PURSUE Release 01: DOW-UAP-D65, Mission Report, Persian Gulf, July 2020

The Department of War's PURSUE Release 01 identifies DOW-UAP-D65 as a redacted PDF mission report released on May 8, 2026, with an incident date of July 16, 2020 and an incident location of the Persian Gulf.¹ The release description defines a Mission Report, or MISREP, as a standardized military form for recording operational circumstances and notes that U.S. military services often use MISREPs to report UAP information to AARO.¹ The released PDF itself is an eight-page scanned record labeled Misrep 4472514.²

  D65 Persian Gulf Record

Visible release markings state that MG Richard A. Harrison, USCENTCOM Chief of Staff, declassified the record on March 16, 2026; the page footers identify the record as USCENTCOM MDR 26-0028 and approved for release to AARO.² The report's administrative fields place it in the air domain, list 482 ATKS as the originator, identify ACC as the major command, and identify USCENTCOM as the combatant command.²

The mission narrative says the aircraft took off from OKAS at 0443Z on July 16, 2020, was handed over from the launch-and-recovery element at 0504Z, supported NAVCENT from 0552Z to 0012Z, and returned to OKAS after handback.² The release title uses Persian Gulf, while the report narrative describes support in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.¹²

  Three FMV UAP Sightings

The release summary says a U.S. military operator reported three separate UAP encounters at 1830Z, 1920Z, and 2345Z on July 16, 2020.¹ The PDF's observation sections match those times and list UAP as the observed activity description for each entry, with FMV as the method of observation.² The entries also record aircraft heading, altitude, and airspeed: 152M, FL200, and 98 KIAS at 1830Z; 34M, FL190, and 90 KIAS at 1920Z; and 331M, FL191, and 115 KIAS at 2345Z.²

The same record marks weather as not a factor for the observation sections.² It also records a 0615Z guard call handled with standard call-and-response procedures and no stated impact to the mission.² In the narrative closeout, the report says FMV was exploited by DGS-1 and records 20.3 mission hours, 18.3 IMINT hours, one IMINT tasking prosecuted, and two total taskings prosecuted.²

  Standalone PDF Evidence

The release row for D65 does not list a video pairing or a PDF pairing, so the record should be treated as a standalone document entry rather than a public-release video pair.¹ Its listed media are the PDF and an official thumbnail image used as a preview asset.¹³ The release description cautions that descriptive and estimative language reflects the reporter's interpretation at the time and should not be read as a conclusive finding about intrinsic object features or performance.¹

The record matters because it places three UAP observations inside a contemporaneous operational reporting form rather than a later narrative account.² It preserves timing, sensor method, tasking context, and basic aircraft state for each observation, while redactions obscure aircraft identity, personnel, operation names, and some location detail.² That combination makes the document useful for provenance and chronology, but it also limits what can be concluded from the released text alone.¹²

  References

  References

1. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

3. war.gov ↩