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Air Technical Intelligence Center

The Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was the U.S. Air Force's technical intelligence center from 1951 to 1961 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Project Blue Book, the Air Force's official UFO investigation program, belonged to it.

The Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was a technical intelligence organization of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) that operated at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio from 1951 to 1961. Its task was primarily the technical assessment and evaluation of foreign, mainly Soviet, aircraft and weapon systems. It is known in the history of UFO research because Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's official program for investigating UFO reports, belonged to it.

Background

The center's predecessors were the intelligence departments of the Air Technical Service Command and later the Air Materiel Command. The early UFO investigations, Project Sign (1948) and Project Grudge (1949), already operated at this base, within the framework of technical intelligence. ATIC was established as an independent unit in 1951. In 1961 it was merged into the Air Force organization called the Foreign Technology Division (FTD).

UFO investigations

At the end of 1951, ATIC reorganized Project Grudge, which continued under the name Project Blue Book from March 1952. The program's staff received and evaluated reports from civilian and military eyewitnesses. According to the official position, the vast majority of the reports could be explained by natural phenomena, conventional aircraft or mistakes. Of the 12,618 reports received over the program's entire duration, 701 remained unidentified. According to the Air Force, these did not represent a threat to national security either, and did not indicate an extraterrestrial origin.

Criticism

Many researchers studying the UFO phenomenon criticized the program's work. In their view, the investigations were superficial, especially after 1953, and the goal was more to close the reports than to investigate them thoroughly. One of the program's best-known figures is Edward J. Ruppelt, who led ATIC's UFO investigation group from 1951 to 1953. In 1956 he wrote a book about the program in which he also criticized the earlier period with its dismissive approach. After ATIC was dissolved in 1961, Blue Book continued to operate under the FTD until it was closed in 1969.

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