Unidentified flying object

:UFO redirects here. For other uses, see UFO (disambiguation).

Official Governmental Studies

Canada

In the early 1950s, Project Magnet was created to investigate the possibility of discs powered by magnetic propulsion. The equipment was designed to detect gamma rays, magnetic fluctuations, radio noises and gravity or mass changes in the atmosphere. One of these monitoring stations was located at Shirley Bay, Canada.

Related Topics:
Shirley Bay - Canada

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United States

In response to the June/July 1947 wave of UFO sightings and resulting publicity, the U.S. government began a number of formal studies of UFOs:

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• From July 9 to July 30, 1947, Army Air Force Intelligence studied the 16 best UFO sightings of the previous months, mostly those reported by military and civilian pilots, and concluded that the "flying saucer situation" was neither imaginary nor adequately explained as natural phenomena: "something is really flying around."
• In response to the earlier study, the engineering and intelligence divisions of the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, under the direction of General Nathan Twining, further reviewed the data. Twining's memo of September 23, 1947, likewise concluded the craft were real, further defined their described characteristics, and urged that the subject should be treated seriously, including a formal investigation by multiple government agencies besides the Air Force. Both the Air Intelligence and Material Command studies concluding saucer reality were classified and not publicly acknowledged for many years.
• Twining's memo resulted in the United States Air Force founding Project Sign in late 1947, the first publicly acknowledged government UFO study. Sign produced an "Estimate of the Situation" in late summer, 1948, concluding that the flying saucers were not only real but likely interplanetary in origin. USAF Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg ordered the report destroyed citing lack of physical proof. In late 1948 Project Sign was renamed Project Grudge. Grudge was active until early 1952, when it too was renamed and upgraded in status by the Pentagon, becoming Project Blue Book. In 1956, the first director of Blue Book, Edward J. Ruppelt, referred to the previous era of Grudge as the "Dark Ages" of USAF UFO studies. According to Ruppelt, highly influential Pentagon generals were frustrated with the UFO debunking of Project Grudge, resulting in it being replaced by Blue Book. Since Project Blue Book was dissolved in 1969, the United States government claims that they have had no formal study of UFO reports.
• In December 1948, mysterious Green Fireballs were sighted over sensitive military and government research facilities in New Mexico, such as Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, astronomer and noted meteor expert, investigated for the Air Force, with extensive help from military intelligence and the FBI. Based on observed object characteristics, LaPaz quickly concluded the fireballs weren't natural and thought they might be Russian spy devices. Upon urging of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, a year later the Air Force set up a small observation program called Project Twinkle. In 1951, over LaPaz's objections, Twinkle concluded the fireballs might be some natural phenomenon. But at the same time, scientists at Los Alamos told new Project Blue Book chief Edward J. Ruppelt they thought the fireballs were alien probes from spaceships orbiting Earth.
• The Robertson Panel was organized by the Central Intelligence Agency in late 1952, in response to a wave of UFO sightings, especially in the Washington DC area, which included highly-publicized radar contacts and jet intercepts. After brief study, the panel concluded that most UFOs were prosaic, and furthermore suggested a public relations campaign using celebrities, authority figures, and media giants like Walt Disney Corporation to reduce public interest. They also recommended spying on civilian UFO organizations because of their influence on the public. Immediately after the Robertson Panel, Project Blue Book was downgraded in status by the USAF, directed to withhold information on unexplained cases from the public, and also ordered to reduce the number of unexplained cases to a minimum. Thereafter, unexplained cases plummeted from over 20% down to 3%.
• Project Blue Book Special Report #14 was a massive scientific statistical study of all Blue Book UFO reports to date conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute at behest of the Air Force from 1951 to 1954. Their statistics indicated that 22% of the reports remained unexplained even after stringent analysis and the highest quality reports were twice as likely to remain unexplained than the poorest quality (35% vs. 18%). Also six studied characteristics (speed, duration, color, etc.) were found to be different between knowns and unknowns at a high level of statistical significance.
• The Brookings Report was a study commisioned by NASA in 1960 from the Brookings Institution. The study was noteworthy for its conclusions regarding possible future contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, which they felt would likely be highly disruptive: "...societies sure of their own place in the universe have disintegrated when confronted by a superior society..." Among groups cited as likely having trouble adapting to the new reality were religious fundamentalists and many scientists. The report's conclusions have been offered as a possible motive for governments to cover up evidence of extraterrestrial life.
• The Condon Committee (1966 to 1969), commissioned by Project Blue Book while under pressure from a Congressional inquiry after a new wave of sightings in 1965 and 1966, was a landmark but still controversial study which supported the misidentification-delusion-hoax explanation for UFO reports, and furthermore argued that no available evidence warranted further scientific study. The conclusions were quickly endorsed by the National Academy of Science (NAS), but a more detailed review by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) criticized the NAS position and the Condon Report conclusions, which they noted did not match the actual data. About 30% of the cases examined by the Condon Committee itself were "well-documented but unexplainable" and formed the "hard core of the UFO controversy." They recommended a moderate level, ongoing scientific study of UFOs.

Ultimately, the official U.S. Air Force public position was that UFO reports were due almost entirely to misidentification of ordinary aerial phenomena, delusion, or hoaxes. Both contemporary and modern critics, however, argue that some of the listed studies harbored an unacceptable degree of bias, were involved in sloppy science of dubious validity, or even perpetrating a cover up. Furthermore, the official Air Force position was frequently at odds with internal, classified documents, many later released under the Freedom of Information Act, which proved that the subject was treated far more seriously by the Air Force and other government agencies, like the CIA and FBI, than the public had been led to believe. In addition, many documents still remain classified or are heavily censored even when released, such as those of the CIA. Sometimes lawsuits have had to be filed to get even the censored documents released to the public.

Related Topics:
Bias - Cover up - Freedom of Information Act - CIA - FBI

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