At about 00:35 UTC on 27 October 2023, a U.S. military crew in transit reported a small contact apparently flying just above the sea. The operator described several right-angle turns and estimated a speed of 80 miles per hour. By 00:38 UTC, the contact had disappeared from the crew’s sensor feed.
The released mission report gives the encounter a date, a short duration and a qualified visual description. It does not establish that the reported turns represented a measured physical flight path. The observer assessed the contact as benign, and the file records no effect on the aircraft or its personnel.
The observation in the mission timeline
The seven-page report, released as DOW-UAP-D033, concerns a sortie that began late on 26 October and continued into 27 October 2023. Its take-off entry is 23:39 UTC on 26 October, while the UAP initial-contact field is 00:35:12 UTC on 27 October. The short narrative rounds that start time to 00:35 and says the contact was lost at 00:38.
The distinction matters because a mission spanning midnight can be filed under its departure date even though a particular observation happened the next day. This case uses the dated UAP entry, 27 October, rather than treating the departure date or later declassification as the sighting date.
The contact was reported while the aircraft was travelling towards its operational task. The later surveillance tasking and final landing are separate parts of the sortie; their coordinates should not be substituted for the location of the UAP observation.
A small contact near the sea surface
The operator described the contact as apparently circular but too small to resolve in detail. The narrative placed it just above the surface of the sea and reported multiple turns of about 90 degrees. The estimated speed was 80 miles per hour. It remained in the feed for roughly three minutes before the crew lost it.
The source therefore supports a reported circular appearance, not a measured sphere or disc-shaped aircraft. It supplies no detailed outline, dimensions, visible propulsion, close-range photograph or independent visual identification. The contact’s apparent proximity to the water also does not establish entry into or movement beneath the sea.
The report does not explain how the observer separated target motion from the effects of the moving aircraft, sensor pointing and viewing geometry. Without the underlying imagery and a range history, the described turns cannot be converted into verified accelerations. Reporting the operator’s impression accurately is different from establishing an unusual vehicle’s capabilities.
The form’s qualifications
The UAP section records a benign assessment and no observed response to the aircraft’s actions. It marks propulsion as unknown and advanced capabilities or materials as unknown. A separate field answers no to intelligent control. Those entries sit alongside, rather than cancel out, the narrative’s description of turns.
The form records no effects on people or equipment, no engagement and no recovered object or material. Fields for some other measurements and observers are blank. A blank field should remain a gap in the public record, rather than becoming proof that an additional sensor or witness did or did not exist.
The contact is marked solid in the form, but the released file does not demonstrate that judgement with independent material. Nor does the estimated speed establish that conventional explanations were excluded. The document preserves a report, not a final scientific identification.
Assessment: Insufficient Evidence
UKPX classifies the case as Insufficient Evidence. A dated observation and an operator’s description are available, but the public report alone is insufficient to identify the contact or verify its reported flight path. It would be premature either to identify an extraordinary craft or to state a particular conventional explanation as proven.
No sphere, disc or triangle feature is assigned solely from the small circular appearance. No radar feature is assigned: the document does not establish a radar detection for this observation. The encounter is kept as one case, rather than splitting each reported turn into a separate event.
Location and source trail
The report preserves parts of military-grid references for the aircraft and the first and last contact positions. The visible prefix 35SKD places the disclosed area in the northern Aegean. The pin at approximately 39.26°N, 24.10°E is the centre of that 100 km square, converted on WGS84 and rounded; an independent UTM conversion returned the same result. The release is catalogued under Greece, but the pin does not assert which territorial waters or jurisdiction contained the contact, and no hidden coordinate digits are reconstructed. The pin represents only the disclosed area at the resolution the public record supports. It is not an exact track, recovered object or visitor destination. A mission’s departure airfield is not used to determine the country of a sea observation.
The primary source is DOW-UAP-D033, mission report concerning the 27 October 2023 sea-surface contact. All seven pages were read and visually checked; the detailed UAP section is on pages 6–7. The report’s January 2026 declassification and release markings concern the file’s handling, not a 2026 incident. The reproduced government page is a document image, not a photograph of an identified craft. Sources checked 13 November 2026.