Air Force Regulation 200-2

Air Force Regulation 200-2 (AFR 200-2), titled Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting and carrying the short title UFOB, was the United States Air Force regulation that told Air Force activities how to report unidentified flying objects, which command investigated them and what the public could be told about them. The Secretary of the Air Force issued the first edition on 26 August 1953, in the months after the Robertson Panel; it was reissued on 12 August 1954 over the signature of Chief of Staff General Nathan Twining, revised in 1959, and replaced by Air Force Regulation 80-17 on 19 September 1966. Under the 1954 edition the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron of the Air Defense Command investigated sightings in the field, and the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base analyzed those the field investigation could not identify, work that fed Project Blue Book.

The regulation gives the Air Force's interest in UFOs as twofold, a possible threat to the security of the United States and its forces and "to determine technical aspects involved," and permits the news media to be told of a sighting only when the object is "positively identified as a familiar object." The authors of the Sign Oral History Project's study of the 1968 Minot Air Force Base case read it as having "effectively institutionalized secrecy" and as codifying UFO policy "chiefly as a public relations issue"; Richard Dolan reads the 1953 edition as having formally stripped Project Blue Book of its investigative function, leaving it little more than a public relations front, and the 1954 text as a promise that the public would learn nothing about an object that was not a familiar one; the Air Force's own published account of the same years is that no UFO it reported, investigated and evaluated ever gave any indication of a threat to national security.

Origins and revisions

The Sign Oral History Project's authors write that Air Force headquarters promulgated AFR 200-2 on 26 August 1953 in response to the recommendations of the January 1953 Robertson Panel, which in their summary urged the national security agencies to debunk UFO reports and to institute policies of public education to reassure the public. Dolan describes the 1953 edition as superseding the previous year's 200-5 order, tightening reporting and investigation and further restricting the release of information, and as confining investigation to three bodies, Air Force intelligence at the Pentagon, the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron and the Air Technical Intelligence Center, with the Center receiving reports only after they passed through the squadron; in his reading the order thereby left Blue Book little more than a public relations front. In his account freelance investigators were off-limits, officers were warned not to probe beyond preliminary reporting, and sightings were to be discussed only with authorized personnel; only hoaxes, practical jokes and erroneous reports could be given to the press, all radar-scope photographs were classified, and public release of unexplained sightings was forbidden. Dolan holds the order to have been a clear implementation of the Robertson Panel recommendations, followed by a rapid drop in sightings reported by Air Force personnel, and sets that against Blue Book's public image as the investigative office. Donald Keyhoe learned of the regulation in September 1953, according to Dolan.

A change, 200-2A, followed on 2 November 1953, and the 12 August 1954 edition states on its face that it supersedes the 1953 edition including that change. In December 1953 the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued Joint-Army-Navy-Air Force Publication 146 (JANAP 146), entitled Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings (CIRVIS), which included unidentified flying objects among the information to be reported but did not designate Project Blue Book to receive the reports; it also applied to civilian pilots and prohibited the unauthorized revelation of the contents of CIRVIS reports under the laws of the Espionage Act. Dolan adds that the reissue made any public release of a UFO report a crime under the Espionage Act, punishable by one to ten years in prison or a $10,000 fine, and that it differed from AFR 200-2 chiefly in applying to everyone who knew of it, commercial airline pilots included; that month Executive Order 10501 abolished the "Restricted" classification, which in his account both documents carried, and Keyhoe called it a "stunning blow" to the silence group, yet meaningful sightings were simply classified higher.

On 23 July 1954 the Navy issued an unclassified UFO reporting directive that cited JANAP 146 and AFR 200-2; Dolan writes that it thereby threatened disclosure of the still-classified regulation and that the Air Force began work on a version without the Restricted label, and that Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining declassified AFR 200-2 on 12 August, a step Pentagon rumor attributed to Navy pressure; the public could then learn that Air Defense Command, not Blue Book, was responsible for field investigations and that Blue Book did not receive all reports.

A 1959 revision, in the words of the Sign Oral History Project's authors, "was unequivocal in declaring that, 'Air Force activities must reduce the percentage of unidentifieds to the minimum'" (paragraph 2c). Dolan places the revision carrying that wording shortly after the Armstrong Circle Theater broadcast on UFOs, in early 1958, and adds that it re-created the system of air base commanders conducting initial investigations while continuing the Air Technical Intelligence Center's responsibility for analysis and evaluation. The edition of 20 July 1962 was the last: Air Force Regulation 80-17 of 19 September 1966, a regulation on research and development, superseded it and established the Air Force program for investigating and analyzing UFOs over the United States. A November 1966 amendment, AFR 80-17A, announced the University of Colorado study that became the Condon Committee.

Provisions of the 1954 edition

The regulation defines an unidentified flying object as "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object," and counts balloons, astronomical bodies and birds among familiar objects. It records that "To date, the flying objects reported have imposed no threat to the security of the United States and its Possessions," that "Analysis thus far has failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for a number of sightings reported," and that the Air Force "will continue to collect and analyze reports until all sightings can be satisfactorily explained," bearing in mind that "The possibility exists that an air vehicle of revolutionary configuration may be developed."

Commanders of Air Force activities were to report all information that came to them, including information from adjacent commands of the other services and from civilians; the Air Defense Command was to conduct all field investigations within the United States, and the Air Technical Intelligence Center was to analyze what the Command could not identify, together with everything collected overseas. The 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron, headquartered at Peterson Field, Colorado, was the Command's investigating unit, with flights attached to air defense divisions. Reports followed a numbered format, from the shape, size, color, number and sound of the object through its course, the manner of observation, the observers' identities and the weather at the time to the preparing officer's preliminary analysis of the possible cause, and were sent by electrical message headed UFOB. Physical evidence, including photographs and materiel, was to be reported promptly, and any materiel kept from defacing or alteration that "might reduce its value for intelligence examination and analysis." Reports "should be unclassified unless" the data required made a higher classification necessary. The text sets out no penalty for disclosure.

Headquarters USAF was to release summaries of evaluated data to inform the public. In response to local inquiries, base personnel could tell the news media of an object only when it was positively identified as a familiar object, withholding the names of principals, intercept and investigation procedures and classified radar data; for objects not explainable, "only the fact that ATIC will analyze the data is worthy of release." Dolan asks what the "technical aspects involved" were and answers that the public would never know, since the Air Force would release information only about objects positively identified as familiar ones and would not discuss anything truly unconventional.

Open questions

References

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