DOW-UAP-D017, UAP Reported at Sandia Base, 1948-1950
This file contains 116 pages of documentation from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Program (AFSWP) – the direct, post-World War II successor to the Manhattan Project – and from the U.S. Air Force – relating to a series of sightings and investigations in Sandia, New Mexico, from 1948-1950. This file contains 209 sightings of “green orbs,” “discs,” and “fireballs” reported near the military base. Witnesses reported unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) maneuvering, flying out of sight, disappearing, or exploding. The documents also include the results of contemporary investigations into residual copper powder found in some areas where sightings were reported. A few of these investigations became the basis for Project Grudge, which collected reports of unidentified flying objects from various other military installations – also included in this collection.
The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.
Text of the document
Machine-extracted from the PDF war.gov published (its text layer or OCR), so expect errors, especially in names, numbers and handwriting; the PDF is the authoritative copy. Lines that did not extract as readable text are left out. Showing about 993 words from pages 1, 2, 4, 5 of 116.
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1100TH USAF SPECUL REPORTING GROUP Campbell Mr Force Base Camp Campbell. Kentucky SUBJECT: Security :E:nspection TOt Commanding General Sandia Base \ Albuquerque, New Mexico 1. Reference is made to secret letter. your headquarters. dated 1 April 1949• Subjects Security Inspection. 2. a. Guard Orders have been amended directing that the elec tric gate be closed between 1700 hours until 0700 hours the following b. Looks have repl~ced the bolts in all inspection access gates in the outer fence. c. Inspection ports on both bridges are now pr ovided with d. The final draft of our alert plan has been reviewed and will be published and distributed for study to operating personnel. It is desired to point out that the alert plan is incomplete. !. stockpile custodian has not been assigned here; his part in the alert plan has been outlined only. Furthermore, since the 11th Airborne ' Division is not in place yet, only temporary arrangements for defense have been made. Final form of the overall alert plan will be sub mitted to your headquarters for approval as soon as conditions will allow. ·1n the interim period. it is felt that the temporary alert plan we have prepared is adequate. A copy of this pl an will be dis patched to your headquarters in the near future. e. !11 jeep radios are now installed in jeeps. with the Camp Campbell Military Police has been in effect for some- time and was in effect at the time of the Security inspection. .Pe~ manent arrangements for radio communication with Camp Campbell Military Police are delayed panding the arrival of radio frequency crystals that fit the Milit ary Police net frequency. Short Title
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SUBJECTs Security Inspection g. Pressure has been exerted to get the Post 'Ehgineers to keep the dra.inage system. clear and to take measures to check the ero sion. These efforts will be continued but little progress on erosion control can be expected until the rains diminish. Ditches have been filled, dirt moved and replaced, native grasses planted, but the rains return too soon and much of the effort invested is therefore wasted. Plans a.re prepared f or an interim erosin control effort, and a stud;y is being ma.de to estinate the cost of resloping the cuts in order that the rainfall mq be drained with less damaging results. Initial estimates run in the neighborhood of twenty thousand dollars (t20,ooo.oo). 3. With the exception of halting the erosixm, all deficiencies listed in the security inspection report have been cleared away. It is therefore requested that the monthly report of action taken re quired by cited letter be discontinued. RICHARD TI' KLIN.!!i Lt Col, USAF
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InDtituta of 'Meteoritics University of New Mexico I a::n lnclos1ng two copies or the report you asked tor, fllld hope that they oerve their purpose. token at nine locatione on my,l!onde.:,•'l'uesday trip. !lbere was a large number of coppor-boar1ng pe.rtiolee on one eolleotion (ll-104L) taken on i onal particles throJJ.ghout the series. The collection teken at tho Blt"lle location imcodiately' following R-l04L eho'\YD practically no copper. A 1orge l)art of the n -104L is of a granular mnterial untamiliar to us, and aggregations of finely (ona ..m eron) granular material of overall sizes in tho neighborhood of thirty microns. Some cop_per _part! ,lea, hor.- ever, appear to be solid nnd o,Paque. The passage of t-, automobiles while this oollection uas being made is a complicating fe.ctor. It is hard to aee how they mieht he.Ta been a eourco ot coppor, ho,raver, unlean it nao a question of stirring up aoI!lo :trom dust on the -pavement. We intend to do some :1"urther chemi.eal work Tii th theee colloctions, but I doubt if muoh nen relevant information 11111 be obtained. Hy tentative conclusion is that no ~idcspread significant dispersion or copper-bea't'ine; particles ,vas present in tbe atmoaphere in the rc"ion is possible about the one heavy copper collention: it should be prosumod to be of local origin until come evidonee to the contrary ic 'found. ~e route at tho collocting trip included Paatura, Santa noaa., junc tion of Routes 66 and 84, ond Las ·Ve.:;aa on J!ondey af'ternoon. On Tuosdey morning it included. Las Ve3as, Canonr,1to, Glorieto. end ecos. Yours vory truly,
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A'3SOOIA'l'ED fJI'l'iJ THE FIREBALL OF JULY 24 1949 Ben Seely A 'fireball was raportad to have pasaod ovor the general noighborhood of in conneation 1a th the sarosol research proJect ot the New Mex1 co School of !lines, was available, and it was decided to make systematic collections ot airborne me.ter -iel. in the hope ot obta1nill8 material that could be associated .-1th the t1reball. For the present report it is suftio1ent to state that the equipnant processed air at the rate ot about J4 11tera per minute, the particles being separated f'rom the air by -impactment against en adhesi'f9-coate~ plate in an air jet. Appro:d!natel.y ninety per cent of airborne particlee with dianeters greater than one micron are Tho adheeive used. on the collecting plates (mcroscope slides) waa a glycerin gelatin tlixture w1th an a.dd1tion or rubeanic aeid (dithiooxamide. ) 'l'lus reagent was used to enable identifioation of copper or copper compounds; it also enables identification of nickel and cobalt. After ?C:lking the eollaotions, the slides were covered with e. Saran til::l, after which thoy were exposed to strong aomonia vapor for r1:tteon Jninutes to effect partial ao lution or any copp_er or copper oxide parti '?he first oolleotion was made at 10:00 a.m., .ruly 25, about thirteen and one- he.lf houra after the fireball was seen. The air wan te.lcen about twelve teet above ground lovel, on t he Ol!!'.IJ>UO the School ot Uines. Tho first run was i'or three min- , utes, ll['COosaing cbout 102 liters of air. Sevoro.l large particles wero :round in it that gave J)ositiva co pe.r teats. In at least ono or these the copper reaction was aeen petore the cn::mx>ni c tro~ont, indicating the presence 9f at least a trace of a
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of DoD's 257 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the DoD agency block it ranks #135 of 257 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 450-file archive it ranks #259 of 450.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (259 of 450 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
Anomalousness Index: 56/100
Evidentiary weight that this encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. Not a probability of extraterrestrial origin - that number is not honestly computable from the released files and this tracker refuses to publish it.
🤖 AI-ASSISTED SCORING · methodology
The six rubric components break down for this file as follows. Each component has a weighted contribution to the final score; the per-component explanation below describes what this file's particular value on that component means in the rubric's framework.
No sensor, camera, or instrument backs this observation - it is testimony, relayed through the Department of War, and scored on the rubric's lowest sensor-quality tier for that reason. That doesn't bear on the witness's credibility (a separate axis); it reflects only that nothing beyond human perception recorded the event.
Reported by trained U.S. military personnel during an operational mission (1948-1950) - a high witness-credibility tier, ranked in the rubric below astronaut, trained-aviator, and federal-agent testimony. This profile is shared across the AARO-submitted infrared-capture cluster that anchors the archive's densest scoring band, at 66.
On corroboration, this file from the Department of War - like every single-tier file in the PURSUE archive - is a single-witness or single-instrument capture per the released metadata. The rubric doesn't infer multi-witness confirmation the summaries don't actually establish; this score reflects the honest limit of what was released, not a judgment about the underlying event.
The released file contains no speed, acceleration, or vector data precise enough to score on the kinematic axis - and that's true archive-wide, not specific to this file. The rubric declines to infer kinematic anomaly from a witness's narrative estimate of how fast something moved; that itself says something about what PURSUE actually released: descriptive accounts, not flight-path telemetry.
Every file in the archive, including this one, scores this tier: a conventional explanation was considered in the released record but isn't treated as dispositive. That's a pattern in how war.gov's own summaries are written - they consistently hedge against strong conclusions either way - and the rubric takes that hedging at face value rather than resolving it for them.
This file was released as open by the Department of War after a formal review process concluded - not simply logged and left pending. That's a stronger disposition signal than 'unresolved, no review': a review actually happened, and remaining open is the Department of War's own published conclusion from it, not an absence of one.
Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 56/100 reflects evidentiary weight that this specific file's encounter remains structurally unexplained by the rubric's six axes - it is not a claim that the underlying event involved anything non-conventional, and it is not comparable across rubrics that use different weights. For the full per-axis weights and the rubric JSON, see /methodology.
Related files in DoD
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
DOW-UAP-PR024, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2023
DOW-UAP-PR072, "ADMINISTRATIVE REVISION: IIR 1777 J0032 22 Kazakhstan - UAP in the vicinit…
DOW-UAP-PR106, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR108, Unresolved UAP Report, Western United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR109, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2015
DOW-UAP-PR110, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
Verification
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