DOW-UAP-D175, BAASS Self-Assessment of UAP Analysis Capabilities, November 2010

Official Conclusion

Excerpted DIA assessment: the AAV was no known US or foreign aircraft, with advanced low observable, aerodynamic and propulsion characteristics, and possibly the ability to 'cloak' or operate undersea. BAASS makes no formal conclusion on the incident.

Official Description

This document is an administrative, programmatic, or contractor-produced record related to the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)-administered program active from 2008 to 2012. AAWSAP’s official scope of work identified 12 technical research areas relating to potential aerospace threats over a time horizon of more than 40 years. As part of the broader program record, the file documents how AAWSAP was scoped, organized, tasked, funded, executed, or described at a particular point in time. This November 2010 Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) contractor-authored capability statement presents BAASS’s analysis as technically rigorous and strategically valuable. The document appears intended not only to describe BAASS’s analytical capabilities but also to reinforce the case for the organization’s continued relevance and for the continuation of AAWSAP. The document summarizes the company’s self-assessment of the suitability of its personnel, software, equipment, field sensor, and data warehousing capabilities for analyzing unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and unidentified submerged objects (USOs). It includes excerpted case findings and uses selected case studies and modeling exercises as demonstrations of BAASS’s analytical capabilities. The report describes BAASS as combining field collection resources, historical databases, and computational tools such as ANSYS Multiphysics to model UAP incidents through engineering and physics analysis, including work on radar cross section, fluid behavior, acoustics, and aerodynamic performance. It also presents BAASS’s in-house capabilities as supporting both threat assessment and the study of advanced aerospace technologies, while asserting that analysis of UAP performance characteristics could inform future developments in propulsion, stealth, detection, and weapons systems.

Key Findings

• →BAASS was contracted by the DIA Defense Warning Office from 2008 to 2010 to create, staff and equip an organization to analyze national security threats from advanced aerospace technology (contract HHM402-08-C-0072).
• →The report excerpts a DIA investigation of the November 2004 Nimitz CSG 'Tic Tac' encounter, with F/A-18 aircrew describing a ~46 ft white, smooth, wingless object, FLIR tracking, failed radar lock, a water disturbance beneath it, and rapid departure.
• →BAASS parametric calculations assume a 60,000 ft to sea level descent in 0.5-10 seconds, yielding speeds of roughly Mach 5-107 and accelerations of about 19 to 7,453 g, which the report calls extraordinary.
• →DIA key assessments quoted in the report state the AAV was no known US or foreign aircraft and showed advanced low-observable, aerodynamic and propulsion characteristics, and possibly a 'cloak' capability.
• →The report's CFD, acoustic and radar-cross-section models are generic demonstrations of capability on assumed geometries, not analyses of measured data, and the report acknowledges there was little hard data.

Extracted Entities