PURSUE Release 01: DOW-UAP-D60, Mission Report, Persian Gulf, August 2020

  USCENTCOM Mission Report

The Department of War's May 8, 2026 PURSUE Release 01 identifies DOW-UAP-D60 as a redacted Mission Report tied to an August 8, 2020 Persian Gulf incident.¹ The release describes MISREPs as standardized U.S. military operational reports and notes that their GENTEXT sections are often used to pass UAP observations to AARO.¹

The six-page PDF is MISREP 4592219, approved for release to AARO under a USCENTCOM mandatory declassification review footer and declassified by MG Richard A. Harrison, USCENTCOM Chief of Staff, on March 20, 2026.² The visible fields place the report in the air domain under USCENTCOM, with ACC as major command, the 609th listed in an operations-center field, 482ATKS as originator, and Air Force as the tasked service.²

  Persian Gulf ISR Sortie

The mission narrative says the aircraft took off from OKAS at 0337Z, handed over from the launch and recovery element at 0359Z, collected SIGINT through Airhandler, and supported NAVCENT in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.² It says the sortie conducted IMINT and SIGINT taskings, returned to base after 2256Z, handed back to the launch and recovery element at 0017Z, and landed at OKAS at 0045Z.²

The report lists 20.3 mission hours, 17.7 IMINT hours, 18.4 SIGINT hours, one IMINT tasking, one SIGINT tasking, and two total taskings prosecuted.² In the ISR section, the tasking is described as planned support to NAVCENT, including scans of identified IRIN/IRGCN vessels to establish pattern of life, UAS activity, and activity outside ports.²

  Single FMV UAP Sighting

The UAP entry is brief. The observation line records that at 0726Z on August 8, 2020, the crew observed one UAP in the vicinity of a mostly redacted grid location, described the observed activity as transiting, and identified the method of observation as FMV.²

The same observation section says there was no impact to the mission and that weather was not a factor for the observation.² A later ISR weather field adds that dense cloud coverage intermittently affected FMV collection during the broader tasking, which is useful context for interpreting the mission record but not a direct explanation of the UAP entry.²

The report also records a separate guard-channel interaction: at 1250Z, an Iranian Air Defense Guard station hailed the aircraft, standard calls were exchanged, and the report says that contact had no impact on the mission.²

  No D60 Video Pairing

The release metadata provides the D60 PDF and an official thumbnail, but it does not populate a public video-pairing field for this record.¹³ No PURSUE PR media row is explicitly paired with DOW-UAP-D60, so the public evidence for this entry is the redacted MISREP rather than a released clip.

  What the Redactions Leave

DOW-UAP-D60 matters because it preserves the source context around a terse 2020 UAP notation: the observing platform was on a USCENTCOM Air Force ISR mission supporting NAVCENT maritime activity, the observation was made through FMV, and the report says it did not affect the mission.²

The record is also an example of the limits built into the PURSUE release. The Department of War metadata cautions that descriptive and estimated language reflects the reporter's interpretation at the time, not a conclusive determination of object features or performance.¹ Here, redactions remove aircraft identity, precise location, operation name, and personnel details, leaving the strongest public facts as the reporting chain, mission timing, sensor context, and the single "1X UAP" entry.¹²

  References

  References

1. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

3. war.gov ↩