DOW-UAP-PR073, IIR 1 655 S0053 23/Several Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Encountered In The Vicinity of Columbus OH"

Investigation reading

This Release 02 item is an official Department of War / AARO video record from manifest row 133, published in the 5/22/26 WAR.GOV/PURSUE release and mirrored through DVIDS video ID 1007790. The uploader-defined title is preserved as source/catalog language: IIR 1 655 S0053 23/Several Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Encountered In The Vicinity of Columbus OH". The title's Columbus wording, the DVIDS location field, and the manifest's broader Midwestern United States field should not be treated as independently verified geography without original custody records.

The official release description says eight U.S. House members requested access to 51 potentially UAP-related records allegedly held by the Department of War and the Intelligence Community. AARO identified responsive materials held on a classified network and warns that many of these materials lack a substantiated chain of custody. For this row, AARO assesses that the public video is likely derived from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform operating within the United States Northern Command area of responsibility in November 2022, and says a user uploaded it to a classified network in March 2023.

The source-provided video description lists a duration of 00:01:28. It says the opening 00:00-00:04 and closing 01:23-01:28 intervals contain no content; 00:05-00:07 shows the sensor panning to center a small area of contrast; 00:11-00:37 cycles contrast modes and zoom levels while the area remains generally in view; 00:38-00:41 says sensor orientation causes the area to appear to rotate; 00:42-01:14 says a second area of contrast enters from near the top-center and transits the field of view before being obscured by a redacted visual element; 01:17 says the initial area loses distinctiveness; and 01:20 says sensor rotation causes the second area to re-enter before exiting at the top-center. The same description is explicitly informational only and should not be interpreted as an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination about validity, nature, or significance.

The DVIDS page resolves to a canonical page for video 1007790 and lists category B-Roll, date taken 11.01.2022, date posted 05.22.2026 07:30, location COLUMBUS, OHIO, US, filename DOD_111720765, VIRIN 221101-O-XX999-9738, and length 00:01:28.

What the released item appears to contain

The downloaded direct MP4 is a vertically framed sensor-display clip. Sampled frames are effectively blank at the beginning and again at the end, matching the source description's no-content intervals. From roughly 00:05 through the main visible window, the sampled frames show a high-contrast, mostly black display with a blocky gray area or region of contrast across the central field, a faint central reticle/crosshair, and bright horizontal display/redaction bands near the top and bottom of the frame.

In the 00:05-00:41 sampled frames, the central gray contrast region remains broadly visible while its position, edge alignment, apparent zoom, and internal dark patches shift slightly. The sampled frames are consistent with a sensor display cycling contrast/zoom/orientation, but the still samples alone do not prove physical rotation, range, altitude, shape, or object identity.

In the 00:42-01:14 source-described window, the upper-frame crops show the relevant top portion of the field, but the alleged second area of contrast is subtle in still samples. The dominant visible elements remain the dark field, the central/lower gray contrast region, and the bright top/bottom display bands. This page therefore preserves the source description's second-area timing as official wording while treating the still-frame visual evidence as ambiguous pending full-motion and source-record review.

The MP4 includes an AAC stereo audio stream, but full decoded audio returned zero signal in this run (RMS 0.0, max absolute sample 0.0). No transcript or audible content is quoted here. The contact sheets below are derived review aids from the downloaded official MP4; they are not independent evidence and should not be used to infer cause or identity.

Source asset review

The individual official DVIDS/CloudFront MP4 was downloaded and inspected directly; the full Release 02 video ZIP was not used as a substitute. The direct media response returned 200, content-type: binary/octet-stream, accept-ranges: bytes, content-length: 2347351, last-modified: Fri, 22 May 2026 11:30:49 GMT, and ETag "873237c434eb6f7979d4bfa22ec4c4c1". A byte-range probe returned 206 with content-range: bytes 0-0/2347351.

The Release 02 remote video-ZIP central directory lists video_2605_DOD_111720765_DOD_111720765.mp4 as 2,341,227 bytes with CRC32 159f95a3, stored uncompressed. That does not match the downloaded direct DVIDS MP4 size or CRC32. Until the ZIP entry is byte-compared against the direct DVIDS object, this should be treated as a source-custody/versioning lead, not as a substantive finding about the imagery.

Source custody and provenance

Primary public provenance for this page is the official WAR.GOV/PURSUE Release 02 landing page, the Release 02 manifest row, and the DVIDS page for video 1007790. The public DVIDS page resolves to https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1007790/dow-uap-pr073-iir-1-655-s0053-23-several-unidentified-aerial-phenomenon-encountered-vicinity-columbus-oh and exposes the direct media asset at https://d34w7g4gy10iej.cloudfront.net/video/2605/DOD_111720765/DOD_111720765.mp4.

The custody posture is intentionally bounded. The public release says many responsive materials lack a substantiated chain of custody. This row also says the video was uploaded to a classified network in March 2023 and is likely derived from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform in the United States Northern Command area of responsibility in November 2022. This page preserves the official manifest/DVIDS provenance and the downloaded-source inspection facts without converting the title, visible contrast regions, or AARO summary into an Open Sky finding.

Graph context

No exact Release 02 graph record was returned for this slug, title, or DVIDS ID during this run's read-only graph context check. That is not a source-access problem; it means this page is currently anchored to official manifest/DVIDS provenance while graph ingest for Release 02 catches up. Future title-related or dataset-wide graph hits should be treated as leads until their provenance links resolve back to this exact official asset.

Leads to check

• Reconcile the manifest's Midwestern United States field, the DVIDS COLUMBUS, OHIO, US field, the title's vicinity of Columbus OH language, and any original IIR / AARO / platform records before asserting precise location or event context.
• Byte-compare the direct DVIDS MP4 against the Release 02 video-ZIP entry because the direct-file size/CRC32 and ZIP central-directory size/CRC32 do not match.
• Review the full-motion sequence frame-by-frame before treating the source-described second area of contrast as a distinct object; in still upper-frame crops it is not plainly separable from display bands, redaction, compression, and the main contrast region.
• Identify the sensor/display mode and redacted visual elements. The public MP4 lacks original telemetry, platform position, line of sight, range, and exact recording time.
• Run prosaic context checks before escalation: aircraft, drones, balloons, ordinary thermal targets, sensor contrast/zoom artifacts, platform motion/parallax, display/redaction artifacts, Columbus-area airspace activity, weather, and any available military or civilian incident logs for November 2022.

Limits

This is a compressed public MP4 derived from a classified-network upload, and the release-level source warning says many responsive materials lack a substantiated chain of custody. The public record does not provide the original file hash, original sensor metadata, platform identity, precise recording time, line of sight, range, altitude, independent tracks, air-traffic logs, weather correlation, or original witness/operator notes on this page. The visible contrast regions are present in the sampled public frames, but their source, cause, distance, scale, and event significance remain unresolved from this asset alone. This page is a source-review draft and not a finding.

Sources

• WAR.GOV/PURSUE Release 02 landing page: https://www.war.gov/UFO/
• DVIDS video page: https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1007790
• DVIDS direct media asset: https://d34w7g4gy10iej.cloudfront.net/video/2605/DOD_111720765/DOD_111720765.mp4
• Release 02 document bundle: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/052226/release_02/release_02_document_bundle.zip
• Release 02 video bundle: https://d34w7g4gy10iej.cloudfront.net/uap052226.zip
• Official Release 02 manifest row 133, DOW-UAP-PR073, IIR 1 655 S0053 23/Several Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Encountered In The Vicinity of Columbus OH", release date 5/22/26, agency Department of War, kind VID.