PURSUE Record — DOW-UAP-D10, Mission Report, Middle East, May 2022: Iraq · 5/6/22

DOW-UAP-D10 is a declassified Mission Report released by the U.S. Department of War on May 8, 2026, documenting a UAP observation logged on May 6, 2022, in Iraq. The document is a single-part PDF — a standardized MISREP, the operational form U.S. military services routinely use to record the circumstances surrounding their activities in theater. It is a field-generated report, not an analytical product, and its entry into the public record came through PURSUE Release 01, the first structured UAP declassification coordinated through the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

What this record contains

The releasing agency is the U.S. Department of War — the renamed successor to the Department of Defense — and the report covers an event dated May 6, 2022, at a location in Iraq. The public release consists of a single file part. The document type is a MISREP, described in the official release notes as "a standardized reporting form the U.S. Military uses to record the circumstances surrounding its operations." The GENTEXT section — the free-text narrative field that distinguishes MISREPs from purely numerical data — is identified as the key passage. Within it, a U.S. military operator reported observing "5x UAP fly across the screen." The report characterizes one of those contacts as a "possible missile" and the remaining four as "possible birds."

The official release metadata explicitly frames those characterizations as the reporter's subjective interpretation at the time of the event, stating that "such characterizations should not be interpreted as a conclusive indication of the presence or absence of any intrinsic object features or performance characteristics." Beyond the GENTEXT summary and the file-level metadata, the public release does not include additional descriptive detail about sensor type, altitude, speed, or engagement context.

Historical & documentary context

In May 2022, the United States maintained a residual advisory and counterterrorism presence in Iraq following the formal end of the combat mission against ISIS in 2021. U.S. forces operated under the Global Coalition framework and continued conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activity across the country. MISREPs generated in that environment cover a wide range of operational activities, and UAP observations embedded within them typically reflect whatever sensor feed the operator was monitoring — an electro-optical camera, an infrared array, or a radar display. The phrase "fly across the screen" is consistent with a sensor or video feed rather than a naked-eye sighting, though the release does not specify the collection method.

The MISREP format has been used by AARO as a primary intake mechanism for military UAP reporting. Because MISREPs are standard operational documents rather than purpose-built anomaly reports, UAP observations within them tend to be terse, co-mingled with other operational data, and filtered through the operator's immediate tactical framing. The characterizations here — "possible missile," "possible birds" — reflect real-time threat assessment logic, not systematic anomaly analysis conducted after the fact.

What this does and does not prove

What is documented is narrow: a military operator in Iraq on May 6, 2022 observed five objects moving across a sensor display, logged them as UAP, and offered tentative field identifications for each. That is the full extent of the confirmed factual record as publicly released. The document does not establish that any of the five contacts were anomalous, unknown, or technologically sophisticated. The reporter's in-the-moment characterizations are field estimates, not forensic conclusions, and the official disclaimer accompanying the release is unambiguous on this point. Equally, the tentative identifications do not close the case; they represent what the operator thought most plausible given what was visible on screen in that moment, under operational conditions that the public record does not detail further.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

DOW-UAP-D10 is one of 120 PDFs within the 162-document PURSUE Release 01 package, sitting within the subset of contemporary Department of War mission reports — field-generated records from active military operations rather than archival or historical material. Where other portions of the release draw on FBI records stretching back to 1947 or NASA imagery from crewed spaceflight programs, the DoW MISREP series represents the current operational layer of U.S. UAP documentation: events reported in recent years through the AARO intake pipeline. Taken alongside the full release, DOW-UAP-D10 illustrates both the breadth of environments in which UAP are being reported and the analytical discipline AARO applies — including publishing cases where the most plausible explanations are mundane. You can browse every record in the release on the SkyLens UAP files page, or read additional PURSUE coverage on the blog.

Editorial note: This analysis is independent commentary on a publicly released document. The original record, source links, and full release metadata are catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page alongside every other case in the PURSUE Release 01 set.