THE DOCUMENTS
DOW-UAP-D166, “MUFON Reports Prepared for BAASS November 2008”, DOW-UAP-D167, “Project Capella December 2008”, and DOW-UAP-D168, “BAASS Project Management Plan December 2008”, three Department of War records from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 07, published at war.gov/ufo on 23 October 2026. The titles are the release’s, taken from the file names; each war.gov site title adds a comma before the month. D166, 26 pages, is a cover reading MUFON Reports, Prepared for BAASS, November 2008, Copies (p. 1, read from the page image) and five typescript papers, each paginated on its own, with Nov-08 in the footer (cut off at the edge on pp. 14 to 16): Lift (pp. 2 to 6), Power Generation (pp. 7 to 13), Control (pp. 14 to 16), Human Interface (pp. 17 to 21) and Propulsion (pp. 22 to 26). D167, 42 pages, is a cover reading Project Capella (p. 1); a title page under a company letterhead, dated 10 December 2008 and addressed Report no.001 to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, LLC (BAASS), with an author under a substitution label (p. 2, read from the page image); an overview (pp. 2 to 11); Appendices A, B and C (pp. 12 to 40); and a two-page exhibit table (pp. 41, 42). D168, 49 pages, is a Project Management Plan (Overview Paper) under Contract HHM402-08-C-0072, dated 2 December 2008 (pp. 1, 2): front matter (pp. 3 to 6), a body printed Page 1 to 35 (pp. 7 to 41), an Exhibits list (p. 42) and three exhibits (pp. 43 to 49); this briefing uses PDF pages. The D166 footers read BAASS CONFIDENTIAL and the D168 plan footers carry a proprietary notice; on the page images both are struck through, and no page says by whom. Names lie under thin-outlined white boxes labelled 1843(a)(2), in the D168 exhibits also 1843(a)(1)(B), or, in D167 and D168, carrying substitution labels (AAP Person and a number). No page explains either kind of label.
Why this one is worth your time
D166, D167 and D168 are the earliest dated BAASS records in Release 07. They show what BAASS received and proposed in the last weeks of 2008: five research proposals from MUFON, a proposal for a warehouse of sighting catalogues, and BAASS’s own plan of nine projects, with ten recommendations, most of them for what the DIA should help it obtain.
Only D168 gives a contract number or names the DIA. None of the three prints AAWSAP, the acronym under which the war.gov site tags them.
What the documents say
D166, the MUFON papers. Each paper opens under the Mutual UFO Network name and a MUFON Advanced Technology Establishment line with a place in California, Colorado, Wisconsin or Texas (pp. 2, 7, 14, 17, 22). Lift concludes that using the Earth’s magnetic field with superconductors has merit (p. 2), and its milestones include the line “Week 17: Results surprise everyone, require redesign” (p. 4). Power Generation proposes buying a reactor for cold fusion work which, the paper says, has been built but never funded for experiments (pp. 7, 10, 11). Control would steer a superconducting craft by modulating the current in its superconductor (p. 14). Human Interface hypothesises that implants found in people are bi-directional communication devices which, reverse engineered, could give a mind-to-vehicle interface, and proposes an implant removal study of 18 to 24 months (pp. 19 to 21). Propulsion lists nine characteristics drawn from observations of unidentified aerial phenomena, then asks which theory best fits the seven conditions noted, and proposes research on anti-gravity (pp. 22 to 24).
D167, Project CAPELLA. The overview proposes a data warehouse rather than one massive catalogue or a merger of existing databases, each of which, it says, carries its own bias: a standard structure and coding over many files, kept by a small trained team on commercial software, Microsoft EXCEL first (pp. 6, 7). It counts at least 30 active catalogues (p. 5), estimates the available sighting cases at only about 100,000, and says many private efforts carry an embedded bias, usually the unstated assumption that all cases involve spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin (p. 7). From 1 January 2009 every case coming to BAASS’s knowledge could be recorded in the new format by a dedicated data analyst (p. 8). The personnel section says three important roles have been identified and sets out five across two years, the last two for the second year (pp. 9, 10); the budget, plus or minus 30 per cent, totals $610,000 for the first year and $830,000 for the second (p. 11). Appendix A classifies reports by the behaviour of the phenomenon, as anomalies, close encounters, manoeuvres and flybys, each with five variants (pp. 15 to 17). Appendix B, by two authors under substitution labels, sets out a six-layer model, from physical manifestations to cultural effects (p. 20). The exhibit gives 48 case rows from 1946 to 1967, the witnesses’ column under one box (pp. 41, 42, read from the page images).
D168, the plan. The Preface speaks of over six decades of advanced aerospace craft, some of which may threaten the security of the United States, its airspace and nuclear facilities, and thanks the sponsors/DIA (p. 4). The Acknowledgements record three sets of documents delivered under serious time constraints: under contract 081006-1 to MUFON, under contract 080930-1 to a second contractor company, and from an assignment to a BAASS employee (p. 5).
The Summary says the report fulfils the requirement to submit a report under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application contract HHM402-08-C-0072, for twelve technical areas, with a final report due in September 2009 (p. 7). Nine projects are to address all twelve (p. 7). Physics, mandated by the DIA, would bring approximately 24 position papers from the second contractor company by 31 July 2009, expanding on the 12 Technical Studies it delivered in November 2008 (pp. 8, 16, 17). Engagement would locate and secure small areas with very frequent displays of advanced aerospace vehicles in order to observe them, with Communication and or Contact as its third objective (pp. 8, 19, 20). Cooperation, which the plan says could be the most important, depends on the Agency helping BAASS acquire film, hardware, materials and information (p. 22). Campus would fund university research, Database would bring existing databases together, and Oral History would record interviews with dozens of highly placed individuals (pp. 8, 9, 26). Blue Book Materials would obtain files of cases never included in Project Blue Book, presumably because they were deemed too sensitive; Northern Tier concerns cases of the 1960s and 1970s at bases holding nuclear weapons; Colares concerns 1977 incidents on Colares Island in northern Brazil, many of which, the page says, caused death and injury (p. 9).
Among the ten Key Recommendations are requests for clearances for BAASS staff, at least the Administrator’s by the end of January (p. 10); for the DIA to contact a Brazilian military body by 1 February 2009 for the files on the 1977 events, medical records included (p. 11); for Agency officials at interviews, so that the government employees concerned know it is “officially okay” to speak (p. 12); and for help with foreign sources, the page stating that testimony substantiates several “crashes” of novel spacecraft outside the United States (p. 12). Recommendation 9 rests on the premise that biological material of potentially non-human origin has been recovered (p. 13).
D168, the exhibits. The Exhibits list boxes most of the names of items (1) and (2), leaving the words memorandum and Affidavit, and gives item (3) as a United Kingdom Ministry of Defense aircraft incident of 20 May 1957 (p. 42). Item (1) is a copy of a memorandum headed Headquarters, Air Materiel Command, dated SEP 23 1947, subject AMC Opinion Concerning Flying Discs, its addressee and signature block boxed (pp. 43, 44). Among its opinions are that the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious, and that reported characteristics lend belief to the possibility that some objects are controlled manually, automatically or remotely; it also allows that some incidents may be caused by natural phenomena such as meteors, asks that a domestic high security project, the lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits and a foreign nation’s form of propulsion be considered, and recommends a detailed study (pp. 43, 44). All of this is read from the page images, p. 43 being damaged in the text layer and p. 44 scanned on its side.
Item (2), headed APPENDIX 2, is an affidavit dated 26 December 2002; the affiant’s name, birth date and address are boxed, as are the names of the other people he mentions, and it closes with his conviction that what he observed was a craft and its crew from outer space, then Signed: and Signature witnessed by:, each beside a box, with no signature visible (pp. 45, 46). Item (3) is three pages of a reprint headed as copies from British archives, released through a clipping service and numbered 03 to 05, holding a 1988 solicitor’s letter to the Ministry of Defence in London, with a Ministry of Defence stamp dated 21 JUL 1988, forwarding a former American pilot’s narrative of a night intercept in May 1957 in which, he says, the target broke radar lock and left his range; its black bars carry no code, and a handwritten note says names were deleted to protect witnesses’ identity (pp. 47 to 49, read from the page images).
What the documents do not say
AAWSAP returns zero in all three records. D168 prints the contract number on five pages (pp. 1, 2, 7, 9, 14) and DIA 29 times as a whole word, never expanded (Defense Intelligence 0); D166 and D167 carry no contract number (HHM402 0) and no whole-word DIA. D166 never expands BAASS (Bigelow 0), and no author’s name heads any of its five papers; the reference lists that close three of them are boxed (pp. 16, 21, 25, 26).
D168’s body never refers to its exhibits: exhibit occurs only inside exhibitions and exhibited (p. 40) and in the list (p. 42), so why the copies were attached is not said. The plan gives no budget or cost for any of its nine projects. It does not name the place of Engagement’s earlier efforts, which, it says, intensified in 2007 and 2008; in most contacts, it adds, the authors were acted upon, having placed themselves in residency at the location (p. 20). The 12 Technical Studies and the other two sets are acknowledged (pp. 5, 16) but not attached.
None of the three reports what came of its proposals. The site’s description of D167 credits it with groundwork for BAASS’s later work, and its description of D166 says the papers were prepared under a second, supporting contract: both are the site’s framing, and D166 uses the word contract only in milestones (pp. 4, 13, 16). The site gives D166 and D168 the Incident Location Las Vegas, Nevada, which neither prints (0 each), and D166 the Incident Date 11/1/2008, a day its cover and footers do not give. It gives D167 the Incident Location San Fransisco, California, as the site spells it. D167 is a proposal and reports no incident of its own; the 48 cases in its exhibit table are taken from an existing catalogue (p. 40).
From the record
MUFON is in possession of copies of x-rays which may provide evidence of implants in
DOW-UAP-D166, p. 19, the Human Interface paper’s Plan of Action and Milestones for implant removal; the sentence continues: unsuspecting U.S. citizens
whether the properties of unidentified aerial phenomena that have been witnessed over the last 50
DOW-UAP-D166, p. 22, the introduction of the Propulsion paper; the sentence begins: Although controversial, it is worth considering
of unusual aerial phenomena whose nature or behavior suggest the presence of an
DOW-UAP-D167, p. 5, the first of four needs set out under Implementation requirements; the sentence continues: unrecognized threat
Three (3) persons at $120,000 fully-loaded average salary $360,000
DOW-UAP-D167, p. 11, the first line of the First Year budget estimate, which totals $610,000
Everything works as if UAPs were the product of a technology that integrates
DOW-UAP-D167, p. 27, Appendix B, the single statement under Possible Nature of UAP Technology; the sentence continues: physical and psychic phenomena and primarily affects cultural variables in our society through manipulation of physiological and psychological parameters in the witnesses
Accordingly, BAASS has chosen eight specific projects to focus on during the
DOW-UAP-D168, p. 15, the Introduction, the sentence just before the one that speaks of these nine projects; the sentence continues: first and second years of this contract.
Project Cooperation is the program that could be the most important of all
DOW-UAP-D168, p. 22, the opening line of the PROJECT COOPERATION section; the sentence continues: Plans of Action.
It is imperative that physical access be obtained to actual hardware of the
DOW-UAP-D168, p. 40, the Concluding Comments; the sentence continues: anomalous spacecraft that appear to be many decades or centuries beyond anything we have
Where the case connects
The five D166 titles are five of the twelve area names D168 lists (p. 7), and D168 acknowledges a MUFON set delivered under contract 081006-1 (p. 5). That D166 is that set is an inference from the organisation, the five area names and D166’s date, the month before the plan; neither record cites the other. D167 and D168’s Project Database both propose gathering existing catalogues into one searchable system, and they count them differently: at least 30 active catalogues in D167 (p. 5), over twenty in the United States and over a dozen abroad in D168 (p. 28). D168 never names CAPELLA (0), and D167 never names a Project Database (0). The labels AAP Person 5, 7, 8 and 58 occur in both D167 and D168; D166 carries none.
The projects of D167 and D168 recur by name in later BAASS reports: Capella and Colares in DOW-UAP-D169 (pp. 10 to 15, 24 to 40) and Northern Tier in DOW-UAP-D170 (p. 34), both in Release 07 Briefing 6; Northern Tier and Colares in DOW-UAP-D171 (pp. 119 to 130, 103 to 116; Release 07 Briefing 7); Northern Tier on hold in DOW-UAP-D173 (p. 155; Release 07 Briefing 8); and a Project Colares Database and the CAPELLA format in DOW-UAP-D175 (p. 20; Release 07 Briefing 10).
Outside these records, Release 06 Briefing 10 reports contract HHM402-08-C-0072 with Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, LLC, awarded and effective 22 September 2008, whose schedule prices a project management plan for the twelve tasks; a separate statement of objectives of 18 July 2008 asks for a management plan for each technical area at the 60 day point. D168 says only that it fulfils the requirement to submit a report under the contract (pp. 7, 14); whether it is that deliverable, no page says.
The release prints, once in each of the three records, what it boxes elsewhere: in D166, personal names and an institute’s name in a figure legend, and a name on its chart, where the narrative boxes the experimenters’ names; in D167, an e-mail address, and the town and state of a source whose name is boxed; in D168, the affiant’s post and role, legible beside his name box. These are release slips, and nothing of them is repeated here.
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-D166, “MUFON Reports Prepared for BAASS November 2008”, DOW-UAP-D167, “Project Capella December 2008”, and DOW-UAP-D168, “BAASS Project Management Plan December 2008”, are hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 07. In DOW-UAP-D167 the overview and budget are pages 2 to 11 of the PDF; in DOW-UAP-D168 the Summary and Key Recommendations are pages 7 to 13, the projects pages 16 to 39 and the exhibits pages 43 to 49.
Read the files. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-D166, “MUFON Reports Prepared for BAASS November 2008”, PURSUE Release 07, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- DOW-UAP-D167, “Project Capella December 2008”, PURSUE Release 07, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- DOW-UAP-D168, “BAASS Project Management Plan December 2008”, PURSUE Release 07, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 06 Briefing 10, on DOW-UAP-D110 to DOW-UAP-D116, the AAWSAP contract file
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 07 Briefing 6, on DOW-UAP-D169 and DOW-UAP-D170, the March and April 2009 reports
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 07 Briefing 7, on DOW-UAP-D171, the June 2009 report
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 07 Briefing 8, on DOW-UAP-D173, the November 2009 report
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 07 Briefing 10, on DOW-UAP-D175, the November 2010 capability report