A U.S. Central Command document declassified and cleared for open publication on March 10, 2026, shows that USCENTCOM's Chief of Staff formally recommended referring an unresolved unidentified aerial phenomena report — originating from Kuwait in May 2022 — to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The recommendation, designated USCENTCOM MDR 25-0094 through MDR 25-0099 and cross-referenced as JS-250710-TM8S, was signed by Maj. Gen. Richard A. Harrison on October 8, 2025, and formally recorded on October 17, 2025.
The Document and Its Provenance
The record was reviewed and cleared by the Department of Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review, and carries the designation DOW-UAP-PR20 under the Department of War filing system. It was released publicly on March 10, 2026, following what the document's header indicates was a mandatory declassification review process. The source domain war.gov carries a moderate trust rating, and the document's formatting and classification markings are consistent with standard DoD prepublication review outputs, though independent verification of its full contents has not been completed by this publication.
The incident in question occurred in Kuwait in May 2022, placing it within USCENTCOM's area of responsibility. The document does not describe the nature of the UAP encounter in detail — no sensor data, witness accounts, or physical descriptions are included in the portion cleared for release. What the record does establish is that the phenomenon was assessed as sufficiently unresolved to warrant escalation to AARO, the office Congress established in 2022 as the central coordinating body for UAP investigation across military services and intelligence agencies.
AARO Referral and What It Signals
The referral itself is procedurally significant. AARO was created under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 specifically to receive and coordinate unresolved UAP cases that individual combatant commands or services cannot explain through conventional analysis. A recommendation from a combatant command's chief of staff — a two-star general officer — suggests the Kuwait incident had already passed through lower-level review without resolution before reaching Harrison's desk.
According to the document, Harrison's recommendation is addressed directly to AARO, indicating USCENTCOM followed the established referral chain rather than closing the case administratively. The record does not indicate whether AARO has since resolved, categorized, or published findings related to the Kuwait incident. AARO's public case registry, as of this writing, does not list a Kuwait May 2022 entry in its unclassified disclosures, though the office has acknowledged that a significant portion of its caseload remains classified.
The gap between the incident date — May 2022 — and the formal referral recommendation — October 2025 — is notable and unexplained by the available record. Whether that interval reflects extended internal review, administrative processing delays, or other factors is not addressed in the declassified portion of the document.
Context and Limitations
The Kuwait report adds to a growing, if still fragmentary, public record of UAP incidents logged within active U.S. military operational areas. USCENTCOM's area of responsibility encompasses the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of South Asia — regions where U.S. forces operate sophisticated sensor arrays and airspace monitoring infrastructure. UAP incidents within that theater have historically received less public attention than those associated with naval operations in the Pacific, making this document a relatively uncommon data point for that region.
Significant caution is warranted in interpreting this record. The declassified document provides administrative and procedural information only. It does not describe what was observed, by whom, under what conditions, or what preliminary analysis was conducted before Harrison's referral recommendation. The absence of substantive detail is itself a feature of mandatory declassification review releases, which frequently clear the bureaucratic framework of a document while withholding operational specifics.
AARO and USCENTCOM public affairs did not respond to requests for comment prior to publication. The Pentagon's Office of Prepublication and Security Review confirmed via its public disclosure process that the document was cleared, but declined to discuss its contents beyond what appears in the released version.