UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D061Mission Report, Arabian Gulf, August 2020
This mission report (MISREP) records a 21-hour sortie that took off from Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait at 2307Z on August 26, 2020. It was filed by the 482nd Attack Squadron during a NAVCENT support mission, one of several such reports in the release.
The formation sighting
At 1527Z on August 27 the crew logged a “formation of unk flying objects,” observed through the aircraft’s sensor. The free text says the formation was moving along the coast, its direction given as “NE-NW,” and that the crew tracked it for about two minutes, until positive identification (PID) was lost in cloud cover at 1529Z. The crew could not regain it. The weather block repeats the point: light cloud coverage prevented continuous tracking of the formation. The form does not say how many objects made up the formation, how large they were or how high they flew, and the observed location is a partly redacted grid near the coast.
Around the sighting
The rest of the report is routine intelligence work. Earlier in the sortie, at 0532Z, Iranian air defense hailed the aircraft on the guard frequency and received the standard reply. The crew also logged a probable vessel with two adult men on its rear deck and a possible Il-76 transport aircraft (NATO name “Candid”) at the Abu Musa Island airfield. The aircraft landed back in Kuwait at 2012Z. As with other MISREPs, the entry is the crew’s own account, written without analysis.
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 “formation of unknown flying objects” traveling northeast to northwest along the coast for approximately two minutes. The report notes that light cloud coverage “prevented the continuous tracking of the formation.” 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.