Department of War - UAP Release 4

[flarkey]

Tranche 4 has just been released

https://www.war.gov/UFO/

https://www.dvidshub.net/search/?q=uap&view=grid&sort=publishdate

 

[flarkey]

Looks like a bunch of balloons...

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1014124/dow-uap-pr116-unresolved-uap-report-atlantic-ocean-2020

 

[flarkey]

The familar 6 pointed camera artefact is there again...

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1014101/dow-uap-pr104-unresolved-uap-report-yellow-sea-2025

 

[RobertBillyBob]

Four of the videos are marked as "featured" on the war.gov website.
The "featured" column is a new addition to the .csv for this release.

 

[RobertBillyBob]

PR024 and PR030 are in this release, they are filling gaps we had in the numbering from previous releases. PR020 and PR025 are still missing, they might come out one day.

 

[Jack]

PR024 and PR030 are in this release, they are filling gaps we had in the numbering from previous releases. PR020 and PR025 are still missing, they might come out one day.

PR020 was released in tranche 1:

https://www.war.gov/UFO/search/pr02...P-PR020-Unresolved-UAP-Report-Kuwait-May-2022

 

[RobertBillyBob]

PR020 was released in tranche 1:

https://www.war.gov/UFO/search/pr02...P-PR020-Unresolved-UAP-Report-Kuwait-May-2022

I missed this because I was only looking at videos, but that's a pdf containing one frame, I don't consider this as "released".

 

[John J.]

The familar 6 pointed camera artefact is there again...

I'm guessing that whoever submits a UAP image/ video to AARO isn't obliged to consider the pattern of diffraction spikes that the imaging system might show. But I'm a bit disappointed that AARO doesn't comment on what are obviously diffraction spikes.

Video Description:
00:01-00:15: The sensor pans to track an area of contrast resembling a six-pointed star, keeping it generally centered within the center of the screen.

DOW-UAP-PR104, Unresolved UAP Report, Yellow Sea, 2025 https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1014101/dow-uap-pr104-unresolved-uap-report-yellow-sea-2025

The six-pointed star seems to be the focus of interest. It's a diffraction spike pattern.
If the original observer/ image analysts aren't aware of this, it poses questions about their training. If imagery like this is being submitted by other people who have access to the imagery but don't understand it, this also raises questions.

 

[Jack]

I missed this because I was only looking at videos, but that's a pdf containing one frame, I don't consider this as "released".

The description states that the report consisted of the image in its present state. I don't think there is more to it than what's been released.

 

[Chief Gleeby]

A lot of hoopla's being made over these images of what appears to be a slender triangular-ish object Columbia captured.

But here's the thing, the mission Columbia was on (STS-80) was carrying payloads: 2 Satellites that they released, let float in orbit for a while, and then re-captured!

Photos taken from within the shuttle of a distant object when one of their objectives is to recover some satellites that they themselves deployed... hmmmm....

The fact that none of this is mentioned on any of the image's pages is great too, really keeping this gravy train going lads, good work.

Also, as relayed by one of the crew for this mission, they saw diddly squat.

I have never seen any evidence in space or on Earth of spacecraft or phenomena not explained by our routine space operations in the shuttle or Space Station programs. My crewmates and I have not seen any evidence for UFOs or spacecraft of "alien" origin or behavior. - Tom Jones

A few minutes of googling was all it took! Hey DOW, hire me!

 

[RobertBillyBob]

PR102 has a few frames you can almost read :

 

[MyMatesBrainwashed]

Starting to wonder what doesn't look anamolous in infrared.

 

[Ravi]

Starting to wonder what doesn't look anamolous in infrared.

It all is insanely laughable. How can I "have an open mind" when we are fed with complete and utter nonsense videos? Ah, I suppose "the good ones are still being hidden from us!" Sigh (^3)

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

Starting to wonder what doesn't look anamolous in infrared.

That's a good point.
It's the perfect camera setting for seeing weirdness where there isn't.

 

[ThomasH]

Ah, I suppose "the good ones are still being hidden from us!" Sigh (^3)

They will claim this the next 79 years, it's a never ending story...

 

[NoParty]

Apologies if this was explained somewhere already, but was there some criteria given, for
the order in which these duds would be released?

I ask because I'm thinking that if the "best" ones had been prioritized in the first batch
(I gotta google a better synonym for that noun), it seems it would be hard to get many folks' attention
at this point, with a 4th batch, when loads 1, 2 & 3 failed to provide much sizzle...

 

[ExclusionZon]

Following up on the PR104 mention earlier in this thread - agreed with the diffraction spike call, and since AARO's own label on it is "Unresolved" figured it was worth actually running the numbers instead of just eyeballing it.Pulled the actual file from DVIDS (two independent copies - official high-res master plus a separate remux of the public HLS stream, both hash the same structurally) and ran the same kind of frame analysis I did on the Roswell tape a while back.

Some of what came out of it:

Averaged 16 frame crops centered on the core and the six spikes come out sharper, not blurrier - only makes sense if they're locked to the screen rather than the object. Did a more granular version too, tracking rotation across 63 frames at 4fps, and the pattern doesn't drift at all over the full clip (0.55° average, no progressive trend). A camera panning and drifting for 15 seconds would show some rotation in anything actually attached to the object it's filming. Not seeing that here.

Also ran the same pipeline against PR46 from the first release (the "football-shaped body" one) as a control, since it's got literally the same HUD design - same corner brackets, same north indicator position, same censorship layout, so almost certainly same sensor family. PR46's object moves WITH the frame between shots and has no long radial spikes. Same system, different behavior depending on whether it's looking at an extended object or an unresolved point source. That's exactly the discriminator you'd expect if this is diffraction.

Built a quick optical sim too - point source through a 3-strut aperture, standard diffraction PSF, saturation/blooming added for the black-hot look. Spits out six spikes in three collinear pairs within half a degree of the real angles. Not just "looks like diffraction," a 3-parameter model actually reproduces it.

One genuinely odd thing I couldn't resolve: the official description says "18 seconds of footage" but the published file is 15.67s on both copies. Checked five other PURSUE videos across two releases and they all match their stated duration exactly - this one's the only outlier. No way to tell from public material if that's a redaction or just a drafting error on the DVIDS page.

Full writeup with all the numbers/methodology: https://www.theexclusionzone.com/yellow-sea-star-pr104-forensic-analysis-six-pointed-uap/

Happy to share the frame stacks or the sim script if anyone wants to poke at it.

 

[FatPhil]

Built a quick optical sim too - point source through a 3-strut aperture, standard diffraction PSF, saturation/blooming added for the black-hot look. Spits out six spikes in three collinear pairs within half a degree of the real angles. Not just "looks like diffraction," a 3-parameter model actually reproduces it.

Looks like your struts are at 0, 120, -120, and the angles aren't quite a perfect match - can you do one at 0, 130, -130, say? That's closer to the actual mechanics of some of the pods I've seen photos of. But you're right, these are classic diffraction artefacts.

 

[jarlrmai]

Following up on the PR104 mention earlier in this thread - agreed with the diffraction spike call, and since AARO's own label on it is "Unresolved" figured it was worth actually running the numbers instead of just eyeballing it.Pulled the actual file from DVIDS (two independent copies - official high-res master plus a separate remux of the public HLS stream, both hash the same structurally) and ran the same kind of frame analysis I did on the Roswell tape a while back.

Some of what came out of it:

Averaged 16 frame crops centered on the core and the six spikes come out sharper, not blurrier - only makes sense if they're locked to the screen rather than the object. Did a more granular version too, tracking rotation across 63 frames at 4fps, and the pattern doesn't drift at all over the full clip (0.55° average, no progressive trend). A camera panning and drifting for 15 seconds would show some rotation in anything actually attached to the object it's filming. Not seeing that here.

View attachment 92050

Also ran the same pipeline against PR46 from the first release (the "football-shaped body" one) as a control, since it's got literally the same HUD design - same corner brackets, same north indicator position, same censorship layout, so almost certainly same sensor family. PR46's object moves WITH the frame between shots and has no long radial spikes. Same system, different behavior depending on whether it's looking at an extended object or an unresolved point source. That's exactly the discriminator you'd expect if this is diffraction.

Built a quick optical sim too - point source through a 3-strut aperture, standard diffraction PSF, saturation/blooming added for the black-hot look. Spits out six spikes in three collinear pairs within half a degree of the real angles. Not just "looks like diffraction," a 3-parameter model actually reproduces it.

View attachment 92051

One genuinely odd thing I couldn't resolve: the official description says "18 seconds of footage" but the published file is 15.67s on both copies. Checked five other PURSUE videos across two releases and they all match their stated duration exactly - this one's the only outlier. No way to tell from public material if that's a redaction or just a drafting error on the DVIDS page.

Full writeup with all the numbers/methodology: https://www.theexclusionzone.com/yellow-sea-star-pr104-forensic-analysis-six-pointed-uap/

Happy to share the frame stacks or the sim script if anyone wants to poke at it.

Useful work, some members also did some simulation in the chandelier case

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/pr038-the-chandelier-ufo.13307/post-309157

 

[ExclusionZon]

Went and actually measured it instead of eyeballing - ran a 16-frame stack of the high-res master with a 0.125°/bin angular profile and parabolic peak interpolation. Real spike-line angles come out at 29.5 / 94.0 / 148.9°.

Checked total angular error against a few models: symmetric 3-strut (0/±120) comes out at 5.7°, our original 0/±125 was actually worse at 13.4°, and your proposed 0/±130 is worse still at 23.4°. So if anything the data pulls toward ~0/±120, not ±130 - and it turns out our own initial sim was off too (I'd misremembered it as 0/±120 when it was actually run at 0/±125, my mistake). Updated the sim and the writeup to match.

With about +1° of global rotation allowed, the symmetric model lands within ±1-3° of the measured stack, which is inside the noise floor (per-frame angle estimates jump around by ~5° from sea clutter, the stacked average is the number to trust).

One thing worth flagging: the measured spike SEPARATIONS aren't quite even either (64.5/54.9/60.6°) - hints at maybe ±5° asymmetry but it's right at the edge of what's measurable from this compressed public file. Would need the uncompressed sensor original to actually resolve that, which isn't out there.

Script's the same one from before if anyone wants to rerun it.