UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D065Mission Report, Arabian Gulf, July 2020
This mission report (MISREP) records a sortie that took off from Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait at 0443Z on July 16, 2020, and spent 20 hours and 20 minutes on station. It is the earliest of the 482nd Attack Squadron’s Gulf reports in this group. It reached the release as an image-only scan.
Three sightings, three lines
The crew logged three separate UAP, each through full-motion video. At 1830Z the aircraft was at flight level 200, heading 152 degrees magnetic at 98 knots; at 1920Z it was at flight level 190, heading 34 degrees at 90 knots; at 2345Z it was at flight level 191, heading 331 degrees at 115 knots. Each free-text entry says only that the crew observed an unidentified aerial phenomenon in the vicinity of a grid reference whose digits are redacted. No shape, size, speed, direction or duration is given for any of them, and the weather was recorded as not a factor.
The working day around them
The report shows what the sightings interrupted. At 0615Z the aircraft was hailed on the guard frequency and replied in standard fashion. The crew also logged several vessels, including a probable vessel heading east and two possible vessels docked at Bushehr port. Because the three entries are so brief, the file cannot say whether they involved the same kind of object; AARO’s summary likewise lists only the times. Compare DOW-UAP-D064.
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 encountering three separate UAP on July 16, 2020, at 1830Z, 1920Z, and 2345Z. 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.