A declassified document from the U.S. Department of War details a 2020 incident in which a military operator observed an unidentified anomalous phenomenon, or UAP, moving across the Persian Gulf. The record, designated DOW-UAP-D60, was made public on May 8, 2026, through the department’s PURSUE online archive, a repository for declassified UAP-related materials.
The document is a standardized Mission Report, commonly referred to as a MISREP, which military services use to document operational events. According to the Department of War’s official summary, such reports are frequently employed to submit UAP sightings to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, for further examination. The report includes a “GENTEXT,” or general text section, offering qualitative details about the encounter, separate from the numerical data found elsewhere in the form.
The incident occurred on August 8, 2020, in the Persian Gulf. The reporting operator described the UAP as “transiting” and noted that it had “no impact to mission.” The report also states that “dense cloud coverage intermittently impacted FMV collection,” with FMV referring to full-motion video, a surveillance tool commonly used by military aircraft and drones.
The Department of War’s summary includes a caution that “all descriptive and estimative language contained in this report reflects the reporter’s subjective interpretation at the time of the event.” The agency further notes that “such characterizations should not be interpreted as a conclusive indication of the presence or absence of any intrinsic object features or performance characteristics.” This means the document offers no definitive conclusion about the object’s nature, origin, or technical capabilities.
The official summary provides limited details beyond the basic facts of the sighting. It does not specify the type of aircraft or vessel from which the operator made the observation, nor does it describe the UAP’s shape, size, speed, or color. The summary also does not indicate whether the object was tracked by radar or other sensors, or if any other military assets in the area corroborated the sighting.
The Department of War, the federal agency responsible for the U.S. military, released the document as part of its PURSUE initiative, accessible at war.gov. This initiative aims to increase transparency by providing the public with declassified records of UAP encounters involving military personnel. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which investigates such phenomena across air, sea, space, and land, is the office within the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense that receives these reports. According to a Wikipedia summary, AARO’s first director was physicist Sean Kirkpatrick, who reported to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, and its current director is Jon T. Kosloski.
The August 2020 incident leaves several questions unresolved. The report does not explain what the operator believed the object to be, nor does it provide analysis of its behavior beyond the term “transiting.” The mention of dense cloud coverage impacting full-motion video collection suggests the visual record may be incomplete, potentially limiting analysts’ ability to draw firm conclusions. The document also does not indicate whether the object was ever identified as a known aircraft, drone, natural phenomenon, or something else.
The Department of War’s summary emphasizes that the language in the report is subjective and not a conclusive indication of the object’s intrinsic features, leaving the nature of the UAP entirely open to interpretation. Future releases from the PURSUE archive may include additional mission reports from the Persian Gulf or other regions, as the department has indicated more documents are forthcoming. For now, the August 2020 sighting remains a documented but unexplained encounter between a U.S. military operator and an unidentified object over the Persian Gulf.
