USCENTCOM has released a collection of Range Fouler Debrief and Mission Report forms — standard military documentation for aircrew encounters with unidentified contacts during operational missions — covering incidents reported between May 2020 and 2023. All five documents were processed through USCENTCOM's SPEAR system and approved for release to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in early 2026. Taken together, they represent one of the more detailed primary-source windows into how U.S. military aviators operating in the Central Command area of responsibility reported and described UAP during that period.

The documents do not carry classification markings beyond standard handling instructions, and several bear the notation "FOUO / PA applies." Four of the five were declassified by MG Richard A. Harrison, USCENTCOM Chief of Staff. No official analysis or attribution accompanies any of them — these are raw crew-reported debriefs, not finished intelligence assessments.

What the documents say

The earliest incident in the batch is DOW UAP D38, a Range Fouler Debrief from the Middle East dated May 14, 2020. An aircrew conducting an ISR mission — sensor configured in "Black Hot" mode — reported that "a solid white object flew through the FOV" while the IR sensor was set to detect warm objects as dark and cold objects as bright. That inversion is significant: the object appeared bright white against a black-hot background, meaning it registered as cold rather than warm. The crew lost the contact briefly but re-acquired it, then attempted to track it at 4x zoom. According to the form, "the crew was able to follow the object as it appeared to make erratic movements above the water," but "lost the object due to poor track placement" during maneuvering. The sensor operator was, the form notes, "continuously manipulating the sensor to maintain eyes on the object," a detail apparent in the footage from the shifting water background. Only one contact was reported; no radar track, no EA indications, no further detail on speed or altitude.

"the crew was able to follow the object as it appeared to make erratic movements above the water"

DOW UAP D56, a Range Fouler Debrief from the North Arabian Sea dated August 24, 2020, was filed by a pilot identified only by rank (O-3) and unit (IHSM-73), with all personal identifying information stripped per SPEAR protocol. The pilot reported observing "3x possible unidentified small air contact while conducting routine operations in the North Arabian Sea" with "negative ES, radar track, and IFF track." The contacts' distance, speed, and precise course were all unknown; they appeared to be on a westerly heading. What makes this report notable in the context of the others is the account of how the contacts evolved: the crew initially tracked a single unknown air contact before losing it behind a cloud. When reacquired, "2x additional unknown air contacts were seen due east of the location of the initial contact." All three then "appeared to maintain their relative course, speed, and altitude." The form documents "Wings/Airframe" as a checked shape descriptor — unusual given that no radar or IFF return was obtained — though no further physical description is provided.

The Gulf of Aden produced two separate reports filed by the 1172 ATKS. DOW UAP D57, a Mission Report dated September 4, 2020, describes a contact at 21:09Z. Flying at 23,819 feet HAT, the crew tracked what the form describes as "a round, cold object in IR traveling 168 degrees at 277 mph." The sensor was in black-hot mode and the object appeared bright white — again, thermally cold. Slant range was 6.1 nautical miles, ground range 8.81 kilometers, sensor depressed 39 degrees below aircraft altitude. The contact lasted eight minutes, during which the object "made a few abrupt directional changes." No radar track was obtained.

DOW UAP D44, a Range Fouler Report from October 15, 2020, describes a contact in the same general area. The 1172 ATKS crew, flying at 19,073 feet HAT, tracked "a round, cold object in IR traveling 319 degrees at 20 mph" — a nearly opposite heading and dramatically slower speed than the September 4 contact. The object "made a few abrupt directional changes during the 1 minute contact," with the sensor depressed 50 degrees, slant range 4.06 nautical miles, ground range 4.78 kilometers. Same black-hot sensor configuration, same bright-white appearance. One contact, round shape checked, no radar track, no IFF.

The most recent document in the batch, DOW UAP D42, is a Range Fouler Debrief filed by a pilot from the 482 ATKS — a unit not previously appearing in the other four reports — dated August 31 (year listed appears to be 2020 on the form, though the document is contextually associated with a Japan encounter in 2023; the date field may reflect a form pre-population issue or a transcription artifact). The pilot described conducting an ISR mission at 18,000 feet when an initial object flew across the sensor field of view. The crew began tracking it, at which point the object was surpassed by "another object of same size and shape but much higher speed." At one point, "there were three on the screen at the same time moving amongst each other." Shape is listed as "Other," no metallic or reflective attributes are checked, and "Apparent Propulsion" is checked — one of only two forms in the batch to note that attribute. No radar trackfile is indicated as stable.

Context, contradictions, and what remains unanswered

Several observations apply across all five documents. First, the SPEAR system's stated purpose appears explicitly in each form: the header reads, "SPEAR sanitizes all reports of identifying information. Absolutely no identifying information for aircrew or squadron will be recorded for analysis." This anonymization is intentional and makes independent corroboration of the underlying incidents difficult without additional records. The forms direct crews to save display tapes for the entire interaction period and upload them to a separate repository — but none of the released documents confirm whether that footage was preserved, and the question of what analysis, if any, was conducted on those tapes is explicitly unresolved across all five cases.

The two Gulf of Aden contacts from the 1172 ATKS raise a specific internal tension worth flagging. The September contact traveled 168 degrees at 277 mph for eight minutes; the October contact traveled 319 degrees — nearly the reciprocal heading — at just 20 mph for one minute. Both are described with nearly identical sensor geometry language and the same thermal inversion (cold object appearing bright white in black-hot mode). Whether these represent the same class of phenomenon, or entirely unrelated objects, the documents do not address.

More broadly, the erratic movement descriptions across D38, D44, and D57 — "erratic movements above the water," "abrupt directional changes" — are consistent in character but unsupported by any sensor-derived trajectory data in the released forms. These are crew narratives, not instrument readouts. The shapes logged are internally consistent (round or cold objects, in most cases), but the absence of radar tracks, IFF returns, or electronic support detections across all five incidents leaves the nature of the objects entirely unresolved.

Three tensions in the record are worth stating plainly rather than glossing over. The D38 report's description of a solid white object making erratic movements above water bears superficial similarity to language used in descriptions of the 2013 Puerto Rico FLIR event — but AARO's own assessment of that Puerto Rico footage concluded it showed two distinct airborne objects rather than a single object behaving anomalously, and no connection between the CENTCOM incidents and that case is established in these documents. The Gulf of Aden speed reports — 277 mph in one contact, 20 mph in another — span a wide enough range that they resist easy categorization, but the forms provide no airspeed calibration data or independent corroboration. And the Arabian Sea contact that appeared to grow from one object to three after passing behind a cloud could reflect multiple airborne objects that were never in close proximity, or a single contact that was misidentified as multiple — the form's narrative cannot adjudicate between those readings.

What these documents confirm is narrower than some might wish: that U.S. military aircrew operating under USCENTCOM authority filed standardized UAP reports on at least five separate occasions between 2020 and 2023, describing contacts with no radar or IFF signatures that moved in ways they found unusual enough to document. They were approved for release to AARO in March and January 2026. No analytical conclusions, no follow-up investigation summaries, and no attribution to any identified aircraft, balloon, or adversary program accompany any of the five. The filing of a Range Fouler Debrief is, by design, the beginning of an investigation — these documents are evidence that the process started, not that it reached any conclusion.