UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D063Mission Report, Strait of Hormuz, October 2020
This mission report (MISREP) records a 21-hour sortie that took off from Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait at 2249Z on October 1, 2020. The squadron box reads 482ATKS, and the tasking was Navy support in the Gulf. The sighting itself is logged on October 2 by Zulu time, a day after the date in the catalogue. AARO’s summary of it is a single sentence, and the scan shows why.
What the report contains
Most of the file is ordinary mission material. The crew logged five guard-frequency hails, at 0727Z, 0854Z, 1122Z, 1236Z and 1315Z; two of them, at 1122Z and 1315Z, are marked “directive,” and each drew the standard response with no impact. They watched the airfield on Abu Musa Island, recording an unidentified aircraft on the runway at 1244Z and, at 1344Z, one they assessed to be an ATR 72-500 turboprop airliner. The weather block notes that heavy haze precluded imagery analysis. At 1657Z they noted a possible vessel docked near an Iranian navy boatyard at Bushehr.
The missing observation
The narrative says that at 1829Z the crew observed a UAP and refers the reader to “observation line 1.” In the pages released, that observation entry does not appear; the final pages hold only the guard-call lines. As a result, the file gives no time span, position, shape, speed or method of observation for the sighting, only the fact that one was reported. The aircraft was cleared to return at 1835Z and landed at 1953Z. For other reports from the same squadron, see DOW-UAP-D065.
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 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.