THE PENTAGON'S UFO DATABASE ENDED UP IN THE FAA RULEBOOK

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Apparently, somebody brought a filing cabinet.

Somewhere around 2008, while the American public was busy watching the economy implode, a Las Vegas outfit called Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) was constructing an enormous database of UFO reports under a Pentagon research contract. By March 2009, the operation reported 234,364 entries across six databases. An impressive number, although many entries came from historical catalogs containing duplicates. A quarter-million records don't necessarily mean a quarter-million separate mysteries.

But the really peculiar business was happening over at the Federal Aviation Administration.

In January 2009, BAASS began working to replace the National Institute for Discovery Sciences, another Bigelow organization, in FAA reporting guidance. The contractor's March progress report describes negotiations with federal officials to accomplish precisely that.

And by February 2010, there it was, sitting inside FAA Order JO 7110.65T, Section 9-8-1: Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, listed among organizations that people could contact to report unidentified flying objects.

Think about that. A private aerospace research organization, operating under a Pentagon contract, had become a named destination in the federal government's UFO reporting instructions. Not the exclusive destination, and certainly not proof of extraterrestrial visitation. But an extraordinary little intersection of private investigation, government bureaucracy and the great American flying-saucer obsession.

And here's the kicker: this wasn't merely some speculative connection uncovered yesterday. Researcher John Greenewald documented the FAA relationship through Freedom of Information Act records back in 2018. The newly released BAASS operational reports now help explain the contractor's side of that arrangement.

So the question isn't whether the Pentagon secretly hired little green men to operate a switchboard. The question is what happened to the information potentially flowing through that reporting channel, who controlled it, and how much remains accessible to independent investigators.

Because once a private organization becomes a destination for official reporting guidance, the mystery isn't confined to whatever somebody saw in the sky.

The mystery also involves who receives the report, who catalogs it, and who gets to examine it afterward.

And somewhere in the American bureaucratic wilderness, the UFO had acquired something almost as improbable as antigravity propulsion.

A place in the FAA manual.

FMPU — 100% Underground. Investigations of Very Strange Things.