View original document (0.3 MB) PDF viewer unavailable in this browser. Download the PDF to view. A newly declassified document from the U.S. Department of War details a 2020 encounter in which a U.S. military crew tracked a “solid white object” making “erratic movements” above the water in the Middle East, according to records released under the Pentagon’s PURSUE transparency initiative.
According to Department of War records released under PURSUE, the document, titled “DOW-UAP-PR36, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, May 2020,” was published on May 8, 2026. The official description states that the United States Central Command submitted a report of an unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
The submission consisted of two minutes and 17 seconds of video footage from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform. An accompanying Range Fouler report, designated DoW-UAP-D38, described the UAP as a solid white object making erratic movements above the water. The document text excerpt, a declassified Range Fouler Debrief Form, provides further detail from the aircrew.
The form, dated May 14, 2020, and filled out for a night Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) mission, describes the contact as a single object. The crew member wrote: “While preforming an ISR tasking (ULTN/Black Hot/Lin), a solid white object flew through the FOV.
There was a temporarily lose of the object but re-acquired shortly there after. The crew was able to follow the object as it appeared to make erratic moments above the water.” The report notes the sensor operator was “continuously manipulating the sensor to maintain eyes on the object.” The form also includes technical data fields, including a contact latitude of 28 degrees, 31 minutes, and 4 seconds North, and a contact longitude of 49 degrees, 52 minutes, and 4 seconds East. The contact altitude is listed as 20,000 feet.
The crew indicated the object was moving, but the fields for direction and speed were left blank. The form also notes the crew was able to obtain 4x zoom on the object but “lost the object due to poor track placement.” The official description of the video footage, provided for informational purposes only, notes that a “blue reticle briefly appears on screen but does not acquire a lock on the area of contrast” at the 2:10 mark.
The sensor then switches to a different modality and loses track of the object at 2:17.
The Broader Context of UAP Investigations
Per a Wikipedia summary of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the AARO is an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense that investigates unidentified flying objects and other phenomena in the air, sea, space, and/or on land. Wikipedia’s entry on the office notes that its first director was physicist Sean Kirkpatrick, who reported to then deputy defense secretary Kathleen Hicks. The current director is Jon T.
Kosloski. The Department of War document confirms that the 2020 report was submitted to this office for analysis.
The record’s official summary offers limited detail beyond the description of the object and the technical parameters of the encounter. The Range Fouler form itself is a standard debriefing tool, and the crew’s narrative is the primary source of descriptive information. The form explicitly states that “SPEAR sanitizes all reports of identifying information,” and that “absolutely no identifying information for aircrew or squadron will be recorded for analysis.” What remains unanswered is the nature of the object itself.
The document does not provide a conclusion or an analytical judgment regarding the event’s validity, nature, or significance. The crew’s description of a “solid white object” making “erratic movements” above the water, combined with the sensor’s inability to maintain a track, leaves the incident unresolved in the official record.
Readers should watch for future PURSUE releases from the Department of War, which may provide additional context or similar reports from the same region or time period.
