Talk:Investigation of UFO reports by the United States government

To-do list
Please feel free to edit the text of this to-do list below in order to add proposed categories or details. Each of these entities or events need a summary of purpose, scope, and any conclusions (with attention to their relation or impact on each other as reported in any reliable sources):
 * 1948 Project Sign
 * Impact of Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter on Sign
 * "Estimate of the Situation" (according to Ruppelt) controversial
 * Michael D. Swords (source)
 * James Everett Lipp and "Appendix D"
 * 1949 Project Grudge
 * 1952 to 1969 Project Blue Book
 * 1953 Robertson Panel and CIA involvement (CIA sources)
 * 1954 4602nd AISS unit and Regulation 200-2
 * 1960 Brookings Report
 * April 5, 1966 Congressional hearing
 * 1968 Condon Report
 * 1969 Congressional hearing
 * 1977 request to NASA by President Jimmy Carter
 * 1994 "Report of Air Force Research Regarding the 'Roswell Incident'" by the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force
 * 1997 "The Roswell Report: Case Closed" by Capt. James McAndrew for the U. S. Air Force
 * 2007 to 2017 Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
 * At the behest of three credulous senators:
 * George Knapp connection to all this: (dates to 1996)
 * It took him 10 minutes to get the money in 2007 because Ted Stevens was also a believer:
 * Here's an account of how the woo-woo was imported into the government spending: including necessary discussion of J. Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee, and Harold Puthoff. Connecting to Project Stargate and, of course Robert Bigelow.
 * 2017 to 2022 Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF)
 * 25 June 2021 Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (or UAP Report)
 * 17 May 2022 Congressional hearing on UAPs
 * 2002 NASA's UAP study team
 * 2002 All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)
 * 19 April 2023 Congressional hearing on UAPs
 * 31 May 2023 meeting of NASA's UAP study team
 * 26 July 2023 Congressional hearing on UAPs
 * Find strong sources for any other reports or entities that are missing above.

Note: a recentism tag was added 4 August 2023 pointing out: "Project Blue Book was an epic expenditure which ended in the Condon Report. This article does not give it appropriate WP:WEIGHT." After further work, this tag was removed 21 August 2023 (with invite for further comment in another talk page section below). However, please give priority to resolving this recentism imbalance when considering the list below of some basic areas for ongoing work on this article. Jjhake (talk) 11:32, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Reference needed

 * Out of these, "11,917 were found to have been caused by material objects (such as balloons, satellites, and aircraft), immaterial objects (such as lightning, reflections and other natural phenomena), astronomical objects (such as stars, planets, the sun and the moon), weather conditions and hoaxes" while 701 remained "unidentified".

I suspect this is sourced in the next sentence, but Wikipedia style conventions require replicating that source if there is a direct quote like this. So if it is the same source, you'll need to add it again here. Viriditas (talk) 11:17, 11 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Thanks for noting this. Jjhake (talk) 11:32, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

badufos.blogspot.com citation
with the Robert Sheaffer blog citation that you added today, the conclusions seem close to some of the initial findings of the NASA UAP study team, so we might be able to find a better citation for the same point. In the meantime, can we list Robert Sheaffer as the source of this point within the article text (as this is a primary source from a blog, although the blog of an expert that I do agree is worthwhile to include as a primary source)? Jjhake (talk) 20:01, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Fine with me. I think the thing that always gets me in these conversations is the breathless "These are still unexplained" but the point is that these are not great observations in the first place that remain unexplained. The best observations get explained quickly. jps (talk) 20:29, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, makes sense. Jjhake (talk) 01:15, 15 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Btw, the question mark on your "Mistake?" edit comment just now made me wonder if you thought that someone else had reverted your edits. However, the edit history indicates that you accidentally reverted them yourself and then restored them. I just wanted to be sure that you weren't thinking that anyone else was undoing you edits. Jjhake (talk) 20:05, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it was my mistake. jps (talk) 20:29, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay to remove "slanted towards recent events" tag at top?
A lot of work has been done on the early history since the "slanted towards recent events" tag was added to the top of this article (and will continue). I'm removing the tag while also inviting any remaining concerns to be shared here on the talk page in case this might be premature. Jjhake (talk) 01:54, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Lead image
Not convinced that Kirkpatrick is the best image for the lead. It might help to think out of the box on this. For example, from my POV, I would much rather see an infobox listing all of the reports, chronologically sorted by date and primary participants or investigators. I'll keep an eye out for an appropriate template if you don't find one first. From where I stand, I think we should focus on data in the lead, not on images. I understand that others may disagree. Just something that I wanted to comment on. Viriditas (talk) 01:27, 23 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Makes sense to me. It's about historical data as I understand you to be pointing out. Thanks for noting this. Will look around and give it thought but glad if you or others get to it first. Jjhake (talk) 01:43, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I suspect that the best examples will be history articles such as History of the United States and Reconstruction era (although we could also look at examples like Foreign relations of the United States or Vaccination policy of the United States or Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States for more informational approaches).
 * As for images in the lede, I'm wondering if some combination of new and old reports might be good. Some examples would be:
 * 1985 US Air Force UFO Fact Sheet page 1 of 3.png
 * [[File:Slide 2 of 7 from Sean Kirkpatrick 31 May 2023 Presentation to NASA Independent Study Team on UAPs Image File.png|thumb|Slide 2 of 7 from Sean Kirkpatrick's May 31, 2023 Presentation to NASA Independent Study Team on UAPs]] Jjhake (talk) 08:50, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * So, it's perfectly fine if I'm alone on this, but here's my take: we are dealing with a history of UFO reports. As a reader who is here to gleam as much information as possible in the fastest amount of time, I would prefer an infobox in the lead that gives me the number of reports to date, the names of the reports, the names of the lead investigators, the dates, and their conclusions, in chronological format.  I'm not interested in seeing an image of any kind.  That's just me, of course, so opinions might differ. Viriditas (talk) 10:39, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. Let's remove any images and go with an infobox or sidebar with this materail. What about a sidebar that could span a series of the existing articles and link them together? Jjhake (talk) 10:56, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * An infobox in the lead should just link to the reports; but you could very well use a topic sidebar. There's no right or wrong way. Viriditas (talk) 11:05, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm terrible with sidebars and formatting, but I've taken an initial shot at it. I hope others might help to clean it up. I'd like to make it narrower, and there is much more content to consider (as you have noted above). Jjhake (talk) 11:55, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've clearly got something messed up in how I setup the sidebar template because it does not automatically update on the article whenever the template content is changed. I probably should not have tired something out that I don't know how to do yet. Jjhake (talk) 12:05, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The sidebar doesn’t show up on mobile devices, so I’m inclined to switch to an infobox after all. Jjhake (talk) 12:33, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've taken a shot at "Infobox historical era" as a first try.--Jjhake (talk) 13:09, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Anyone with infobox experience should feel free to entirely replace the customized shell that I ended up putging into place as I practiced around (which I should have done in a sandbox).--Jjhake (talk) 16:59, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Have a bit more confidence in yourself. You're doing great work and the infobox looks good. Viriditas (talk) 08:25, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

AARO Report (2024-03-08), and responses thereto
The March 2024 AARO "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena" is available here: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3701297/dod-report-discounts-sightings-of-extraterrestrial-technology/

Some Ufologists have criticized the report. I think this criticism from Marik von Rennenkampf seems quite reasonable:

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4526160-pentagons-flawed-ufo-report-demands-congressional-action/

See also this lengthy, highly critical article in Salon: https://www.salon.com/2024/03/14/pentagon-report-denies-ufos-are-aliens-experts-accuse-the-government-of-misrepresenting-the-truth/

Surely both the AARO report and some of the criticism of it should be reported in the subject Wikipedia article, but I am afraid my Wikipedia editing skills would not do this material justice. KHarbaugh (talk) 14:59, 16 March 2024 (UTC)