UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D062Mission Report, Strait of Hormuz, September 2020
This mission report (MISREP) covers a sortie that took off from Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait at 2302Z on September 15, 2020, and landed after 20 hours and 56 minutes. The 482nd Attack Squadron flew it in support of NAVCENT, the US Navy’s Middle East command. Its UAP entry is short, but the report around it is unusually eventful.
What else happened
Iranian air defense hailed the aircraft on the guard frequency three times, at 0408Z, 0421Z and 1141Z, with the tone logged twice as “directive” and once as “professional”; each time the crew gave the standard reply. The aircraft then lost its link twice: for 11 minutes from 1248Z and for 27 minutes from 1414Z. Both are filed as electromagnetic interference of unknown type, with a complete impact on the affected system, a flight-path deviation and a “medium” mission impact. The cause is redacted, and the report does not connect these outages to the sighting.
The UAP line
At 1732Z the crew observed a UAP on full-motion video; the free text says only that, plus a partly redacted grid. AARO’s summary gives the UAP an altitude of about 1,800 feet. The released observation entry gives no altitude for the object; the only altitude on it is the aircraft’s own, flight level 180, roughly 18,000 feet. The report describes no shape, speed or behavior.
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 UAP at an estimated altitude of 1,800 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.