UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D018Mission Report, Iraq, December 2022
This MISREP records a 19-hour, 17-minute intelligence sortie on 1–2 December 2022 under Operation Inherent Resolve. The aircraft took off from Ali Al Salem in Kuwait (code OKAS) to support an operation near Baghdad, and the originating unit was the 482nd Attack Squadron.
The mission and the sighting
The tasking was to watch patterns of life and look for signs of high-value individuals or persons of interest, weapons, convoys and personnel. At 1620Z, flying at 18,000 feet, the crew saw one object flying west to east, which they wrote up as a “possible UAP/UAV” — UAV meaning an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone. They did not follow it, continued their assigned mission, and recorded no further events.
The UAP form lists one object, no signatures and no reported effects on people. The weather was not a factor, and the report notes the intelligence gap was not filled.
Context
Including “UAV” in the label suggests the crew considered a drone a possibility. A ten-second infrared clip that goes with this report, DOW-UAP-PR023, shows a spot of contrast crossing the frame diagonally. Other Iraq reports from 2022 include DOW-UAP-D012.
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 one “possible UAP” flying from west to east. The observer did not pursue the UAP. 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.