UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D019Mission Report, Syria, February 21, 2023
This MISREP comes from a pair of F-15E Strike Eagles that took off from Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan on 20–21 February 2023 to fly defensive counter-air patrols under Operation Inherent Resolve. The originating unit is the 389th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. It is one of the more detailed fighter reports in the release.
What happened on patrol
Near Shaddadi in northeastern Syria, between 0021Z and 0024Z, the jets’ APG-82 radar suffered partial jamming. The report’s working theory is a Turkish X-band jammer operating across the Syria–Turkey border. A minute later, at 0025Z, while patrolling at 27,000 feet, the crew observed three possible UAP at about 24,000 feet. They got no radar returns from them; the free text says two white objects stood out on infrared, the crew felt no health effects, and weapon system video was recorded.
At 0135Z the crew logged one possible balloon near Shaddadi at FL210, which in flight-level notation means about 21,000 feet. The release’s summary gives the altitude as about 2,100 feet, so the two disagree. The weather was cloudy.
Weighing it
The report keeps the jamming, the possible UAP and the balloon as separate entries, and nothing in it connects them. The pair also refueled in the air three times during the sortie. For a similar report a month later, see DOW-UAP-D020; on infrared terms, FLIR.
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 balloon” at approximately 2,100 feet. 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.