Project Blue Book was the code name for the systematic study of

unidentified flying objects An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...

by the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

from March 1952 to its termination on December 17, 1969. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, was initially directed by Captain

Edward J. Ruppelt Edward James Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). He is generally ...

and followed projects of a similar nature such as Project Sign established in 1947, and Project Grudge in 1948. Project Blue Book had two goals, namely, to determine if UFOs were a threat to

national security National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...

, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data. Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the '' Condon Report'', which concluded that the study of UFOs was unlikely to yield major scientific discoveries, and a review of the report by the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

, Project Blue Book was terminated in 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations: By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural

phenomena A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...

(

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

s, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12. 701 reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...

, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted.

Previous projects

Public USAF UFO studies were first initiated under Project Sign at the end of 1947, following many widely publicized UFO reports (see

Kenneth Arnold Kenneth Albert Arnold (March 29, 1915 – January 16, 1984) was an American aviator, businessman, and politician. He is best known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported modern unidentified flying object sighting in ...

). Project Sign was initiated specifically at the request of General Nathan Twining, chief of the

Air Force Materiel Command Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) is a major command (MAJCOM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). AFMC was created on July 1, 1992, through the amalgamation of the former Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) and the former Air Force Systems Com ...

at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Wright-Patterson was also to be the home of Project Sign and all subsequent official USAF public investigations. Project Sign was officially inconclusive regarding the cause of the sightings. However, according to US Air Force Captain

(the first director of Project Blue Book), Sign's initial intelligence estimate (the so-called Estimate of the Situation) written in the late summer of 1948, concluded that the flying saucers were real craft, were not made by either the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, and were likely

extraterrestrial Extraterrestrial refers to any object or being beyond ( extra-) the planet Earth ( terrestrial). It is derived from the Latin words ''extra'' ("outside", "outwards") and ''terrestris'' ("earthly", "of or relating to the Earth"). It may be abbrevia ...

in origin. (See also

extraterrestrial hypothesis The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) proposes that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being physical spacecraft occupied by extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens, or non-occupied alien probes from other planets vi ...

.) This was subsequently rejected by Gen.

Hoyt Vandenberg Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg (January 24, 1899 – April 2, 1954) was a United States Air Force general. He served as the second Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and the second Director of Central Intelligence. During World War II, Vandenberg was t ...

, USAF Chief of Staff, citing a lack of physical proof. Vandenberg subsequently dismantled Project Sign. Project Sign was succeeded at the end of 1948 by Project Grudge, which was criticized as having a

debunking {{Short pages monitor Ruppelt left Blue Book in February 1953 for a temporary reassignment. He returned a few months later to find his staff reduced from more than ten, to two subordinates. Frustrated, Ruppelt suggested that an Air Defense Command unit (the 4602nd Air Intelligence Service Squadron) be charged with UFO investigations.

Robertson Panel

In July 1952, after a build-up of hundreds of sightings over the previous few months, a series of radar detections coincident with visual sightings were observed near the National Airport in Washington, D.C. (see 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident). After much publicity, these sightings led the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

to establish a panel of scientists headed by Dr. H. P. Robertson, a physicist of the California Institute of Technology, which included various physicists, meteorologists, and engineers, and one astronomer (Hynek). The Robertson Panel first met on January 14, 1953 in order to formulate a response to the overwhelming public interest in UFOs. Ruppelt, Hynek, and others presented the best evidence, including movie footage, that had been collected by Blue Book. After spending 12 hours reviewing 6 years of data, the Robertson Panel concluded that most UFO reports had prosaic explanations and that all could be explained with further investigation, which they deemed not worth the effort. In their final report, they stressed that low-grade, unverifiable UFO reports were overloading intelligence channels, with the risk of missing a genuine conventional threat to the U.S. Therefore, they recommended the Air Force de-emphasize the subject of UFOs and embark on a debunking campaign to lessen public interest. They suggested debunkery through the mass media, including

Walt Disney Productions The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

, and using psychologists, astronomers, and celebrities to ridicule the phenomenon and put forward prosaic explanations. Furthermore, civilian UFO groups "should be watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking ... The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind." It is the conclusion of many researchersJerome Clark, ''The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial'', 1998; Detroit: Visible Ink Press, that the Robertson Panel was recommending controlling public opinion through a program of official propaganda and spying. They also believe these recommendations helped shape Air Force policy regarding UFO study not only immediately afterward, but also into the present day. There is evidence that the Panel's recommendations were being carried out at least two decades after its conclusions were issued (see the main article for details and citations). In December 1953, Joint Army-Navy-Air Force Regulation number 146 made it a crime for military personnel to discuss classified UFO reports with unauthorized persons. Violators faced up to two years in prison and/or fines of up to $10,000.

Aftermath of Robertson Panel

In his book (see external links) Ruppelt described the demoralization of the Blue Book staff and the stripping of their investigative duties following the Robertson Panel jurisdiction. As an immediate consequence of the Robertson Panel recommendations, in February 1953, the Air Force issued Regulation 200-2, ordering air base officers to publicly discuss UFO incidents only if they were judged to have been solved, and to classify all the unsolved cases to keep them out of the public eye. The same month, investigative duties started to be taken on by the newly formed 4602nd Air Intelligence Squadron (AISS) of the Air Defense Command. The 4602nd AISS was assigned the task of investigating only the most important UFO cases with intelligence or national security implications. These cases were deliberately siphoned away from Blue Book, leaving Blue Book to deal with the more trivial reports. General Nathan Twining, who started Project Sign in 1947, was now Air Force Chief of Staff. In August 1954, he was to further codify the responsibilities of the 4602nd AISS by issuing an updated Air Force Regulation 200-2. In addition, UFOs (called "UFOBs") were defined as "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Investigation of UFOs was stated to be for the purposes of national security and to ascertain "technical aspects." AFR 200-2 again stated that Blue Book could discuss UFO cases with the media only if they were regarded as having a conventional explanation. If they were unidentified, the media was to be told only that the situation was being analyzed. Blue Book was also ordered to reduce the number of unidentified to a minimum. All this work was done secretly. The public face of Blue Book continued to be the official Air Force investigation of UFOs, but the reality was it had essentially been reduced to doing very few serious investigations and had become almost solely a public relations outfit with a debunking mandate. To cite one example, by the end of 1956, the number of cases listed as unsolved had dipped to barely 0.4 percent, from 20 to 30% only a few years earlier. Eventually, Ruppelt requested reassignment; at his departure in August 1953, his staff had been reduced from more than ten (precise numbers of personnel varied) to just two subordinates and himself. His temporary replacement was a

noncommissioned officer A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enli ...

. Most who succeeded him as Blue Book director exhibited either apathy or outright hostility to the subject of UFOs or were hampered by a lack of funding and official support. UFO investigators often regard Ruppelt's brief tenure at Blue Book as the high-water mark of public Air Force investigations of UFOs, when UFO investigations were treated seriously and had support at high levels. Thereafter, Project Blue Book descended into a new "Dark Ages" from which many UFO investigators argue it never emerged. However, Ruppelt later came to embrace the Blue Book perspective that there was nothing extraordinary about UFOs; he even labeled the subject a "Space Age Myth."

Captain Hardin era

In March 1954, Captain Charles Hardin was appointed the head of Blue Book; however, the 4602nd conducted most UFO investigations, and Hardin did not object. Ruppelt wrote that Hardin "thinks that anyone who is even interested n UFOsis crazy. They bore him."Jerome Clark, ''The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial'', p. 468 In 1955, the Air Force decided that the goal of Blue Book should not be to investigate UFO reports but to minimize the number of unidentified UFO reports. By late 1956, the number of unidentified sightings had dropped from the 20–25% of the Ruppelt era to less than 1%.

Captain Gregory era

Captain George T. Gregory took over as Blue Book's director in 1956. Clark writes that Gregory led Blue Book "in an even firmer anti-UFO direction than the apathetic Hardin." The 4602nd was dissolved, and the 1066th Air Intelligence Service Squadron was charged with UFO investigations. In fact, there was actually little or no investigation of UFO reports; a revised AFR 200-2 issued during Gregory's tenure emphasized that unexplained UFO reports must be reduced to a minimum. One way that Gregory reduced the number of unexplained UFOs was by simple reclassification. "Possible cases" became "probable", and "probable" cases were upgraded to certainties. By this logic, a ''possible''

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ar ...

became a ''probable'' comet, while a probable comet was flatly declared to have been a misidentified comet. Similarly, if a witness reported an observation of an unusual balloon-''like'' object, Blue Book usually classified it as a balloon, with no research and qualification. These procedures became standard for most of Blue Book's later investigations; see Hynek's comments below.

Major Friend era

Lt. Col. Robert J. Friend was appointed the head of Blue Book in 1958. Friend made some attempts to reverse the direction Blue Book had taken since 1954. Clark writes that "Friend's efforts to upgrade the files and catalog sightings according to various observed statistics were frustrated by a lack of funding and assistance." Heartened by Friend's efforts, Hynek organized the first of several meetings between Blue Book staffers and ATIC personnel in 1959. Hynek suggested that some older UFO reports should be reevaluated, with the ostensible aim of moving them from the "unknown" to the "identified" category. Hynek's plans came to naught. During Friend's tenure, ATIC contemplated passing the oversight of Blue Book to another Air Force agency, but neither the Air Research and Development Center nor the Office of Information for the Secretary of the Air Force was interested. In 1960, there were U.S. Congressional hearings regarding UFOs. Civilian UFO research group

NICAP The National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) is an unidentified flying object (UFO) research group most active in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s. It remains active primarily as an informational depository on th ...

had publicly charged Blue Book with covering up UFO evidence and had also acquired a few allies in the U.S. Congress. Blue Book was investigated by the Congress and the CIA, with critics—most notably the civilian UFO group NICAP asserting that Blue Book was lacking as a scientific study. In response, ATIC added personnel (increasing the total personnel to three military personnel, plus civilian secretaries) and increased Blue Book's budget. This seemed to mollify some of Blue Book's critics, but it was only temporary. A few years later (see below), the criticism would be even louder. By the time he was transferred from Blue Book in 1963, Friend thought that Blue Book was effectively useless and ought to be dissolved, even if it caused an outcry amongst the public.

Major Quintanilla era

Major

Hector Quintanilla Hector Quintanilla Jr. (May 7, 1923 – May 18, 1998) was a United States Air Force (USAF) Lieutenant Colonel, best known as the last chief officer of Project Blue Book, the USAF's official unidentified flying object investigative arm. Bio ...

took over as Blue Book's leader in August 1963. He largely continued the debunking efforts, and it was under his direction that Blue Book received some of its sharpest criticism. UFO researcher Jerome Clark goes so far as to write that, by this time, Blue Book had "lost all credibility."Jerome Clark, ''The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial'', p. 592 Physicist and UFO researcher Dr.

James E. McDonald James Edward McDonald (May 7, 1920 – June 13, 1971) was an American physicist. He is best known for his research regarding UFOs. McDonald was a senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics and a professor of meteorology at the Univ ...

once flatly declared that Quintanilla was "not competent" from either a scientific or an investigative perspective,Ann Druffel; ''Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald's Fight for UFO Science''; 2003, Wild Flower Press; , p. 63 although he also stressed that Quintanilla "shouldn't be held accountable for it," as he was chosen for his position by a superior officer, and was following orders in directing Blue Book. Blue Book's explanations of UFO reports were not universally accepted, however, and critics—including some scientists—suggested that Project Blue Book performed questionable research or, worse, was perpetrating cover up. This criticism grew especially strong and widespread in the 1960s. Take, for example, the many mostly nighttime UFO reports from the midwestern and southeastern United States in the summer of 1965: Witnesses in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

reported "multicolored lights" and large aerial objects shaped like eggs or diamonds. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported that

Tinker Air Force Base Tinker Air Force Base is a major United States Air Force base, with tenant U.S. Navy and other Department of Defense missions, located in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, surrounded by Del City, Oklahoma City, and Midwest City. The base, origina ...

(near

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

) had tracked up to four UFOs simultaneously, and that several of them had descended very rapidly: from about 22000 feet to about 4000 feet in just a few seconds, an action well beyond the capabilities of conventional aircraft of the era. John Shockley, a meteorologist from

Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 397,532. The Wichita metro area had ...

, reported that, using the state Weather Bureau

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

, he tracked a number of odd aerial objects flying at altitudes between about 6000 and 9000 feet. These and other reports received wide publicity. Project Blue Book officially determined the witnesses had mistaken

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...

or bright

s (such as Rigel or

Betelgeuse Betelgeuse is a red supergiant of spectral type M1-2 and one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye. It is usually the tenth-brightest star in the night sky and, after Rigel, the second-brightest in the constellation of Orion ...

) for something else. Blue Book's explanation was widely criticized as inaccurate. Robert Riser, director of the Oklahoma Science and Art Foundation

Planetarium A planetarium ( planetariums or ''planetaria'') is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation. A dominant feature of most planetarium ...

offered a strongly worded rebuke of Project Blue Book that was widely circulated: "That is as far from the truth as you can get. These stars and

planet A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...

s are on the opposite side of the earth from Oklahoma City at this time of year. The

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an a ...

must have had its star finder upside-down during August." A newspaper editorial from the ''Richmond News Leader'' opined that "Attempts to dismiss the reported sightings under the rationale as exhibited by Project Bluebook won't solve the mystery ... and serve only to heighten the suspicion that there's something out there that the air force doesn't want us to know about", while a Wichita-based UPI reporter noted that "Ordinary radar does not pick up planets and stars." Another case that Blue Book's critics seized upon was the so-called

Portage County UFO Chase Portage or portaging (Canada: ; ) is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A path where items are regularly carried between bodies of water is also called a ...

, which began at about 5.00 am, near Ravenna, Ohio on April 17, 1966. Police officers Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff spotted what they described as a disc-shaped, silvery object with a bright light emanating from its underside, at about 1000 feet in altitude. They began following the object (which they reported sometimes descended as low as 50 feet), and police from several other jurisdictions were involved in the pursuit. The chase ended about 30 minutes later near

Freedom, Pennsylvania Freedom is a borough in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, located along the Ohio River northwest of Pittsburgh. The population was 1,495 at the 2020 census. Originally founded as a steamboat building town, chief industries later includ ...

, some 85 miles away. The UFO chase made national news, and the police submitted detailed reports to Blue Book. Five days later, following brief interviews with only one of the police officers (but none of the other ground witnesses), Blue Book's director, Major

, announced their conclusions: The police (one of them an Air Force gunner during the

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

) had first chased a

communications satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. C ...

, then the planet Venus. This conclusion was widely derided, and police officers strenuously rejected it. In his dissenting conclusion, Hynek described Blue Book's conclusions as absurd: in their reports, several of the police had unknowingly described the moon, Venus ''and'' the UFO, though they unknowingly described Venus as a bright "star" very near the moon. Ohio Congressman William Stanton said that "The Air Force has suffered a great loss of prestige in this community ... Once people entrusted with the public welfare no longer think the people can handle the truth, then the people, in return, will no longer trust the government." In September 1968, Hynek received a letter from Colonel Raymond Sleeper of the

Foreign Technology Division The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) is the United States Air Force unit for analyzing military intelligence on foreign air and space forces, weapons, and systems. NASIC assessments of aerospace performance characteristics, ca ...

. Sleeper noted that Hynek had publicly accused Blue Book of shoddy science, and further asked Hynek to offer advice on how Blue Book could improve its scientific methods. Hynek was to later declare that Sleeper's letter was "the first time in my 20 year association with the air force as scientific consultant that I had been officially asked for criticism and advice egarding... the UFO problem."Jerome Clark, ''The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial'', p. 477 Hynek wrote a detailed response, dated October 7, 1968, suggesting several areas where Blue Book could improve. In part, he wrote: Despite Sleeper's request for criticism, none of Hynek's commentary resulted in any substantial changes in Blue Book. Quintanilla's own perspective on the project is documented in his manuscript,
UFOs, An Air Force Dilemma
" Lt. Col Quintanilla wrote the manuscript in 1975, but it was not published until after his death in 1998. Quintanilla states in the text that he personally believed it arrogant to think human beings were the only intelligent life in the universe. Yet, while he found it highly likely that intelligent life existed beyond earth, he had no hard evidence of any extraterrestrial visitation.

Congressional hearing

In 1966, a string of UFO sightings in Massachusetts and New Hampshire provoked a Congressional Hearing by the House Committee on Armed Services. According to attachments to the hearing, the Air Force had at first stated that the sightings were the result of a training exercise happening in the area. But NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, reported that there was no record of a plane flying at the time the sightings occurred. Another report alleged that the UFO was actually a flying billboard advertising gasoline. Raymond Fowler (of NICAP) added his own interviews with the locals, who saw Air Force officers confiscating newspapers with the story of UFOs and telling them not to report what they had seen. Two police officers who had witnessed the UFOs, Eugene Bertrand and David Hunt, wrote a letter to Major Quintanilla stating that they felt their reputations were destroyed by the Air Force. "It was impossible to mistake what we saw for any kind of military operation, regardless of altitude," the irritated officers wrote, adding that there was no way it could have been a balloon or helicopter. According to Secretary Harold Brown of the Air Force, Blue Book consisted of three steps: investigation, analysis, and the distribution of information gathered to interested parties. After Brown gave permission, the press were invited into the hearing. By the time of the hearing, Blue Book had identified and explained 95% of the reported UFO sightings. None of these were extraterrestrial or a threat to national security.Brown, Harold. "Unidentified Flying Objects." 6005. Brown himself proclaimed, "I know of no one of scientific standing or executive standing with a detailed knowledge of this, in our organization who believes that they came from extraterrestrial sources." Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a science consultant to Blue Book, suggested in an unedited statement that a "civilian panel of physical and social scientists" be formed "for the express purpose of determining whether a major problem really exist" in regards to UFOs. Hynek remarked that he has "not seen any evidence to confirm" extraterrestrials, "nor do I know any competent scientist who has, or who believes that any kind of extraterrestrial intelligence is involved."

Condon Committee

Criticism of Blue Book continued to grow through the mid-1960s.

's membership ballooned to about 15,000, and the group charged the U.S. Government with a cover-up of UFO evidence. Following U.S. Congressional hearings, the Condon Committee was established in 1966, ostensibly as a neutral scientific research body. However, the Committee became mired in controversy, with some members charging director

Edward U. Condon Edward Uhler Condon (March 2, 1902 – March 26, 1974) was an American nuclear physicist, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, and a participant during World War II in the development of radar and, very briefly, of nuclear weapons as part of the ...

with bias, and critics would question the validity and the scientific rigor of the Condon Report. In the end, the Condon Committee suggested that there was nothing extraordinary about UFOs, and while it left a minority of cases unexplained, the report also argued that further research would not be likely to yield significant results.

End

In response to the Condon Committee's conclusions, Secretary of the Air Force

Robert C. Seamans, Jr. Robert Channing Seamans Jr. (October 30, 1918 – June 28, 2008) was an MIT professor who served as NASA Deputy Administrator and 9th United States United States Secretary of the Air Force, Secretary of the Air Force. Birth and education He wa ...

announced that Blue Book would soon be closed because further funding "cannot be justified either on the grounds of national security or in the interest of science."Jerome Clark, ''The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial'', p. 480 The last publicly acknowledged day of Blue Book operations was December 17, 1969. However, researcher Brad Sparks, citing research from the May 1970 issue of NICAP's ''UFO Investigator'', reports that the last day of Blue Book activity was actually January 30, 1970. According to Sparks, Air Force officials wanted to keep the Air Force's reaction to the UFO problem from overlapping into a fourth decade, and thus altered the date of Blue Book's closure in official files. Blue Book's files were sent to the Air Force Archives at

Maxwell Air Force Base Maxwell Air Force Base , officially known as Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, is a United States Air Force (USAF) installation under the Air Education and Training Command (AETC). The installation is located in Montgomery, Alabama, United States. O ...

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...

. Major David Shea was to later claim that Maxwell was chosen because it was "accessible yet not too inviting." Ultimately, Project Blue Book stated that UFOs sightings were generated as a result of: *A mild form of mass hysteria. *Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a

hoax A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...

or seek publicity. * Psychopathological persons. *Misidentification of various conventional objects. In April 2003, the USAF publicly indicated that there were no immediate plans to re-establish any official government UFO study programs.USAF Fact Sheet 95-03
/ref> However, in December 2017 it was disclosed that a new secret UFO study titled the

Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was an unclassified but unpublicized investigatory effort funded by the United States Government to study unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP). The ...

(AATIP) was funded at 22 million dollars from 2007 to 2012.

USAF official statement on UFOs

Below is the United States Air Force's official statement regarding UFOs, as noted in USAF Fact Sheet 95-03:

Post-Blue Book U.S.A.F. UFO activities

An Air Force memorandum (released via the

) dated October 20, 1969, and signed by

Brigadier General Brigadier general or Brigade general is a military rank used in many countries. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries. The rank is usually above a colonel, and below a major general or divisional general. When appointed ...

Carroll H. "Rip" Bolender (the Deputy Director of Development and Acquisitions under the Air Force's Deputy Chief of Staff, Research and Development) states that even after Blue Book was dissolved, that "reports of UFOs" would still "continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedure designed for this purpose." Furthermore, wrote Bolender, "Reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security ... are not part of the Blue Book system."

Jenny Randles Jenny Randles is a British author and former director of investigations with the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), serving in that role from 1982 through to 1994. Career Randles specializes in writing books on UFOs and paranormal phen ...

and Peter Houghe; ''The Complete Book of UFOs: An Investigation into Alien Contact and Encounters''; Sterling Publishing Co, Inc, 1994; , p. 179 To date, these other investigation channels, agencies or groups (and Bolender's involvement therein) are unknown. Upon drafting the memo, Bolender, who assumed his generalship in 1965, had recently completed a detached tour as Program Manager for

Lunar Excursion Module The Apollo Lunar Module (LM ), originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lunar lander spacecraft that was flown between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface during the United States' Apollo program. It was the first crewed ...

Operations in the Apollo program, likely reporting to fellow detached Air Force officer

Samuel C. Phillips Samuel Cochran Phillips (19 February 1921 – 31 January 1990) was a United States Air Force general who served as Director of NASA's Apollo program from 1964 to 1969, as commander of the Space and Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO) from 196 ...

. He would continue to serve in this position and rank until he retired from the Air Force in 1972. Additionally, author Howard Blum reports that

requests show that the U.S. Air Force has continued to catalog and track UFO sightings, particularly a series of dozens of UFO encounters from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s that occurred at U.S. military facilities with

nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

. Blum writes that some of these official documents depart drastically from the normally dry and bureaucratic wording of government paperwork, making obvious the sense of "terror" that these UFO incidents inspired in many U.S.A.F. personnel.

Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14

In late December 1951, Ruppelt met with members of the

Battelle Memorial Institute Battelle Memorial Institute (more widely known as simply Battelle) is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle is a charitable trust organized as a nonprofit corporation u ...

, a think tank based in Columbus, Ohio. Ruppelt wanted their experts to assist them in making the Air Force UFO study more scientific. It was the Battelle Institute that devised the standardized reporting form. Starting in late March 1952, the Institute started analyzing existing sighting reports and encoding about 30 report characteristics onto IBM punched cards for computer analysis. Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 was their massive statistical analysis of Blue Book cases to date, some 3200 by the time the report was completed in 1954, after Ruppelt had left Blue Book. Even today, it represents the largest such study ever undertaken. Battelle employed four scientific analysts, who sought to divide cases into "knowns", "unknowns", and a third category of "insufficient information." They also broke down knowns and unknowns into four categories of quality, from excellent to poor. E.g., cases deemed excellent might typically involve experienced witnesses such as airline pilots or trained military personnel, multiple witnesses, corroborating evidence such as radar contact or photographs, etc. In order for a case to be deemed a "known", only two analysts had to independently agree on a solution. However, for a case to be called an "unknown", all four analysts had to agree. Thus the criterion for an "unknown" was quite stringent. In addition, sightings were broken down into six different characteristics—color, number, duration of observation, brightness, shape, and speed and then these characteristics were compared between knowns and unknowns to see if there was a statistically significant difference. The main results of the statistical analysis were: * About 69% of the cases were judged known or identified (38% were considered conclusively identified while 31% were still "doubtfully" explained); about 9% fell into insufficient information. About 22% were deemed "unknown", down from the earlier 28% value of the Air Force studies. * In the known category, 86% of the knowns were aircraft, balloons, or had astronomical explanations. Only 1.5% of all cases were judged to be psychological or "

crackpot Crackpot may refer to: * Crackpot, North Yorkshire, a village in the United Kingdom and home of Crackpot Cave * Crackpot Hall, a landmark ruin near Keld, North Yorkshire * a DC comics character, see Blasters (comics) * Crackpot (band), an Australi ...

" cases. A "miscellaneous" category comprised 8% of all cases and included possible hoaxes. * The higher the quality of the case, the more likely it was to be classified unknown. 35% of the excellent cases were deemed unknowns, as opposed to only 18% of the poorest cases. (More detailed statistics can be found at

Identified flying object Identifying unidentified flying objects (UFOs) is a difficult task due to the normally poor quality of the evidence provided by those who report sighting the unknown object. Observations and subsequent reporting are often made by those untrained ...

s.) Despite this, the summary section of the Battelle Institute's final report declared it was "highly improbable that any of the reports of unidentified aerial objects ... represent observations of technological developments outside the range of present-day knowledge." A number of researchers, including Dr.

Bruce Maccabee Bruce Maccabee (born May 6, 1942) is an American optical physicist formerly employed by the U.S. Navy, and a ufologist. Biography Maccabee received a B.S. in physics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., and then at American U ...

, who extensively reviewed the data, have noted that the conclusions of the analysts were usually at odds with their own statistical results, displayed in 240 charts, tables, graphs and maps. Some conjecture that the analysts may simply have had trouble accepting their own results or may have written the conclusions to satisfy the new political climate within Blue Book following the Robertson Panel. When the Air Force finally made Special Report #14 public in October 1955, it was claimed that the report scientifically proved that UFOs did not exist. Critics of this claim note that the report actually proved that the "unknowns" were distinctly different from the "knowns" at a very high

statistical significance In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis (simply by chance alone). More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by \alpha, is the p ...

level. The Air Force also incorrectly claimed that only 3% of the cases studied were unknowns, instead of the actual 22%. They further claimed that the residual 3% would probably disappear if more complete data were available. Critics counter that this ignored the fact that the analysts had already thrown such cases into the category of "insufficient information", whereas both "knowns" and "unknowns" were deemed to have sufficient information to make a determination. Also, the "unknowns" tended to represent the higher quality cases, q.e. reports that already had better information and witnesses. The result of the monumental BMI study was echoed by a 1979 French

GEPAN GEIPAN (an acronym for ''Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés'', or unidentified aerospace phenomenon research and information group). (), its name since September 2005. (The group was formerly know ...

report which stated that about a quarter of over 1,600 closely studied UFO cases defied explanation, stating, in part, "These cases ... pose a real question."

and Peter Houghe; ''The Complete Book of UFOs: An Investigation into Alien Contact and Encounters''; Sterling Publishing Co, Inc, 1994; , p. 202 When GEPAN's successor SEPRA closed in 2004, 5800 cases had been analyzed, and the percentage of inexplicable unknowns had dropped to about 14%. The head of SEPRA, Dr.

Jean-Jacques Velasco Jean-Jacques is a French name, equivalent to "John James" in English. Since the second half of 18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau was widely known as Jean Jacques. Notable people bearing this name include: Given name * Jean-Jacques Annaud (born 19 ...

, found the evidence of extraterrestrial origins so convincing in these remaining unknowns, that he wrote a book about it in 2005.

Hynek's criticism

Hynek was an associate member of the Robertson Panel, which recommended that UFOs needed

debunking {{Short pages monitor