THE DOCUMENT
(Unchanged: DOW-UAP-D19, a US Central Command mission report (MISREP), “Misrep undefined-8353978”, covering an F-15E sortie over Syria on the night of 20 to 21 February 2023. Originally classified SECRET/NOFORN. Declassified by the USCENTCOM Chief of Staff on 8 October 2025, approved for release to AARO, and published in PURSUE Release 01.)
Why this one is worth your time
Briefing 1 in this series explained, in general terms, how to read a Central Command mission report. This briefing does it for real, on one specific document, from the first line to the last, so that after reading it you could open any MISREP in the release and know what each block is, where the UAP observation sits, and how much weight it carries. DOW-UAP-D19 was chosen because it is representative, not because it is dramatic: a born-digital file with a clean text layer, ten pages, following the standard MISREP template exactly. It also has one feature that makes it unusually instructive: in the same flight, the same crew logged a possible UAP and, separately, a possible balloon. That contrast, inside a single routine report, is the most useful thing in it.
What the document says
On the night of 20 to 21 February 2023 a two-ship of US Air Force F-15E aircraft flew a defensive counter-air mission over Syria, in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign against ISIS. The flight took off from Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, refuelled in the air several times, and spent roughly three and a half hours on station. During the mission the crew logged four separate events in the report’s observation blocks. This is evidence tier 2: a primary document, authentic, official, internally declassified through a traceable channel. “POSS UAP” is a field label the form uses, not a verdict.
The header, the authenticity anchor. The document is internally titled “Misrep undefined-8353978”. “Misrep” is mission report. The number is a system identifier. The “undefined” is a database field that was never filled in, a small reminder that these are working military records, not documents prepared for public reading. The top of the page carries the original classification, “SECRET/NOFORN”, struck through in red. NOFORN means it was not releasable to foreign nationals. The strike-through is the declassification action. In the margin, also in red, is the authority: “Declassified by MG Richard A. Harrison, USCENTCOM Chief of Staff, Declassified on: 8 October 2025”. The footer adds the case numbers, “MDR 25-0094 thru MDR 25-0099”, and the line “Approved for Release to AARO”. MDR stands for Mandatory Declassification Review. The block tells you the document is a genuine USCENTCOM record, that a named general officer cleared it, on a stated date, and that it was routed to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office before public release; it confirms the document is what it claims to be.
The Narrative block. The first page carries the Narrative, a terse timeline of the whole sortie in clipped military shorthand. The crew, a “2-SHIP OF F-15E”, took off from “MUWAFFAQ SALTI AIR BASE (OJMS)”, the ICAO code for the base in Jordan, at 2320Z, “ISO OPERATION INHERENT RESOLVE”, in support of that operation, “TO CONDUCT DCA IVO ESSA”. DCA is defensive counter-air, a patrol mission to hold airspace. IVO means in the vicinity of. ESSA is the named operating area or “killbox” the report uses elsewhere. The flight checked in with “KINGPIN”, a command-and-control callsign, refuelled in the air, and went on station. At “0021Z-0024Z” the flight “RECEIVED MFT RADAR JAMMING IVO SHADDADI”. At “0025Z” the flight “OBS 3X POSS UAP IVO SHADDADI” at “FL240”, with “WSV PRODUCED”, a weapons system video, the targeting-pod footage, recorded. At “0135Z” the flight “OBS 1X POSS BALLOON IVO SHADDADI” at “FL210”, again with weapons system video produced. The flight then refuelled again, checked off station, and landed back at base at 0425Z. Total mission time, the report states later, was 4 hours 55 minutes.
The redaction codes. The report is heavily redacted, and the codes are consistent. “1.4(a)” is a reference to Executive Order 13526, section 1.4(a), the classification category covering military plans, weapons systems and operations; in this document the 1.4(a) boxes sit over things like the flight’s callsign, exact grid coordinates, the tanker details, and the ATO mission number. “(b)(6)” and “(b)(3)” are Freedom of Information Act exemptions; (b)(6) protects personal privacy, (b)(3) covers information withheld under another statute, and in this report they sit over the names, ranks where identifying, phone numbers and emails of the service members in the points-of-contact section. The redactions cover operational detail and personnel identity. They do not cover the UAP observation: the lines “OBS 3X POSS UAP”, “FL240”, “2 white objects IR significant”, and “no health effects experienced by aircrew” are all left fully visible.
The Admin and equipment blocks. Pages two to five are structured metadata. The Admin block confirms the basics: Report Type “MISREP”, Operation “INHERENT RESOLVE”, Combatant Command “USCENTCOM”, Major Command “AFCENT”, originating unit “389 EFS”, the 389th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. The Service Tasked is “A - AIR FORCE”. The ACEQUIP blocks list the aircraft equipment: the radar is a “SUITE 9.1” load on what a later page names as an “APG-82”, the F-15E’s modern radar; the targeting pod, the source of the weapons system video, is a “SNIPER-SE”; the aircraft carried AIM-120D and AIM-9X air-to-air missiles and an M61A1 gun. It tells you the observers were a current-generation fighter crew with a modern sensor suite, not an isolated eyewitness. The Timeline block confirms the hard facts: two aircraft, tail numbers 169 and 188, takeoff from OJMS at 202330Z February 2023, landing at OJMS at 210425Z, last engine shutdown 210435Z.
The four observation blocks. The MISREP template files each observed event in its own block, with its own GENTEXT, general text, line. The EMI block: EMI is electromagnetic interference, and from 210021Z to 210024Z the crew logged “RADAR JAMMING” affecting the “APG-82” radar on frequency “8.8-9.9GHZ”, impact recorded as “PARTIAL”, mission impact “NONE”. The GENTEXT/EMI line records the crew’s own assessment: “OUR WORKING THEORY IS THAT IT IS AN AREA OF EFFECT TURKISH X-BAND JAMMER ON OR ACROSS THE SYR/TUR BORDER INTO TURKEY.” The crew named a likely mundane source and labelled it a working theory. The first AIRSIGHT block, the UAP: AIRSIGHT is the block for an observed airborne object, logged at 210025Z, “Altitude: FL240”, “Aircraft Type: 3x POSS UAP”. The GENTEXT/AIRSIGHT line reads: “OBS 3X POSS UAP IVO SHADDADI … AT FL240. WSV PRODUCED. NFTR.” A second visible line adds the detail: the F-15E “WAS CRUISING IN CAP AT FL270. NO RADAR RETURNS RECEIVED FROM UAP. NO HEALTH EFFECTS EXPERIENCED BY AIRCREW. 2 WHITE OBJECTS IR SIGNIFICANT. NFTR.” The crew observed three possible UAP, below the aircraft (the F-15E was at flight level 270, the objects at 240), with no radar returns, notable on infrared and described as white, no health effects, and the block closes “NFTR”, nothing further to report. The Weather block immediately after records “CLOUDY”. A small internal inconsistency is worth flagging: the block header says “3X POSS UAP” while the descriptive line says “2 WHITE OBJECTS IR SIGNIFICANT”, and the report does not reconcile the count. The second AIRSIGHT block, the balloon: logged at 210135Z, “Altitude: FL210”, “Aircraft Type: BALLOON”, GENTEXT line “OBS 1X POSS BALLOON IVO SHADDADI … AT FL210. WSV PRODUCED. NFTR.” The same crew, on the same flight, an hour after the UAP contact, saw something else in the same area and logged it plainly as a possible balloon: they recorded a balloon as a balloon and an unknown as an unknown.
What the document does not say
That the three contacts were anomalous. “POSS UAP”, possible UAP, is a field label entered during the flight, not a conclusion reached after analysis. The report contains no determination. The report itself shows the crew were willing to call a balloon a balloon when they saw one.
That the contacts were unexplained even by the people closest to them. The report records no radar returns and no health effects, and closes the block “NFTR”, nothing further to report. There is no sign in the document that the crew or the squadron treated this as an extraordinary event; it was logged with the same brevity as the refuelling.
A connection between the UAP and the radar jamming. The report files them as two separate events, twenty-five minutes apart, in separate blocks, and explicitly attributes the jamming to a probable Turkish ground-based jammer.
A cover-up in the redactions. They mark operational detail and personnel identity, the routine content of any classified military report, and they leave the UAP observation itself fully visible. This is one MISREP; the report does not prove or disprove a phenomenon, and the weapons system video it states exists is not part of the document.
From the record
“OBS 3X POSS UAP IVO SHADDADI … AT FL240. WSV PRODUCED. NFTR.” The GENTEXT/AIRSIGHT line recording the UAP observation
“2 WHITE OBJECTS IR SIGNIFICANT. NFTR.” The descriptive line on the UAP, alongside a header reading “3X POSS UAP”
“OUR WORKING THEORY IS THAT IT IS AN AREA OF EFFECT TURKISH X-BAND JAMMER ON OR ACROSS THE SYR/TUR BORDER INTO TURKEY.” The GENTEXT/EMI line, the crew’s own assessment of the radar jamming
“OBS 1X POSS BALLOON IVO SHADDADI … AT FL210. WSV PRODUCED. NFTR.” The second AIRSIGHT block, logged an hour after the UAP contact
Where the case connects
This briefing reads one document end to end as a worked example of the MISREP format, and Briefing 1 sets out PURSUE Release 01 as a whole, the general guide to reading a CENTCOM mission report, and the evidence tier system. Executive Order 13526, cited in the references, defines the section 1.4(a) redaction category the document uses.
The document also leaves its own loose ends, stated as facts. Weapons system video, the targeting-pod footage, was recorded of both the UAP and the balloon contacts; the report states it exists, but that footage is not part of this document. The block header records “3X POSS UAP” while the descriptive line records “2 WHITE OBJECTS IR SIGNIFICANT”, and the report does not reconcile the count. The 1.4(a) and FOIA redactions cover the flight’s callsign, grid coordinates, tanker details, ATO mission number, and personnel identities, which remain blacked out. Any later release of the weapons system video, or of a fuller version of the report, lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
The report, DOW-UAP-D19, “Misrep undefined-8353978”, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 01.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
References and further reading
- Primary document: DOW-UAP-D19, “Misrep undefined-8353978”, US Central Command mission report, Syria, 20 to 21 February 2023, declassified 8 October 2025, hosted at war.gov
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- Briefing 1 in this series, on PURSUE Release 01 as a whole, for the general guide to reading a CENTCOM mission report and the evidence tier system
- Executive Order 13526, on the classification of national security information, for the section 1.4(a) redaction category