PURSUE Release 01: DOW-UAP-D62, Mission Report, Strait of Hormuz, September 2020

DOW-UAP-D62 is a Department of War PDF released in PURSUE Release 01 on May 8, 2026. The release metadata identifies it as a redacted Mission Report for a September 16, 2020 incident in the Strait of Hormuz, and describes MISREPs as U.S. military operational reports that services often use to report UAP to AARO.¹

The released PDF is nine pages and carries USCENTCOM release markings. It identifies the record as Misrep 4782130, with the 482 ATKS as originator, the 609th operations center, Air Combat Command as major command, and USCENTCOM as combatant command.²

  CENTCOM Mission Setting

The mission narrative says the aircraft took off from OKAS late on September 15, 2020, landed at OKAS on September 16, and logged just under 21 mission hours. The report says the mission supported NAVCENT in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman, with tasking to characterize Iranian naval and UAS activity, activity outside ports, and pattern of life.²

That context matters because the UAP entry appears inside a broader intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission record, not as a standalone analytic case summary. The PURSUE release cautions that descriptive and estimated language reflects the reporter's interpretation at the time and should not be read as a conclusive determination about the object's features or performance.¹

  Guard Calls, Lost Links, and UAP Entry

The readable timeline records three guard calls from Iranian Air Defense at 0408Z, 0421Z, and 1141Z. Each entry says standard orders were given, the crew responded with a standard response, and the calls had no mission impact.²

The report also records two unknown electromagnetic interference or lost-link events. The first ran from 1248Z to 1259Z, and the second from 1414Z to 1441Z. Both entries describe a complete impact to the affected system, flight path deviation, and a medium mission impact before link was regained.²

The UAP observation appears at 1732Z. The observation fields list the aircraft at FL 180 and 90 KIAS, identify the observed activity as UAP, and give full-motion video as the observation method. The GENTEXT/OBSERVATION line states only that a UAP was observed near a redacted coordinate beginning with 39RVM5.²

The PURSUE release summary adds that a U.S. military operator reported one UAP at an estimated altitude of 1,800 feet. The PDF's readable observation fields do not expose the basis for that estimate, the object's identity, a shape description, or a speed estimate.¹²

  No Separate Sensor Release

The release entry provides the D62 PDF and an official thumbnail image, but no public PR video or separate still-image record is explicitly paired with D62 in the release metadata. For this record, the public evidence is the written MISREP and its catalog summary rather than separately released sensor media.¹³

  Narrow Strait of Hormuz Record

DOW-UAP-D62 matters because it preserves a military-origin UAP report inside an operational CENTCOM/NAVCENT mission timeline. The same document places the observation alongside guard calls, lost-link events, ISR tasking, and redacted aircraft and location fields, which helps show what information was available publicly and what remained withheld.¹²

The record supports a narrow factual reading: during a September 16, 2020 mission over the Strait of Hormuz area, a U.S. military operator reported one UAP observed by full-motion video, and the release summary gives an estimated UAP altitude of 1,800 feet. It does not establish what the object was.¹²

  References

  References

1. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. war.gov ↩