A declassified U.S. military mission report released by the Department of War describes a 2024 observation of an unidentified aerial phenomenon during an intelligence flight over Syria. The document, made public on May 8, 2026, under the PURSUE archive, records an operator’s sighting of a “misshapen and uneven ball of white light” through a Full-Motion Video feed.
The report is dated October 20, 2024, and was declassified on October 24, 2025, by Major General Richard A. Harrison, USCENTCOM Chief of Staff. This represents a gap of one year and four days between the event and the declassification order.
The document is titled “DOW-UAP-D32, Mission Report, Syria, October 2024” and exists as a single PDF file. The mission was an Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance flight conducted by the 12th Special Operations Squadron, part of the 27th Special Operations Wing.
The operation was carried out under Operation INHERENT RESOLVE. The aircraft took off from a base identified by the code “OJMS,” with its callsign redacted in the released document. According to the Department of War’s summary, the operator conducted FMV and signals intelligence collection at multiple grid coordinates over Syria.
At 1559Z, or 3:59 PM UTC, the operator observed an unidentified aerial phenomenon. The narrative section of the standardized Military Mission Report, or MISREP, states this observation plainly.
The Department of War notes that these forms are often used to report Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO. The description specifies that the object appeared as a “misshapen and uneven ball of white light.” The summary further indicates there were multiple “glares or light” emanating from an “unknown origin.” The light was white and not a perfect sphere, with multiple points of light coming off it. The origin of those points of light is unknown. The PDF file is 0.6 MB in size.
A note in the browser indicates the PDF viewer is unavailable, requiring a download to read the full form. The document does not include video footage; it is a form filled out by an operator recording what one person saw through a camera feed.
The report does not identify the operator by name, state what happened after the sighting, or offer an explanation for the observation. The document is a record of an observation made during a combat support mission. That observation was filed, classified, then declassified, and released to the public.
The form contains a time, grid coordinates, a description, and a declassification stamp. The Department of War explicitly connects these forms to UAP reporting to AARO.
The location is Syria, the date is October 2024, and the unit is a Special Operations squadron. The mission was ISR, and the time is logged precisely.
