PURSUE Record — DOW-UAP-D18, Mission Report, Iraq, December 2022: Iraq · 12/1/22

Record DOW-UAP-D18 is a declassified Mission Report filed by a U.S. military operator in Iraq in December 2022, catalogued and publicly released by the Department of War on May 8, 2026 as part of PURSUE Release 01. It is a single-part PDF document — a standardized military reporting form submitted through the official AARO reporting pipeline — and it describes one observation of a possible unidentified anomalous phenomenon moving from west to east. The observer did not pursue the object.

What this record contains

DOW-UAP-D18 is classified by the Department of War as a Mission Report (MISREP), the standardized form U.S. military services use to record the circumstances surrounding their operations. The incident is dated December 1, 2022, and the location is Iraq. The public release consists of a single PDF part. According to the official description, the document includes a GENTEXT — or "general text" — section, which is where MISREPs typically carry qualitative, contextual information that supplements the more numerical fields found elsewhere in the form. That GENTEXT section is the primary vehicle through which the operator's account of the observation was transmitted to AARO.

The official summary states that one U.S. military operator reported observing a single "possible UAP" flying from west to east. No pursuit was initiated. The Department of War's release notes explicitly that "all descriptive and estimative language contained in this report reflects the reporter's subjective interpretation at the time of the event" and should not be read as a conclusive determination of any object's physical characteristics or performance.

Historical & documentary context

The MISREP format has been the backbone of U.S. military operational reporting for decades. It is designed for speed and standardization: a field operator can file a complete incident record quickly, ensuring that time-sensitive observations enter the intelligence chain in a consistent, reviewable form. When Congress mandated formal UAP reporting through the establishment of AARO (the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office), the MISREP became one of the primary mechanisms through which service members in active operational environments — including Iraq — could document anomalous observations without that reporting being treated as informal or unofficial. DOW-UAP-D18 is the product of that pipeline working as designed.

Iraq in late 2022 remained an active operational environment for U.S. forces. The presence of persistent ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) activity in the region means that military observers there are generally trained in distinguishing known airborne objects. That context does not resolve what was observed in this case, but it is relevant to evaluating the credibility of the observer's judgment that what they saw warranted AARO reporting. The December 2022 date also places this record squarely within the post-UAP-reporting-mandate era, after the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act strengthened formal requirements for documenting such observations.

What this does and does not prove

What the public record establishes is narrow: a U.S. military operator in Iraq on December 1, 2022 observed an aerial object moving west to east and assessed it as a possible UAP, then filed a MISREP through official channels. That is the documented fact. What it does not establish is the nature, origin, size, altitude, speed, or identity of the object. The observer did not pursue it, so no additional sensor data or closer characterization was collected. The Department of War's own caveat — that descriptive language "reflects the reporter's subjective interpretation" — underscores that this record is an input to analysis, not a conclusion. "Unresolved" in the PURSUE framework means the case has not been explained; it does not confirm anything anomalous.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

DOW-UAP-D18 is one of the contemporary Department of War mission reports in the PURSUE Release 01 set, which spans 162 documents total — including 28 videos, 14 images, and 120 PDFs ranging from declassified FBI files dating to 1947 through modern military sensor records. Within that release, the MISREP category represents the operational end of the collection: recent, field-filed observations submitted by active-duty personnel through the AARO reporting chain. You can review the full index of PURSUE Release 01 cases, including every MISREP and the FBI and NASA archive materials, on the SkyLens UAP files page. For broader editorial coverage of what this release represents and how to read it, see our 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.