DOW-UAP-D128: Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human Biological Tissues - Injuries from Close Encounters and a Medical "Reverse Engineering" Argument

Source file: DOW-UAP-D128_AAWSAP-DIRD-Anomalous-Acute-and-Subacute-Field-Effects-on-Human-Biological-Tissues-March-11-2010.pdf Originating agency: Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Warning Office, Directorate for Analysis; prepared by the Acquisition Support Division (DWO-3) under the AAWSA Program Document type: Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), "Acquisition Threat Support" series; no DIA control number appears on the cover Date: 11 March 2010 (information cutoff date, ICOD: 1 December 2009) Classification: UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY, with the FOUO caveat struck through on every page; released in 2026 Page count: 38 VIRIN: 260918-D-D0360-1117 PURSUE Release: 6

Summary

Of the AAWSAP reference documents in this release, this is the one that deals most directly with what happens to people who come close to an unidentified craft. In its own words, the paper "relates, summarizes, and analyzes evidence of unintended injury to human observers by anomalous advanced aerospace systems," and it goes on to argue that clinical diagnoses can be used to "reverse engineer" physical characteristics of the systems that caused them.

The author, whose name is redacted as "AAP Person 81," builds the case in five short chapters. The method is comparative: take the well-documented medical literature on accidental radiofrequency (RF) and microwave injuries, set it beside symptoms reported from close encounters, and ask whether the pattern of burns, eye damage, headaches, nausea and sleep disturbance points to a particular band of electromagnetic energy. The paper's answer is yes: the reported injuries fit a relatively narrow, non-ionizing band from HF through EHF. The author also concedes that the energy-related propulsion systems themselves "are not well understood."

Unlike most papers in the series, this one names UFOs outright. Appendix A reproduces the frequency table of a 1996 catalog of 356 "UFO-related" physiological-effect cases; Appendix B lists 96 older cases from around the world between 1952 and 1971; and Appendix C is a draft matrix crossing medical diagnostic codes (ICD-10-CM) with encounter features such as "Visual Contact: UFO" and "Approached landed UFO."

Research Article

The brief: injuries within tens of meters and ten minutes

Chapter One defines the scope. The wider program, the author writes, aims to understand the physics and engineering of advanced aerospace weapon system applications "from now through the year 2050"; this study covers the clinical signs, symptoms and biophysics of injury "known and expected from unintended exposure to anomalous systems" (page 8). The working definitions are specific: a "near field" deliberately left subjective but meaning exposures within sight of the injured person, a working distance of "10s of meters," exposure times under ten minutes, and a frequency window of about 300 kHz to 300 GHz (wavelengths of roughly 1 km to 1 mm). Only acute (hours) and subacute (days) effects are covered; chronic low-level exposure is excluded.

The exclusions are just as telling. On claims that such systems are intended to cause harm, the author writes, "We make no attempt herein to validate any claims," and sets aside psychophysics, the "paranormal" and pre-existing psychiatric conditions. Yet the draft coding project in Appendix C keeps "medical sequelae from perceived abductions" "for completeness" (page 9). Beam weapons, active denial systems and high-powered microwaves (HPM) are explicitly in scope, because the author treats the side effects of lift and propulsion mechanisms and the effects of weapons as one problem. The administrative note on page 2 calls the paper one of a series of advanced technology reports "produced in FY 2009" and directs questions to AAP Person 1, the AAWSA Program Manager at DIA in Washington.

Of the twelve technical areas in the program's Statement of Objectives (DOW-UAP-D110), the paper belongs squarely to "human effects," with secondary claims on propulsion and power generation (the "reverse engineering" argument) and on armament (directed-energy and non-lethal weapons).

The anchor case and the Cash-Landrum comparison

The preface opens with an unnamed case: three "previous fit and active individuals" who, "several years ago," experienced an "anomalous" aerospace-related event and within 72 hours developed erythema over exposed skin, fever, headaches, numbness, diarrhea, hair loss, skin boils, palpitations, insomnia and anxiety. Two had photophobia and inflamed eyes, and one developed "moderate blood dyscrasia and signs of radiation illness" and, over several years, "signs of malignant transformations" (page 5). "Extensive, but controversial investigations" found that the three had been exposed in the near field to mixed broadband radiation "centered at about 785 MHz." They were, the preface says, "antennae engineers subjected to an anomalous 'accident'."

The paper's source for this case, reference [1], is a 1997 article in an occupational-medicine journal titled "Effects of acute exposure to ultrahigh radiofrequency radiation on three antenna engineers." In other words, the benchmark is a documented RF exposure; what makes it "anomalous" in the paper's vocabulary is only the bracketed definition "irregular, incongruous and inconsistent with their domain." Beyond it, the preface cites 42 "less dramatic" cases from the peer-reviewed literature and "an additional un-published similar 300 cases," mostly mixed exposures at 1-10 GHz above 100 mW/cm2.

The central move comes in Chapter Three (page 19). In the cases studied, the author writes, there are no significant differences in reported symptoms or physician-observed signs between the three antenna engineers and "the Cash-Landrum cases." From this the author draws the paper's strongest sentence: "'Something' is causing these near field injuries." The paper gives no date, place or narrative for the Cash-Landrum case; it cites a 1981 MUFON UFO Journal article about it and mentions unpublished findings on "a pair of well-documented human cases" (pages 14-15). On page 23 it adds that the RF heating "clearly responsible for the erythema and burns" could not have caused the blood disorders and malignant changes in the Cash-Landrum victims, and attributes the DNA damage instead to ionizing radiation.

An INSCOM report and the "RF hearing" literature

Chapter Two opens with a vignette. A citizen identified only as "XXXX" believed the government was attacking him with field-effect weapons, threatened a Secret Service agent, was arrested, and was judged psychotic by a psychologist and a psychiatrist. But the document he carried was genuine: an Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) report, "Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapons," from 1998, classified SECRET/NOFORN until 2006. The author draws six lessons from it (page 11), including "There is no evidence that the systems described in the document have been fielded" and "There is no doubt that they would work." A footnote states that the author once personally ran the INSCOM effort from which that document derived.

The INSCOM effects list follows: microwave "hearing" and localized heating; RF-modulated intracranial "voices" produced by thermoelastic expansion at 5 kHz; raising core body temperature above 41°C with VHF (225 MHz) within 15-30 minutes; seizures from nanosecond pulses of 100 kV/m repeated at 15 Hz; and nausea and disorientation from 145 dB tones at 100-500 Hz (pages 11-12). The section on RF hearing traces the phenomenon from a 1956 Airborne Instruments Laboratory report to a 2003 review and claims that the character of the perceived sounds can be used to "back-calculate" the emitter; simple shielding, "including tin-foil hats (sic!)," attenuates and often blocks them (page 13). A heavier effect is quantified too: very intense pulses at 915 MHz raise brain temperature by 8°C, causing seizures after one minute of exposure and five minutes of unconsciousness, with a "stun" threshold of 680 J, about 1,000 times the auditory threshold (page 14).

The most speculative passage is a hypothesis adapted from "Technical Study 10.0 Human Effects": under "spacetime manipulation for lift and propulsion," a craft's blackbody heat spectrum would be blue-shifted, so a person nearby could receive broadband radiation from microwaves to soft X-rays (page 14). The idea applies General Relativity to propulsion concepts that have never been demonstrated experimentally; the paper itself offers it only as "one hypothesis."

From skin to brain: the dose-response lists

Chapters Three to Five are the technical core. They define the bands (RF from 100 kHz to 300 GHz; microwave from 300 MHz to 300 GHz) and the specific absorption rate (SAR, in W/kg), and reproduce a World Health Organization figure (Figure 1) that divides absorption in the body into four regions. The 785 MHz exposure falls in the "hot spot" range of 400 MHz to 2 GHz, where peak-to-average SAR ratios reach 150:1 to 200:1 (page 16). Heat is perceived at about 0.7 mW/cm2 and becomes painful at about 9 mW/cm2 within one second.

Drawing on about 100 accidental exposures in military aerospace and communications settings, the author lists the acute picture that the paper says also appears in encounter reports: a prickly warmth on exposed skin, erythema progressing to second-degree burns within 72 hours, a temporal headache lasting three weeks, vertigo and vomiting at 24-72 hours, palpitations at 48-72 hours, "gritty eye syndrome," Beau's lines on the fingernails, and paresthesiae that can last up to three years (pages 17-18). A footnote makes severe anxiety requiring medication and hospitalization a marker of broadband exposure above about 500 mW/cm2. A short graded list links power densities to outcomes, from "no effects" below 10 mW/cm2 to a neuropathy lasting 20 months.

Chapter Three also flags an "enigma": 1-3 cm wheals, boils and abrasions on clothed parts of the body, away from the burns, that cannot be diagnosed as thermal injuries (page 18). For a possible mechanism the author turns to a theoretical paper by researchers in Dubna, Tashkent and Rostock on magnetic-field resonance of ionic currents in blood vessels, conceding that the peer review of it is "well beyond the capabilities of this author" (page 19). Chapter Four reviews FCC exposure limits (Table 1) and concludes that early burns are unlikely below about 1.0 W/kg or 1.0 mW/cm2 over minutes, so reports of erythema imply those levels "have been surpassed!" (page 22). Chapter Five compares two 2007 rat-brain studies at 900 and 1439 MHz and argues that 48 hours of "cognitive clouding," sleep and anxiety complaints, and minor motor problems fit a "narrow HF through EHF, non-ionizing, RF band of exposure" (page 25).

The appendices: a UFO catalog, 96 old cases and an ICD matrix

Appendix A (pages 30-31) is the frequency table from "UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects," a catalog compiled in 1996 by John F. Schuessler, whom the paper describes as MUFON's past Director: 356 selected cases from 1873 to 1994. The top entries are apparent abductions (129), electromagnetic effects on vehicles (77), paralysis (75), perceived time loss (75), light-beam effects (61), eye injuries (54), heat (43) and burns (41); deaths appear five times. The author calls the catalog a database "from which it is anticipated that certain physical source causes may be inferred."

Appendix B (pages 32-33) lists 96 dated locations in 14 countries between 1952 and 1971, from Worcester Cape in South Africa to Sweden, including 20 French entries between September and November 1954. Appendix C (pages 34-38), marked "in draft- progress," explains J. Vallee's classification ratings (AN, MA, FB, CE) and cites the "CASH/LANDRUM CASE" as an example of a fly-by causing permanent injury. It then presents a three-page matrix. The rows are diagnoses with ICD codes, from "Loss of Hearing H91.9" and "Amnesia R41.3" to "Third Degree Burns/Charring" and "Flesh appeared cooked"; the columns are encounter features such as "Hear Humming Sound," "Struck by beam of light," "Saw 'beings/humanoids'" and "Electromagnetic effect on vehicle." The cells hold case numbers, some higher than 96, so the Appendix B list is only part of the database.

What the paper does not establish

No patient is examined in the document. The central comparison rests on unpublished, HIPAA-protected files the reader cannot see, and on encounter reports whose exposure conditions cannot be measured. The draft also shows signs of haste: the list of tables reads "Error! Bookmark not defined."; a "Table Two" cited in Chapter Four does not appear; Chapter Five announces "four separate problems" and then lists five; and the literature counts ("over 240,000" papers on RF hearing, "approximately 300,000" citations on RF and brain injury) rest on search-engine hit counts, while reference [41] itself gives 8,006. Sources range from peer-reviewed journals to Wikipedia, the MUFON journal and a web page on the "Philadelphia Experiment"; one reference is a link to a local computer (127.0.0.1). The official blurb puts it plainly: the paper "does not establish a direct causal link between the reported injuries and any specific source."

Significance

This is the AAWSAP paper closest to the question readers usually ask: were people actually hurt by these objects, and what would that tell us? Its value lies in what it puts on record. It is a document from a DIA program stating that "Sufficient incidents/accidents have been accurately reported, and medical data acquired, as to support a hypothesis that some advanced systems are already deployed, and opaque to full US understanding" (page 6). It sets out a dose-response framework linking symptoms to frequency and power density, and it makes an early attempt to code encounter injuries in standard medical diagnostic codes.

Its limits are just as specific. The argument rests on analogy rather than measurement; the Cash-Landrum comparison is asserted rather than shown; and the paper defers the theoretical work, noting in a footnote that the series "is not to be limited to current technology, much less-only 'on-world' technology" (page 20). Read alongside the other AAWSAP reference documents, it shows how far the program went in treating the medical side of close encounters as a source of technical intelligence.

Key People

Locations

Key Concepts

Notable Quotes

"This paper relates, summarizes, and analyzes evidence of unintended injury to human observers by anomalous advanced aerospace systems." -- page 5

"Based on historical cases, humans have been found to have been injured from exposures to anomalous vehicles, especially airborne, and when in relatively close proximity." -- page 6

"Sufficient incidents/accidents have been accurately reported, and medical data acquired, as to support a hypothesis that some advanced systems are already deployed, and opaque to full US understanding." -- page 6

"The medical analyses while not requiring the invention of an alternative biophysics, do indicate the use of (to us) unconventional and advanced energy systems." -- page 7

"There are no significant differences in either the reported acute effects (symptoms) or the physician-observed (signs) between the case of three antenna engineers and the Cash-Landrum cases." -- page 19

"This pathophysiological observation is a convincing one: 'Something' is causing these near field injuries, the energy deposition and conditions follow our 'real-world' neurological experience." -- page 19

"As the purpose of this paper is to argue that data exists to 'reverse engineer' propulsion systems of anomalous aerospace vehicles, independent of origin, based on biology..." -- pages 24-25

"There is no evidence that the systems described in the document have been fielded." -- page 11