THE DOCUMENT
DOW-UAP-D101, “IIR, Unresolved UAP Report, Gulf of Oman, 2021”, a Department of War record from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 05, published at war.gov/ufo, cleared 7 August 2026. It is an Intelligence Information Report originated by Air Force Special Operations Command, date of information 8 September 2021, published 271329Z April 2022. Six video records are released alongside it, DOW-UAP-PR117 through PR122, each of which names D101 in its official description. Those descriptions are the source for every account of the footage here.
Why this one is worth your time
Most of what PURSUE has released as video arrives without paper. A clip appears, an official description tells you the sensor panned and an area of contrast stayed generally centred in the frame, and that is the record. This one arrives the other way round. There is a written intelligence report, filed through ordinary theatre channels seven months after the event, and it says what the aircrew saw, how fast they clocked it, what the aircraft was doing at the time and what happened to the footage. The six clips are the surviving fragments of a much larger recording that no longer exists.
It is also the first PURSUE record in which a UAP encounter is bracketed by a weapons release. The crew were firing a 105 mm cannon at a flare. Two objects were sitting over that flare when the trigger came back.
What the document says
D101 is released as a screen capture of a message-handling system’s record preview, seven pages: two pages of metadata, four of full message text, one of footer. The originator is AFSOC A2OX, message from AFSOC at Hurlburt Field, Florida; the date of acquisition is 7 April 2022 at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico. It was declassified by the USCENTCOM Chief of Staff on 20 March 2026 and stamped “Approved for Release to AARO” on 26 March 2026. Its own classification line is redacted; the body carries the standard warning that this is an information report, not finally evaluated intelligence, and the declassification instruction reads 50X1-HUM.
The set-up. On 8 September 2021, in darkness, a U.S. Special Operations Forces AC-130 was conducting live-fire training over the Gulf of Oman. The crew dropped a water-activated flare to use as a mock target and put the aircraft into an orbit around it. The Combat Systems Officer ran collateral scans with the aircraft’s electro-optical and infrared sensor in the vicinity of the flare.
The first pair. Slewing the sensor back to the flare in infrared mode, the CSO saw two objects the report puts at approximately four feet in diameter, described as cold orbs, between zero and twenty feet above the surface of the water, stationary over the flare for approximately fifteen seconds.
The shot. After those fifteen seconds the CSO pulled the trigger, firing the aircraft’s 105 mm cannon. The report is precise about the sequence, and the precision is the point: immediately upon pulling the trigger, during the slight delay between trigger pull and the cannon’s recoil, the CSO observed the pair fly rapidly away from the flare and out of the sensor feed, without changing altitude. The departure is recorded as beginning inside the mechanical delay, before the round went out.
The rest of the sortie. Approximately twenty-five instances of UAPs were observed over the course of the sortie, all viewed in infrared as cold orbs, in both white-hot and black-hot polarity. Two were seen flying in a loose but coordinated formation, increasing and decreasing altitude like a wave while manoeuvring around, over and under each other in a manner the report compares to dolphins swimming in a pod; a source comment attached to that passage reads that they knew they were flying together. A formation of three was separately observed. Others were separately observed flying erratically and manoeuvring aggressively.
The numbers. The CSO calculated speeds using the aircraft’s TACTOOL, clocking a maximum observed manoeuvring speed of 1,300 miles per hour and a minimum of 250. No means of propulsion were observed. Geographic coordinates were derived from the AC-130’s sensor feed GPS data; part of the grid reference is redacted.
The footage. One attachment is listed: a PowerPoint containing six embedded videos of the 8 September 2021 UAPs captured via AC-130. Those six are DOW-UAP-PR117 through PR122. The report also records that the crew attempted to save the entirety of the EO/IR footage of the UAP observations, and that the aircraft’s digital video recorder failed and the video data became corrupted. No cause is given and the failure is not attributed to anything the objects did.
What the six clips carry. Each of the six official descriptions says the same three things: that CENTCOM submitted the report to AARO, that the footage is a secondary capture recorded on a cellular device pointed at an infrared sensor display aboard an AC-130J gunship rather than native sensor data, and that PR117 through PR122 were captured contemporaneously. The clips run 16 seconds (PR117), 30 (PR118), two (PR119), 13 (PR120), 34 (PR121) and 26 (PR122). PR119 is the shortest video record PURSUE has published. The descriptions of PR121 and PR122 are near-identical timelines offset from one another, and both carry an AARO comment saying the footage significantly overlaps in content with the other.
What the document does not say
It does not identify anything. There is no assessment, no hypothesis and no attribution anywhere in the report, and the word “unresolved” in the release title appears nowhere in the document itself.
The four-foot figure applies to one pair. The report gives it for the two orbs over the flare and gives no size at all for the roughly twenty-five further instances. It also never converts “instances” into a count of objects, so the number of distinct things seen that night is not in the record.
The source is anonymous. A single source is described in a four-column table whose identifier and description are withheld in full, and the only reliability language released is a context statement recording that the source had direct access to the information through official duties and was aware it would be provided to the U.S. government. There is no credibility grading, and the report is expressly not finally evaluated.
It records no UAP-channel handling at the time. The only coordination noted is with the U.S. Defense Attaché Office in Muscat and SOCCENT J2X, both without comment. AARO appears only in the 2026 release stamp, which is chronologically consistent, AARO having been established in July 2022, three months after the report was published.
It does not give the aircraft’s altitude, the duration of the encounter, any radar or radio-frequency corroboration, or any effect on the crew or the aircraft. And the evidence itself is incomplete by the report’s own account: the primary sensor recording was destroyed, and what survives is six phone captures of a screen.
From the record
approximately four-foot diameter cold orbs between 0 to 20 feet above
DOW-UAP-D101, the first observation; the sentence continues: the surface of the water stationary over the flare for approximately 15 seconds
trigger, during the slight delay between trigger pull and the
DOW-UAP-D101, the moment the pair departed; the passage continues: cannon’s recoil, the CSO observed the pair of UAPs rapidly fly away
manner similar to how dolphins playfully swim in a pod. (SOURCE COMMENT: They [The UAPs]
DOW-UAP-D101, on the coordinated pair; the source comment continues: knew they were flying together
observed maneuvering speed at 250 MPH. No means of propulsion
DOW-UAP-D101, closing the speed calculation; the sentence continues: were observed
An accompanying Intelligence Information Report, DOW-UAP-D101, describes the phenomena as “cold orbs” approximately four feet in diameter.
The official description of DOW-UAP-PR117, and of each of the other five clips
AARO Comment: This video footage significantly overlaps in content with DOW-UAP-PR122.
The official description of DOW-UAP-PR121
Where the case connects
The Middle East is the most heavily represented theatre in PURSUE’s video record, and this tranche adds to it twice over: four further CENTCOM clips from 2023 and 2025 sit in Release 05 Briefing 3, and Release 02 Briefing 14 covered the 2020 wave from the same command. What is new here is the pairing. Release 04 Briefing 8 read the three Range Fouler debriefs that arrived with matched footage, and this is the same shape at larger scale: one written record, six clips, one night.
The report leaves its own loose ends, and names most of them itself. The primary EO/IR recording is gone. The source is withheld. The PowerPoint attachment is described but not published as such. The twenty-five instances have no size, no count and no individual descriptions. Nothing in the release records what CENTCOM, AFSOC or AARO made of any of it between April 2022 and March 2026. Any later tranche that releases an assessment, the recovered footage, or the reports that must sit behind the other instances lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-D101, “IIR, Unresolved UAP Report, Gulf of Oman, 2021”, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 05, with DOW-UAP-PR117 through PR122.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
- PURSUE
- Department of War
- Gulf of Oman Incident 2021
- Cold Orbs
- Air Force Special Operations Command
- USCENTCOM: U.S. Central Command
- AARO: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-D101, “IIR, Unresolved UAP Report, Gulf of Oman, 2021”, PURSUE Release 05, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- DOW-UAP-PR117 to DOW-UAP-PR122, “Unresolved UAP Report, Gulf of Oman, 2021”, PURSUE Release 05, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 3, on the other CENTCOM clips in this tranche
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 04 Briefing 8, on the Range Fouler debriefs and their paired footage
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 02 Briefing 14, on the 2020 CENTCOM wave