UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D007Mission Report, Arabian Gulf, 2020
Among the 2020 Arabian Gulf mission reports (MISREPs) in the release, this one is notable for how much the crew could say about what they saw, and for their own suggestion of what it was. Most of the form is redacted, but the UAP section survives.
Track and identification
The crew reported a “weapons quality” track on the object — sensor data good enough to aim a weapon by — at 31,000 feet above mean sea level, moving with the winds. They were able to look at it through the aircraft’s targeting infrared camera, written TFLIR, and in the description box they wrote that it “LOOKS LIKE A BALLOON.”
They added that it was similar to UAP reported earlier by the 48FW, an abbreviation that normally refers to the Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing. The report does not say what those earlier reports contained. No shape, size or color beyond the balloon comparison is given, and a phrase describing what the crew did on the track is partly garbled in the scan.
Why a balloon still ends up here
An object drifting at wind speed and resembling a balloon on infrared has an obvious ordinary explanation, but a balloon nobody can attribute still counts as unidentified in UAP reporting. AARO has said many of its resolved cases turned out to be balloons. On infrared imaging, see FLIR; for another report in this group, DOW-UAP-D005.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released May 8, 2026, quoted in full
This document is a Mission Report (MISREP), a standardized reporting form the U.S. Military uses to record the circumstances surrounding its operations. U.S. military services often use MISREPs to report Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) to AARO. The GENTEXT, or “general text” section of these reports often contains important qualitative, contextual information, distinguishing it from the more quantitative, or numerical, data found elsewhere in the report. A U.S. military operator reported observing a UAP, describing it as “look[ing] like a balloon.” The report describes the UAP as “traveling with the winds at approximately 31,000 ft.” The visually tracked the UAP via onboard infrared sensor. All descriptive and estimative language contained in this report reflects the reporter’s subjective interpretation at the time of the event. Such characterizations should not be interpreted as a conclusive indication of the presence or absence of any intrinsic object features or performance characteristics.