DOW-UAP-D48 is a Department of War PDF record in PURSUE Release 01, released May 8, 2026, with an incident date of September 10, 1996 and no listed incident location.1 The release metadata identifies it as a Department of the Air Force report about Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations.2
The record concerns launch-risk methodology rather than a witness sighting. Its catalog summary says the report documents historical launch failure modes and recommends corrective actions using modeling techniques for unlikely space-booster failures.2 A later Air Force-sponsored RTI report cites the same 1996 work as J. A. Ward Jr. and R. M. Montgomery's Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations, report RTI/5180/77-43F, dated September 10, 1996.3
Air Force Launch-Risk Report
The PURSUE release places this Air Force technical report among government UAP-related records gathered for declassification and public release.1 Its presence in the release is notable because the subject is not an unresolved aerial observation; it is a safety and risk-analysis document about how rare booster failures should be represented when calculating hazards from space launches.2
That context matters for interpreting the record. Launch-risk analysis depends on assumptions about failure probability, debris behavior, population exposure, and casualty expectation, and later Air Force range-safety work used the 1996 Ward and Montgomery report as a reference for those kinds of calculations.3
PDF Asset and Thumbnail
The official record links to a remote PDF asset for the report.2 The release metadata also provides a thumbnail image for the PDF, but it does not list a video pairing or companion PDF pairing for DOW-UAP-D48.4
Rare Booster-Failure Modeling
DOW-UAP-D48 broadens the PURSUE release beyond case narratives and sensor clips. It shows that the archive also includes technical material about defense and aerospace risk modeling, especially the problem of assigning credible probabilities to rare, high-consequence launch failures.23
For researchers, the value is evidentiary and contextual: the record preserves a dated Air Force-linked report title, a report number, and a release trail for a methodology document that later informed downrange-risk analysis for Titan IV launch planning.23
Released Report
DOW-UAP-D48, Department of the Air Force Report, 1996 remote release asset