An F-15E over Syria, how to read one military UAP report end to end

Mikey · 21 May 2026

THE DOCUMENT

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.

What this briefing is

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. The aim is 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. It is a born-digital file with a clean text layer, it is ten pages, and it follows 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.

TL;DR

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. At 0021Z to 0024Z they recorded radar jamming. At 0025Z they recorded “3X POSS UAP”, three possible unidentified anomalous phenomena, in the vicinity of Shaddadi at flight level 240, roughly 24,000 feet. At 0135Z, an hour and ten minutes later, they recorded “1X POSS BALLOON” in the same area at flight level 210. The report describes the UAP contacts as “2 white objects IR significant”, produced no radar returns, and notes “no health effects experienced by aircrew”. Each event ends with the code “NFTR”, nothing further to report.

This is evidence tier 2: a primary document. It is authentic, official, internally declassified through a traceable channel. It is not proof of anything anomalous. “POSS UAP” is a field label, not a verdict, and this briefing is mostly about reading what the report does and does not say.

The header, your 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.

That block is your authenticity anchor. It 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. None of that vouches for the contents. It only confirms the document is what it claims to be.

The Narrative block, the mission in one paragraph

The first page carries the Narrative, a terse timeline of the whole sortie in clipped military shorthand. It is worth walking through, because every later block in the report expands on a line from here.

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. Then come the two observations this briefing is about. 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, was 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.

A reader skimming only this block already has the whole story. Everything below it is structured detail.

The redaction codes, what is hidden and what is not

The report is heavily redacted, and the codes are consistent. Two appear throughout.

“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. They hide how the mission was flown.

“(b)(6)” and “(b)(3)” are Freedom of Information Act exemptions. (b)(6) protects personal privacy, (b)(3) covers information withheld under another statute. 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 pattern is the important part. 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 black bars in this file are hiding who and how, not what was seen. Reading them as suppression of the UAP content would be a misreading of what the codes actually mark.

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, and they confirm the aircraft type beyond the Narrative’s “F-15E”. 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. None of this bears on the UAP question directly. It matters only because 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, read in order

This is the core of the report. The MISREP template files each observed event in its own block, with its own GENTEXT, general text, line. There are four.

The EMI block. EMI is electromagnetic interference. 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.” Note the discipline here. The crew did not log the jamming as unexplained. They 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. This one is 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.”

That is the entire UAP observation. Read it precisely. The crew observed three possible UAP. They were below the aircraft, the F-15E was at flight level 270 and the objects were logged at 240. The radar produced no returns from them. They were notable on infrared, “IR significant”, and described as white. The crew recorded no health effects. The block closes “NFTR”, nothing further to report. The Weather block immediately after records “CLOUDY”.

A small internal inconsistency is worth flagging honestly. The block header says “3X POSS UAP” while the descriptive line says “2 WHITE OBJECTS IR SIGNIFICANT”. The report does not reconcile the count. It may mean three contacts were tracked but only two were clearly visible on infrared. The document does not say, and a careful reader should not invent a resolution it does not give.

The second AIRSIGHT block, the balloon. Logged at 210135Z, “Altitude: FL210”, “Aircraft Type: BALLOON”. The GENTEXT line: “OBS 1X POSS BALLOON IVO SHADDADI … AT FL210. WSV PRODUCED. NFTR.”

This is the single most instructive feature of the document. 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 did not fold the balloon into the UAP category, and they did not inflate the balloon into a UAP. They recorded a balloon as a balloon and an unknown as an unknown. That internal calibration is worth more than the UAP line on its own, because it tells you these observers were distinguishing between the explained and the unexplained in real time.

What it reliably establishes

It establishes that on the night of 20 to 21 February 2023, an experienced US Air Force F-15E crew, flying a defensive counter-air mission over Syria with a modern radar and targeting pod, observed contacts near Shaddadi that they could not identify and logged as “3X POSS UAP”. It establishes the specific, primary descriptive language the crew used before any analyst or commentator reshaped it: the objects were below the aircraft at flight level 240, were “IR significant” and white, produced no radar returns, and caused no health effects.

It establishes that weapons system video, targeting-pod footage, was recorded of both the UAP and the balloon contacts. That footage is not part of this document, but the report states it exists.

It establishes that the report was generated through, and declassified through, an official and traceable process: a USCENTCOM MISREP, classified SECRET/NOFORN, reviewed under Mandatory Declassification Review, cleared by a named general officer, and routed to AARO.

And it establishes, through the balloon block, that the crew was applying ordinary judgement, recording mundane objects as mundane and unknowns as unknown. That is a fact about the quality of the observers, and it is the report’s strongest single contribution.

What it does not establish

It does not establish 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. Given complete data, three white infrared contacts below a fighter at 24,000 feet over a contested border region could plausibly resolve into balloons, drones, other aircraft, or sensor effects. The report itself shows the crew were willing to call a balloon a balloon when they saw one.

It does not establish 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.

It does not establish 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. Treating the two as linked would be the reader’s invention, not the document’s claim.

And the redactions do not establish a cover-up. 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. Its value is as a clean worked example of the format. The phenomenon, if there is one, is not proven or disproven by a single ten-page report. It is read one document at a time, and this is what one looks like.

Related wiki entries

The wiki entries below give background on the people, programmes and document types behind this briefing.

PURSUE · Department of War · USCENTCOM · MISREP · Executive Order 13526 · AARO

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