UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 07 · OCTOBER 23, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D168BAASS Project Management Plan, December 2008
This 49-page “Project Management Plan (Overview Paper),” dated December 2, 2008, is Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies’ plan for contract HHM402-08-C-0072, one of the deliverables set by the contract award. Every page is marked proprietary, and the names of the Administrator, Deputy Administrator, advisors and team members are withheld. It says the twelve technical areas would be covered through a handful of projects feeding a final report due in September 2009.
The nine projects
The plan lists Physics (added at the DIA’s request: about 24 position papers from Earthtech International by July 31, 2009); Engagement (finding places with frequent sightings to observe and, as a third goal, attempt “Communication and or Contact”); Cooperation (DIA help obtaining film, hardware and records); Campus (university grants); Database (merging some 20 existing catalogs); Oral History (interviewing aging insiders); Blue Book Materials (files BAASS says sit at Los Alamos, kept out of Blue Book); Northern Tier (1960s–70s incidents at missile and bomber bases such as Malmstrom, Minot and Loring, plus Bentwaters in 1980); and Colares (the 1977 Brazilian flap). It says BAASS chose eight projects and the DIA then required a ninth, Project Physics.
BAASS states plainly that, apart from Project Physics, it would study craft it believed already show novel performance rather than current academic research. Its ten recommendations ask the DIA for clearances by the end of January 2009, gun-camera and satellite film, the Los Alamos files, Brazilian Air Force records, NORAD data on uncorrelated targets, and lobbying for access to “biological material of potentially non-human origin.”
Exhibits and limits
The exhibits are a barely legible old Air Materiel Command memorandum, a 2002 affidavit from a man who says he was the Roswell base information officer in July 1947 and saw a craft and bodies (name withheld; see Roswell), and a British Ministry of Defence item on an F-86D incident of May 20, 1957.
The plan records what the contractor intended and what it believed; claims of crashes, recovered biology, hidden files and prior “contact” work are asserted, not documented here. It is a striking shift from the DIA’s Statement of Objectives, which never mentions UFOs.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released October 23, 2026, quoted in full
This document is an administrative, programmatic, or contractor-produced record related to the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)-administered program active from 2008 to 2012. AAWSAP’s official scope of work identified 12 technical research areas relating to potential aerospace threats over a time horizon of more than 40 years. As part of the broader program record, the file documents how AAWSAP was scoped, organized, tasked, funded, executed, or described at a particular point in time.
This December 2008 Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) Project Management Plan is an overview paper setting out the contractor’s proposed strategy, priorities, and milestones for executing contract HHM402-08-C-0072 (AAWSAP). The plan states that BAASS would address the program’s 12 technical areas through a smaller number of selected projects, including initiatives focused on physics research, project cooperation with government-held information, academic engagement, database development, oral-history interviewing, and collection or review of materials described as excluded from Project Blue Book. The plan argues that the most productive approach would be to study “craft” or events already believed by BAASS to demonstrate novel behavior across the 12 technical areas, rather than concentrating primarily on then-current academic or industrial state-of-the-art research.