DOW-UAP-D168: BAASS Project Management Plan - Nine Projects, from Field "Engagement" to Blue Book Files at Los Alamos (December 2008)

Source file: DOW-UAP-D168-BAASS_Project_Management_Plan-December_2008.pdf Originating agency: Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), contractor to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for AAWSAP Document type: Project Management Plan, "Project Management Plan (Overview Paper)", a contract deliverable under HHM402-08-C-0072, with three attached exhibits Date: 2 December 2008 Classification: No government classification marking on the body of the plan; every page carries a BAASS "proprietary and confidential" legend, struck through on some pages. The 1947 memo among the exhibits is marked SECRET. Publicly released in 2026 Page count: 49 VIRIN: 260508-D-D0360-1160 PURSUE Release: 7

Summary

The Project Management Plan of 2 December 2008 is one of the first deliverables that BAASS, the research arm of Bigelow Aerospace, submitted to the DIA after winning the AAWSAP contract. The program's Statement of Objectives (D110) required a "Project Management Plan" for each technical area within 60 days, and the document opens by stating that it fulfils that requirement under contract HHM402-08-C-0072 (see D111). Instead of one plan for each of the 12 areas, from lift to armament, BAASS proposes nine "major projects" that together are meant to cover them all.

The core (PDF pages 7 to 41) describes each project in a fixed structure: Objectives, Methodology, Milestones and Team Composition. It is preceded by ten "Key Recommendations" addressed to the DIA, including requests to speed up security clearances, obtain gun-camera and satellite film, locate files at Los Alamos, approach the Brazilian Air Force and NORAD, and seek access to "biological material of potentially non-human origin". Three exhibits are attached at the end (pages 42 to 49).

The document is written in very assertive language: it speaks of "novel spacecraft already known to exist" and of "six decades of intensive activity". These are the contractor's own claims, and the plan offers no evidence for them beyond the attached exhibits. All staff appear only as labels: the Administrator is AAP Person 4, the Deputy Administrator AAP Person 7, and the advisors AAP Person 57 and AAP Person 8.

Research Article

A contract deliverable that redefines the task

The AAWSAP contract, as drafted by the DIA, concerned understanding the "physics and engineering" of advanced aerospace weapon systems out to 2050 and did not mention UFOs. The BAASS preface (page 4) starts somewhere else entirely: "There has been over six decades of intensive activity of advanced aerospace craft in the skies over North America and around the world." The importance of the study, it says, lies in the possibility that some of these craft "may represent a threat to the security of the United States including its airspace and nuclear facilities."

The acknowledgements page (page 5) reveals the plan's source material: three sets of documents delivered to BAASS under contract 081006-1 with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), contract 080930-1 with Earthtech International, and an internal assignment to a BAASS employee labelled AAP Person 8. The summary (page 7) quotes the Earthtech report on the need for "examining more exotic possibilities that might account for reports of truly anomalous characteristics of high-performance craft of unknown origin".

The methodological choice is stated on page 15: "we deliberately adopted the stance that the most productive way to learn the maximum about the twelve technical areas was to study craft that are already displaying novel behavior in the twelve technical areas." Except for Project Physics, BAASS resources would not be devoted to the "state of the art" in universities, an approach that "could prove fruitless and waste significant time and money."

There is a small but telling inconsistency: page 15 says BAASS chose "eight specific projects" and that "very recently, DIA has mandated the creation of a ninth project", Project Physics. In other words, the only project devoted to conventional physics research was added at the agency's request, not on the contractor's initiative. The document also calls itself alternately a "Project Manager Report" and a "Program Manager Report".

Ten recommendations to the DIA

Most recommendations (pages 10 to 13) ask the DIA to obtain for BAASS information the contractor believes is already "in government hands". The first is a clearance for the BAASS Administrator "by the end of January", without which, it says, the work would become "more of a parochial study". The second is access to film "from gun cameras, ground base sources or satellites", said to bear on eight of the areas. The third concerns files "kept separate" from Project Blue Book because of their "high sensitivity" and held, it says, at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL): "BAASS affiliated personnel have the precise files numbers and locations". The plan describes Blue Book as "active in the 1960's", a partial description of a program that ran from 1952 to 1969.

The following recommendations ask for an approach to the Brazilian Air Force by 1 February 2009 about Colares; data on effects at nuclear facilities such as RAF Bentwaters and Malmstrom AFB; official agency escorts for interviews, since BAASS says it holds a list of "about ten individuals" who worked on programs involving "retrieval of advanced aerospace hardware or of associated biological material"; and links with foreign governments, because "several 'crashes' of novel spacecraft have occurred outside of the United States". Recommendation 9 asks the DIA to lobby through interagency channels for "medical samples", naming the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), the Fort Detrick commands (USAMRMC and USAMRIID) and Dugway Proving Ground. Recommendation 10 asks NORAD, by 15 February 2009, for trajectory and speed data on "uncorrelated targets".

The nine projects

Project Physics (pages 16 to 18): in November 2008 Earthtech delivered twelve "Technical Studies" that BAASS calls "highly theoretical". After consultation with the DIA, Earthtech and its subcontractors would write "approximately 24 position papers" by 31 July 2009. This is very probably the origin of the DIRD series published in Release 6 (D117 to D153), although the plan itself does not use the term DIRD. Team: AAP Person 57, AAP Person 58 and subcontractors.

Project Engagement (pages 19 to 21) is the most unusual section. It aims to locate "small geographical areas where novel spacecraft seem to frequent", mainly for area 9, Human Interface. Its three objectives are to choose and secure sites, gather observational data, and a third objective of "Communication and or Contact". The authors cite previous experience: "Multiple human witnesses were involved in many dozens of successful efforts. These intensified in 2007 and 2008. Hundreds of photographs ... were taken showing anomalistic features." They add that in most cases "we were acted upon". The plan does not name the site, attaches none of the photographs, and warns that the program "could be risky for the participants". It notes that the sister company Bigelow Aerospace already employs "a few people that already have some experience".

Project Cooperation (pages 22 to 24), called "the most important of all Plans of Action", rests on the Administrator, AAP Person 4, receiving a clearance and on the DIA mining its own archives. Project Campus (pages 25 to 27) proposes grants and RFPs to universities to overcome the "giggle factor", led by AAP Person 99 and AAP Person 100, with a milestone on 28 February 2009. Project Database (pages 28 to 30) describes data scattered "through over twenty smaller databases in the United States and over a dozen more internationally" and plans, by 30 June 2009, to acquire a subset including NIDS, MUFON, UFOCAT, GEIPAN and NARCAP, keeping only "close encounter cases with multiple witnesses". Oral History (pages 31 to 32) plans recorded and videotaped interviews with "highly placed retired individuals".

Project Blue Book Materials (pages 33 to 34) repeats the LANL claim and adds that "there may be physical trace evidence" at the same location. BAASS concedes: "we only know the precise locations of a portion of these files". Project Northern Tier (pages 35 to 36) lists Malmstrom, Loring, Wurtsmith, Minot and Kirtland in the 1960s and 1970s and RAF Bentwaters in December 1980, and cites an October 1968 Minot event "involving a 300 foot long advanced aerospace vehicle" that reached Blue Book only in incomplete form. Project Colares (pages 37 to 39) concerns the wave of reports on Colares Island in northern Brazil from June to December 1977, quotes a physician whose name is redacted, and notes that about 200 pages of Brazilian Air Force files had been posted online. A further source is attributed to AAP Person 5 in "Confrontations"; the plan does not identify the author.

The attached exhibits

Page 42 lists three exhibits, two of whose titles are redacted (the redaction code throughout is 1843(a)(2), 1843(a)(1)(B)). Exhibit 1 (pages 43 to 44, the second page upside down) is a Headquarters Air Materiel Command memo of 23 September 1947, "AMC Opinion Concerning 'Flying Discs'", marked SECRET and stamped "RESEARCH MATERIAL FROM: AAP Person 8". The signatory and addressee are redacted. The memo states that "The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious", describes objects "circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top", and explicitly notes "the lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits".

Exhibit 2 (Appendix 2, pages 45 to 46) is a "2002 Sealed Affidavit" dated 26 December 2002 by the person who was public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field in 1947. The affiant's name, the witness and the officers he mentions are redacted. The affiant describes a staff meeting on 8 July 1947, debris "paper thin yet extremely strong", and a visit to Building 84 (Hangar P-3) where he saw an object "approx. 12 to 15 feet in length" and "a couple of bodies under a canvas tarpaulin". BAASS attaches the affidavit as is, without analysis.

Exhibit 3 (pages 47 to 49, partly scanned sideways) is a copy of a British Ministry of Defence file as circulated "via UFO Newsclipping Service": a solicitor's letter of 20 July 1988, "Re: 'Radar Blip'", enclosing the narrative of "a former American Pilot" whose name is deleted. He describes a scramble of two F-86Ds from RAF Manston on 20 May 1957, an order to fire "a full salvo of rockets" at a UFO, a radar return with "the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier", and an unidentified civilian who told him not to discuss it.

What the document does not say

The plan gives no budget, names no address or city (Las Vegas appears only in the release metadata), and documents none of its factual claims, from the Los Alamos files to the "crashes" abroad. The exhibits are previously circulated historical papers or late testimony, not BAASS research products. Nor does it say whether the DIA accepted any of the recommendations; for that the monthly reports in this release, D169 (March 2009), D170, D171 and D173, must be read.

Significance

This is the document in which the gap first becomes visible between the program the DIA commissioned, engineering research into future aerospace threats, and the program BAASS intended to run: research that assumes the existence of "very novel spacecraft" and seeks access to files, film, hardware and biological samples. It shows that the DIRD papers, the best known AAWSAP products, were to the contractor a secondary project added at the agency's request, while the main effort was aimed at report databases, interviews, historical files and field observation. It is useful precisely because it is written as a plan: it sets target dates (January to July 2009) against which the monthly reports can be checked. The score was raised from 6 to 7 because this is the contractor's founding work plan and most later BAASS activity derives from it.

Key People

Locations

Key Concepts

Notable Quotes

"It should be stated at the outset that we deliberately adopted the stance that the most productive way to learn the maximum about the twelve technical areas was to study craft that are already displaying novel behavior in the twelve technical areas." -- page 15

"Very recently, DIA has mandated the creation of a ninth project, that we call Project Physics" -- page 15

"BAASS affiliated personnel have the precise files numbers and locations of these files at LANL" -- page 11

"The third objective would be Communication and or Contact." -- page 20

"Foundationally, there still remains a giggle factor which has been instrumental in squashing serious consideration and thought." -- page 25

"It is imperative that physical access be obtained to actual hardware of the anomalous spacecraft that appear to be many decades or centuries beyond anything we have." -- page 40

"The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious." -- page 43 (AMC memo, 1947)