PURSUE Release 01: DOW-UAP-D63, Mission Report, Strait of Hormuz, October 2020

  D63 Strait of Hormuz Record

The Department of War's May 8, 2026 PURSUE Release 01 identifies DOW-UAP-D63 as a Department of War PDF mission report for an October 1, 2020 incident in the Strait of Hormuz.¹ The release metadata describes the file as a Military Mission Report, or MISREP, a standardized U.S. military reporting form that services also use to submit UAP observations to AARO.¹

The released PDF identifies the record as Misrep 4871281. Its visible administrative fields place the record in a USCENTCOM and AFCENT context, list the 482 ATKS as the originating unit, and show 609th operations-center fields; personnel, aircraft, tasking, and some operational details remain redacted.²

  October 1 Sortie

The narrative says a redacted U.S. military platform took off from OKAS at 2249Z, handed over from the launch-and-recovery element at 2300Z, and supported NAVCENT for a redacted operation in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.² It records multiple GUARD calls across the mission before noting at 1829Z that the platform observed one UAP and directed readers to Observation Line 1.²

The same narrative says the platform was cleared to return to base at 1835Z, handed back to the launch-and-recovery element at 1922Z, and landed at OKAS at 1953Z.² Its mission summary lists 21 mission hours, 17.3 IMINT hours, full-motion video exploited by DGS-1, and four total taskings prosecuted.²

The PURSUE description adds that a U.S. military operator reported observing a UAP, while cautioning that descriptive and estimative language reflects the reporter's subjective interpretation at the time rather than a conclusion about object features or performance.¹

  No D63 Video Pairing

The PURSUE metadata leaves both video pairing and PDF pairing blank for DOW-UAP-D63, so this entry has no identified paired PR media in the release metadata.¹ The public record for this item is therefore the written mission report rather than a PDF-and-video pairing.¹²

  Value and Limits

DOW-UAP-D63 matters because it preserves a contemporaneous military UAP report from a strategic maritime chokepoint, but the record itself is not an identification or investigative conclusion.¹² Its evidentiary value is in provenance: the report ties the observation to mission timing, command context, sensor exploitation, location context, and redaction boundaries.²

Because the release provides no paired public PR media and the PDF withholds many operational details, the record supports cautious source-level analysis rather than claims about the object's origin, capabilities, or identity.¹²

  References

  References

1. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹