Science

AAWSAP

AWE-sap
The Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, a $22 million Defense Intelligence Agency effort (2008-2010) that became the first official US government UAP investigation since Project Blue Book closed in 1969.
Documented

The documented program

Funded in 2008 at Senator Harry Reid's initiative, with Robert Bigelow's BAASS as contractor. The program produced 38 technical reports (the DIRDs) on topics from warp drive to invisibility cloaking, and ran field investigations including Skinwalker Ranch as a self-described living laboratory. The DIA confirmed the program's existence and released the report list in 2019 under FOIA pressure; AAWSAP ended in 2010 when funding lapsed.

Assessment: Documented: the budget, the sponsor, the contractor, the 38 reports. The DIA's own letter is the source.
Stories

The ranch detour

The story the program cannot shake: a serious defense intelligence effort spent much of its money at Skinwalker Ranch collecting accounts of poltergeist activity, cryptids, and orbs alongside UAP. Skeptics hold this up as proof the program was paranormal hobbyism with a government card; defenders note the biological-effects data it gathered remains the largest such collection.

Assessment: Stories: the ranch happened. Whether it was data or distraction is the permanent argument.
Interesting claims

The seed crystal

The reading: AAWSAP is the ancestor of everything current, Elizondo's AATIP, Stratton's task force, the 2021 ODNI report, the congressional hearings. A $22 million side project recruited the small circle of scientists and officers whose names now anchor the entire disclosure conversation.

Assessment: Interesting: the genealogy is documented. So is the fact that it is one small circle.
Sources and further reading
  1. DIA letter to Congress confirming AAWSAP and the 38 DIRDs, released under FOIA, 2019
  2. New York Times, 'Glowing Auras and Black Money', December 16, 2017 (program disclosure)
  3. Senator Harry Reid's funding initiative, 2008; BAASS contract record
  4. Kelleher, Knapp, and Lacatski, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, 2021 (insider account, claim source)
Worth asking

When a UFO program gets a budget line instead of a punchline, what changed?

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GR8YFILES · competing origin stories, labeled by the strength of their evidence · readers 14+