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Department of War

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Department of War (DoW) is the Trump-era rebrand of the U.S. Department of Defense. “Secretary of War” replaces “Secretary of Defense” in official DoW communications; pete-hegseth holds the office.

DoW is the parent department of aaro. The terminology appears in DoW statements quoted in src-war-department-uap-release-2026-04 (April 2026), describing AARO’s coordination with the White House on the uap-disclosure directive from donald-trump.

White House deputy press secretary anna-kelly formally re-confirmed the DoW tasking on April 17, 2026: “President Trump directed the Department of War to begin the process of identifying and releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and unidentified flying objects” (src-trump-tpusa-ufo-tease-2026-04).

FY27 Posture (April 2026)

Secretary pete-hegseth’s April 29, 2026 written posture testimony to the house-armed-services-committee uses “DoW” and “Secretary of War” branding throughout, alongside Chairman dan-caine and CFO Jay Hurst. The 1.5T FY27 topline is organized around four lines of effort: defend the homeland, deter China in the Indo-Pacific, restore burden-sharing, and supercharge the Defense Industrial Base. The testimony reaffirms [[aaro]] as UAP "focal point," establishes [[golden-dome-for-america]] as the homeland aerial-threat-defense program, names "[[drone-dominance|drone dominance]]" and "[[autonomous-warfare|autonomous warfare]]" as priorities, and realigns the [[anomalous-health-incidents]] Cross-Functional Team to OUSW(R&E) with ~3M in HAVANA Act payments disbursed under Trump (src-hegseth-fy27-posture-testimony-2026-04).

PURSUE Launch (May 8, 2026)

DoW launched pursue (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters) at war.gov/UFO on May 8, 2026 — the first concrete records-release vehicle under Trump’s February directive. Release 01: 162 files (108 redacted) drawn from fbi, nasa, the State Department, and department-of-energy, with odni coordination. DoW is the lead agency; pete-hegseth is the on-record principal (“These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation”). PURSUE handles unresolved cases; aaro retains statutory resolved-case reporting. See src-dow-uap-files-release-2026-05 and src-pursue-portal-launch-2026-05.

DoW contribution: 82 records (mostly CENTCOM mission reports)

Two structurally distinct subsets:

  1. Historical/Cold-War archive (~10 PDFs) — pre-1960 administrative files including “319.1 Flying Discs 1949,” “General 1946-7,” “General 1948,” “Incident Summaries 1-100/101-172/173-233” boxes, plus Numerical Files (1944-45 Germany, 1948-55 Netherlands, 1955 Azerbaijan).
  2. DOW-UAP-D series (~70 records, 27 videos + ~45 PDFs) — Mission Reports / Range Fouler Debriefs / launch summaries from CENTCOM/INDOPACOM ISR sorties 2020–2026. Heavy Middle East concentration (Iraq, Syria, UAE, Greece, Persian/Arabian/Aegean Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Aden, Mediterranean, Red Sea), plus Western US, southern US, Japan, East China Sea, North America.

USCENTCOM declassification stamps (Oct 2025)

Multiple DOW-UAP-D mission reports carry the stamp: “Declassified by MG Richard A. Harrison, USCENTCOM Chief of Staff, Declassified on: 7 October 2025” plus reference numbers in the form USCENTCOM MDR 25-0093 / JS-250710-TM8S and footer “Approved for Release to AARO.” These predate Trump’s Feb 19 2026 directive by four months — meaning the underlying declassification work happened under USCENTCOM’s standing MDR (Mandatory Declassification Review) authority and was held until the May 8 PURSUE publication. PURSUE Release 01 is therefore mostly a publication event rather than a declassification event.

Standardized DOW-UAP form template

The DOW-UAP-D mission reports use a recurring set of fields. Sample fields populated across multiple reports (D14, D32, D74, D75):

FieldSample values
UAP Event TypeUAP Incident
UAP ManeuverabilityLIGHT/GLARE FLASHED ACROSS FMV CAMERA FEED · STRAIGHT FLIGHT PATH AT SAME ALTI · NONE
UAP Physical StatePlasma · Solid · (redacted)
UAP Propulsion MeansUNKNOWN · UNK
UAP Under Intelligent ControlNO (mostly)
UAP Advanced Capabilities/MaterialsYES (sometimes — e.g. D74 “traveled ~424 KN consistantly for at least 7 mins in the shape of a bouncy ball”)
Observer Assessment of UAPBenign
Observer Engagement of UAPNO (mostly)
UAP Effects on Persons / EquipmentNO / NONE
UAP Objects/Material RecoveredNO

The “Observer Assessment: Benign” finding is consistent across most CENTCOM mission reports — i.e. the operating military aircrews themselves did not assess the UAP as hostile. Notable exceptions and unusual entries (the bouncy-ball trajectory in D74, the close-approach orb encounters in USPER 2025) merit individual attention. Per-record content is in ufo/raw/assets/pursue-release-01/text/ extracted from the local PDF mirror.

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