The Disc That Hid in the Clouds
Before the Pentagon released it as DOW-UAP-PR055, it was already the most debated piece of military UFO footage in years. On June 17, 2025, investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp obtained and published a video they titled “U.S. Military Films Huge Disc Hiding In The Clouds.” Within hours, it was on NBC News, CNN, and the front page of the Daily Mail. Within days, the debate had split into two camps: those who saw a genuine unknown, and those who saw a balloon.
Nearly a year later, on May 22, 2026, the Department of War officially released the same footage as part of PURSUE Release 02, confirming what Corbell had already shown the world. The government’s own catalog listed it as “Spherical UAP over AFG in and out of clouds 23 Nov 2020.” The government’s own label for the object was “disc.”
What makes PR055 different from most PURSUE videos is that it arrived with a history. We know who leaked it, when, and what they said about it. We know the media covered it exhaustively. We know the government confirmed it by declassifying it. And we still cannot explain what it shows.
The Video
DOW-UAP-PR055: “Spherical UAP over AFG in and out of clouds 23 Nov 2020”
- Date: November 23, 2020
- Location: Afghanistan/Pakistan border region, CENTCOM area of responsibility
- Sensor: Infrared, assessed by AARO as “likely derived from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform” (almost certainly an MQ-9 Reaper)
- DVIDS: Video 1007713
- WAR.GOV: DOW-UAP-PR055
The footage shows what appears to be a large, dark, disc-shaped object moving through layered cloud cover over mountainous terrain. On infrared, the object appears as a distinct dark mass against the brighter thermal signature of the clouds. It enters and exits cloud layers, partially obscured at times, fully visible at others. The movement is steady and lateral, not tumbling or erratic. At several points, the object appears to bank or adjust course while maintaining altitude.
Then there is the thermal signature problem. On IR footage, you see heat. Engines glow. Jet exhaust blazes. Even a bird’s body heat registers against the cold upper atmosphere. This object? Dark. Cold. No thermal emission. Whatever it is, it is not generating heat, or it is somehow masking its thermal signature entirely. In an infrared video, an object with no heat signature that is nonetheless visible as a solid shape is, to put it mildly, unusual.
The Leak
Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp first published the footage on June 17, 2025. Corbell appeared on NBC News and CNN to discuss it. His key claims:
- The U.S. government’s own internal label for the footage was “UAP Disc moving through clouds.”
- The object “appears to be under intelligent control.”
- “The lack of thermal signature is haunting.”
- This was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
The media response was massive. The Daily Mail ran it as “Flying saucer UFO is caught on camera by US MILITARY.” OutKick called it “Insane UFO Video Surfaces, Footage Is Mind-Blowing.” LADbible, always restrained, went with “‘Disc-shaped UFO’ captured by US military flying through sky in never-before-seen footage.” NBC News treated it with relative seriousness, interviewing Corbell at length.
The public response was split. Skeptics noted Corbell’s track record of sensationalized claims and AI-enhanced footage. Supporters pointed out that this time, the raw footage spoke for itself: a solid-looking object, no thermal signature, moving through clouds over a combat zone, captured by military hardware.
The Confirmation
What happened next is what separates PR055 from most leaked UAP footage. On May 22, 2026, the Department of War released the same video as part of the second PURSUE tranche. This was not a confirmation that the object was anomalous. But it was a confirmation of three things:
- The footage is real. It originated from a U.S. military infrared platform operating in the CENTCOM area of responsibility in November 2020. AARO explicitly assessed this.
- The government considered it potentially UAP-related. AARO included it in a collection of 51 “potentially UAP-related records” identified in response to a March 6, 2026 request from eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
- The chain of custody is uncertain. AARO’s own description notes that “many of these materials lack a substantiated chain-of-custody.” The video was uploaded to a classified network at some point, but we do not know by whom, when, or with what analytical assessment.
This is the uncomfortable middle ground where most PURSUE videos live: confirmed authentic, flagged as anomalous, but unresolved. The government will not say what it is. It will only say it does not know.
The Skeptical Case
The Metabunk community has a six-page thread analyzing PR055. Their primary arguments:
Balloon. A high-altitude balloon caught in wind currents could appear to move laterally across an IR sensor’s field of view. The apparent banking and course changes could be the drone’s camera slewing, creating parallax that makes a relatively stationary balloon appear to maneuver.
Parallax. The drone is moving. The camera is moving. The apparent motion of the object could be partly or entirely an artifact of the platform’s own movement. One Metabunk member demonstrated that cloud features in the frame track in ways consistent with significant camera platform motion.
Cloud interaction is ambiguous. The object appearing to enter and exit clouds is not necessarily proof of physical penetration. On degraded IR footage, a dark spot fading as it passes over a brighter cloud region can look identical to an object being obscured by cloud material.
These are reasonable arguments. They are also the same arguments applied to nearly every spherical UAP video in the PURSUE collection, and they share the same weakness: they are generic. A balloon explanation that works for one video also works for all of them, which means it explains everything and nothing simultaneously.
The Anomalous Case
Several features of PR055 resist easy explanation:
No thermal signature. This is the big one. On IR, you see heat. Everything with a temperature above absolute zero emits infrared radiation. The object in PR055 appears dark against bright clouds, meaning it is colder than the surrounding cloud layer, or its IR emission is somehow being blocked. A weather balloon at altitude would still have a thermal signature. A metallic sphere would reflect thermal radiation in detectable ways. This object reads as a thermal void, which is not how passive objects behave on military-grade IR sensors.
Size and shape. When visible between cloud layers, the object presents a consistent disc-like cross-section. It does not deform, rotate erratically, or show the asymmetric profile of a balloon envelope. The government’s own internal assessment labeled it a “disc.”
Duration and behavior. The object maintains controlled flight through cloud layers over an extended period. It does not rise (as a balloon would with decreasing atmospheric pressure) or descend. It moves laterally at a consistent altitude, entering and exiting clouds with what appears to be deliberate navigation.
The operator flagged it. Someone operating a military ISR platform in a combat zone decided this target was worth documenting. They recorded it, preserved the footage, and it eventually made its way into the AARO collection. ISR time in Afghanistan was allocated for threats and anomalies, not weather phenomena.
Afghanistan, November 2020
The footage was captured on November 23, 2020, over the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. At that time, the U.S. military was in the final months of its presence in Afghanistan, with the withdrawal that would be completed in August 2021 already being planned. MQ-9 Reaper drones conducted continuous ISR missions over eastern Afghanistan, monitoring Taliban positions, tracking movement through the mountain passes, and providing overwatch for coalition and Afghan forces.
The border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is some of the most rugged terrain on Earth: the Hindu Kush and Spin Ghar mountain ranges, with peaks above 20,000 feet and deep valleys choked with cloud cover. It is also a region with a long history of unexplained aerial reports. Military pilots flying through these mountains have reported anomalous radar returns and visual sightings for decades.
What a Reaper drone was doing filming cloud layers at sufficient altitude to capture this object is an open question. The operational altitude of an MQ-9 is around 25,000 feet, and the cloud decks visible in the footage appear to be at significant altitude. Was the drone conducting routine ISR, and the operator noticed something anomalous on the feed? Was it specifically tasked to track an object that had already been detected by other sensors? We do not know. The mission details are redacted.
The Pattern
PR055 does not exist in isolation. It is part of a growing cluster of military IR footage showing spherical or disc-shaped objects with no thermal signature, captured by U.S. platforms in the CENTCOM area of responsibility:
- PR051 (2021, Syria): The “instant acceleration” object near the Jordan-Syria border, captured by an MQ-9 Reaper that achieved a weapons-quality lock before the object accelerated out of frame.
- PR060-PR063 (2021, Iraq): Four videos of spherical objects flying across the Iraqi desert near Salahaddin, including one that appears to enter a cave formation.
- PR059 (2020, CENTCOM): The “NAG UAP” captured over an unspecified CENTCOM location.
- PR067 (2022, undisclosed): Multiple spherical USOs near a submarine, going in and out of water.
All share a family resemblance: small to medium, bright or dark on IR depending on background, spherical or disc-shaped, no visible propulsion, and captured by platforms that were not looking for them. Either the CENTCOM area of responsibility has an extraordinary debris problem, or something systematic has been operating in that airspace for years.
What We Still Don’t Know
The PURSUE release of PR055 confirmed the video’s authenticity but answered none of the substantive questions:
- Was the object detected by any other sensors (radar, SIGINT, visual observers)?
- Was there a follow-up investigation?
- What was the drone’s mission that day?
- Has AARO made any determination about what the object is?
- Why was the object catalogued as both “spherical” and “disc”? Was this two different assessments?
The AARO boilerplate description, identical for all 51 PURSUE Release 02 videos, offers nothing. “Readers should not interpret any part of this description as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination.” Which is another way of saying: we have the video, we cannot explain it, and we are not going to try.
Corbell was right about one thing. If a disc-shaped object with no thermal signature, captured on military IR over a combat zone, confirmed authentic by the Department of War, is “just the tip of the iceberg,” then the iceberg must be enormous. And the Pentagon has barely chipped at it.
Sources
- DOW-UAP-PR055 – DVIDS
- WAR.GOV/UFO – PURSUE portal
- Metabunk analysis thread (6 pages)
- NBC News coverage – June 20, 2025
- Daily Mail coverage – June 18, 2025
- DoW Release 02 announcement
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