southern California involving several destroyers. Ships deployed SNOOPIE visual-documentation teams, logged multiple UAVs around the vessels and later deployed counter-UAS equipment during some incidents.
That context is relevant because PR123–PR127 also come from the Pacific in 2019 and show military personnel deliberately preserving unusual tracks and lights. It is not enough to identify these five clips as the USS Kidd, USS Russell, USS Omaha or any other named ship's footage.
The honest position is simple: same year, same broad ocean, similar recording behaviour — but no demonstrated file-level match.
Small drones were demonstrably being reported around Navy ships that year. A small warm object can be very hard to resolve through an IR sensor — especially through a camera recording of the screen.
Point-like lights in poor low-light footage can be ordinary aircraft. The release lacks range, bearing, horizon, stars and flight-tracking data needed to test that properly.
Independent analysis of separate 2019 USS Russell night-vision footage demonstrated how out-of-focus point lights can take on aperture-shaped forms. That lesson is relevant, but it is not a direct identification of these files.
Five government-released videos recorded in the Pacific in 2019, later held by the Navy UAPTF and transferred to AARO in 2022.
No. They are hand-held recordings of an infrared display.
The Department confirms prior alteration but does not say who altered these five files, how or why.
That has not been established by the public record.
No reliable speed, range, size or acceleration can be calculated from the released information.
PR123 through PR127 are authentic government-held records with a strong custody trail. They show that military personnel recorded something worth saving, that the Navy's UAP Task Force kept the material and that AARO ultimately released it without a definitive identification.
But the files we can inspect are secondary, degraded and already altered. The public has no range, native telemetry, radar record, witness account or ship name. Drones, aircraft lights and optical effects remain viable.
That leaves a genuine unresolved record — not proof of extraordinary technology, and not a solved misidentification either. The reader can judge what remains once the missing evidence is made explicit.