UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D032Mission Report, Syria, October 2024
This mission report (MISREP) records a 20-hour intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sortie flown for the 12th Special Operations Squadron on October 20–21, 2024, under Operation Inherent Resolve. The aircraft took off from OJMS, Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, worked three surveillance taskings over Syria and returned in clear weather. The UAP entry is unusual because what the crew describes is light on the camera rather than an object in the sky.
What the crew logged
From 1559Z to 1644Z the crew saw multiple glares of light from an unknown origin, at different angles and directions. At 1559Z, 1602Z and 1644Z a single light or glare crossed directly over the full-motion video (FMV) camera; at 1609Z and 1620Z a halo effect appeared at the top of the feed. The description field calls it a “mishapen and uneven ball of white light.” The form lists the physical state as “Plasma” and the only signature as “LIGHT,” says the phenomenon was not under intelligent control, and notes the crew assessed that it was not a lasing event, meaning no one was shining a laser at the aircraft.
How the crew judged it
The aircraft was orbiting at 20,088 feet and 144 knots. The crew recorded no mission impact, no reaction to being observed and an assessment of benign, and the rest of the sortie continued with routine target-development work. The form gives no altitude, speed or distance for the light and offers no explanation for it.
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 “misshapen and uneven ball of white light,” describing multiple “glares or light” emanating from an “unknown origin.” The reporter described the UAP as a “light/glare halo effect” at the top of the Full-Motion Video (FMV) feed. 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.