Aliens Or Not, Secret Crash Retrieval Programs Are Very Real
Clandestine programs race to pluck foreign aircraft, missiles, and more in order to exploit them by reverse engineering and other means
ews first broke just over a week ago that a former career American intelligence officer is alleging the U.S. government is concealing a decades-long top-secret ‘crash retrieval’ program that has overseen the recovery of otherworldly flying machines and their pilots.
There remains no hard evidence available to the public to substantiate these claims.
Yet the U.S. military and intelligence community’s shadowy crash retrieval programs are a very real thing, although the ones we know about are focused on foreign, not alien, technology.
These secretive endeavors are part of a larger ecosystem focused on gathering intelligence — through examining, reverse engineering, and testing — non-U.S. weapon systems and other equipment through so-called Foreign Materiel Exploitation, or FME.
This extensive espionage ecosystem, honed over nearly a century of operations, lives in the shadows, but remains an indispensable discipline that has paid off massively time and time again.
Crash retrievals become a hot topic
David Grusch’s assertions about what have historically been referred to as unidentified flying objects (UFO) and are now generally described as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) first emerged publicly in a June 5 piece published by The Debrief.
Grusch is a retired U.S. Air Force officer career intelligence official who has worked for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the now-defunct UAP Task Force (UAPTF).
In 2021, the Department of Defense replaced the UAPTF with an organization that has now evolved into the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
Grusch has filed a formal whistleblower complaint alleging that information about the recovery of objects of “non-human” origin, including UAPs and their pilots, has been improperly withheld from Congress.
He has said some of these items were first retrieved as far back as the 1930s, but says he has not personally seen any of them firsthand. He also says he has been retaliated against by elements of the U.S. government over his push for greater Congressional oversight of these matters, but has not publicly accused those entities by name, citing ongoing investigations of his claims.
Official U.S. government interest in UAPs has surged in recent years, spurred in part by the public disclosure of a number of sightings by U.S. military personnel in the past two decades or so. The War Zone has explored in detail how many of these incidents likely reflect very real Earthly national security threats, such as the now-exposed Chinese government high-altitude balloon surveillance program and drone swarms around U.S. Navy warships.
“To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently,” Sue Gough, a Department of Defense spokesperson, told The War Zone last week when asked about Grusch’s complaint. “AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads.”
“AARO, working with the Office of the General Counsel and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, has established a safe and secure process for individuals to come forward with information to aid AARO in its congressionally-mandated historical review,” she added.
The White House, NASA, and members of Congress involved in intelligence oversight have also since issued similar statements.
What Is Foreign Materiel Exploitation?
While David Grusch’s crash retrieval program claims remain up for debate, the U.S. Intelligence Community, including elements of the U.S. military like NRO and NGA, is very much engaged in FME efforts that include the retrieval of flying objects, or parts thereof, from crash sites and other sources for further analysis and evaluation.
For instance, having actual examples of foreign aircraft, or even just certain components, offers unique opportunities to analyze their capabilities and weaknesses, and then to help in the development of new capabilities, countermeasures, and tactics, techniques, and procedures that can be used against them.
Other intelligence can be gleaned from specialized testing of real-world components. This includes gaining insight into the doctrine and standard operating procedures of foreign military forces and the industrial capabilities, including material sciences, and other capacities of those countries.
In addition, if the aircraft are flyable, then they can be pitted against friendly designs, as well as other systems, including air defense assets, adding a level of realism to test and evaluation activities and training exercises that cannot necessarily be achieved through simulated means.
Even by themselves, certain working subcomponents, such as electronic warfare suites and radars, can be evaluated in similar ways.
Since the main focus of FME efforts is primarily on picking apart weapon systems and other materiel in use by adversaries or potential adversaries, simply getting ahold of items can be a highly complex and dangerous affair.
Whether systems are retrieved are directly retired from the field or indirectly acquired by various means, those operations are generally carried out covertly or clandestinely to avoid arousing suspicions or otherwise creating international incidents.
This all, in turn, creates an additional need for very specialized and often discreet networks to actually recover the items in question, possibly from very remote or austere locations, and then move them to secure test facilities.
These activities may need to occur on very short timelines and in contested areas, with or without the cooperation of other governments. They also have to be safely stored and potentially kept completely out of public sight indefinitely.
Even the enemy or competitor state knowing the item has been retrieved can compromise its value. Combined, this makes for some of the most challenging logistics imaginable and these abilities require significant resources, talent, and discretion.
Though Grusch’s allegations have indirectly called attention to U.S. FME efforts, it’s also important to remember that other countries around the world have their own such programs in place. This can create races to get to crash zones first or to retrieve lost friendly aircraft or other systems before adversaries or potential adversaries can get a hold of them.
Managing FME within the U.S. military
The U.S. government’s overall FME ecosystem is multi-faceted, but a central component is the Department of Defense-wide Foreign Materiel Program (FMP). The current official directive outlining the FMP is classified, but a declassified 2006 edition says the program was overseen at that time by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) being the so-called “Executive Agent” for executing it.
How exactly the FMP may have changed on an organizational level since then is unknown. At least one minor change would have occurred in 2019 when the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, or USD(I) was renamed the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security USD(I&S).
Below DIA and USD(I&S), other U.S. military agencies and offices, including within the different service branches, all support the larger FMP. Coordination and cooperation with other organizations engaged in FME elsewhere within the U.S. government, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), on the acquisition of foreign aircraft, as well as other weapon systems, through various means, and their exploitation, is also routine. Foreign governments and private companies are sometimes involved, too.
For instance, “the Air Force Test and Evaluation Directorate, Foreign Materiel Office, had an ongoing initiative to involve contractors early in the exploitation process,” an unclassified 1998 Department of Defense Inspector General report on the use of FME intelligence explains. “Although the initiative pertained only to electronic warfare systems, the Air Force had plans to expand the program to other systems depending on the successes and lessons learned from that program.”
Today, when it comes to the retrieval and subsequent intelligence exploitation of foreign aircraft, as well as missiles and spacecraft, or what might be left of them, the U.S. Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, is a key actor.
NASIC’s website says that it is “the Department of Defense’s primary source for foreign air and space threat analysis” and it includes a dedicated Foreign Materiel Exploitation Squadron.
“Depending on the classification of the materials obtained… a team of the United States’ most qualified, knowledgeable, and tech-savvy sleuths grab their scalpels and start dissecting,” according to the Air Force. “Their analysis and reverse engineering is performed in some of the most heavily fortified, controlled, and monitored facilities in the military.”
The specific mention here of reverse engineering is important to highlight. Not all recovered items may be complete or workable, requiring scientists and engineers to use various means to either make them functional or effectively recreate them.
This process in itself can provide additional understanding about the capabilities of the item in question, how it might be employed, and the resources required to produce it. With regard to the latter point, this can include valuable insights into potential foreign advances in material science and production capabilities.
Long-standing intelligence demands
It is important to stress that this kind of intelligence activity is not new. Though it hasn’t always been called FME, interest in this kind of hands-on technical intelligence gathering within the U.S. government well predates the current Department of Defense FMP.
By World War II, FME-style programs had become increasingly more formalized, and a particular focus on acquiring foreign aircraft and other aerospace technologies by whatever means available had emerged.
Work in this regard done by the U.S. military and other allied forces during the war also underscored the critical importance of reverse engineering.
“Every enemy airplane we have received is usually short of something, or something has been broken in shipment, and in most cases we have had to manufacture the repair parts to get the airplanes in commission,” then-U.S. Army Air Forces Brig. Gen. Frank Carroll wrote in 1944, according to Fredrick Johnsen’s 2014 book Captured Eagles.
“Our supply of spares for the fighter types of German airplanes is extremely limited due principle to the obvious fact that German fighters are rarely brought down over Allied territory. However, we will do the best we can on furnishing any spares, and if absolutely necessary will try to manufacture minor parts to keep the airplanes flying.”
Carroll, who was later promoted to the rank of Major General and finished his military career as a member of the U.S. Air Force, was chief of the experimental engineering section’s research and development branch at what was then called Wright Field at the time.
FME-type work continued after World War II, enabled in part by the relocation of Nazi scientists, engineers, and other specialists to the United States through a secret program called Operation Paperclip. Further study of captured German aircraft, especially, directly contributed to post-war U.S. aviation developments, including with regard to swept-wing jet-powered aircraft.
Cold War creates new FME needs, opportunities
With the emergence of the Cold War, attention shifted within the U.S. military and intelligence agencies like the CIA to acquiring Soviet (and later Chinese) aircraft types. While many of these efforts remain shrouded in secrecy, various examples have become a matter of public record over the years.
One of these most famous known retrievals of a Soviet military aircraft is the U.S. government’s acquisition of its first complete, flyable Soviet MiG-15 jet fighter in 1953. Of course, retrieval in this case simply meant collecting the aircraft from South Korea after Northern Korean pilot No Kum Sok used it as his means to defect to the West.
No claimed he had not heard of a $100,000 reward (around $1.14 million in 2023 dollars) American officials had put up for anyone willing to do exactly what he had done. His defection had come just months after an armistice agreement effectively ended the Korean War.
Observations of the MiG-15’s performance during that conflict had indicated that the aircraft was superior in at least some respects to contemporary Western designs and the U.S. military, in particular, had been desperate to get ahold of one for deeper analysis and evaluation.
Initial FME-type flight testing of No’s MiG-15 took place in Japan, with the legendary Brigadier General Charles “Chuck” Yeager (then a Major) being among those to take the stick. It was subsequently back to Wright-Patterson for more evaluations and for NASIC’s predecessors to completely tear down.
The testing and evaluations yielded important information about the jet’s capabilities and limitations, including when pitted against contemporary U.S. jet fighters like the F-86 Sabre and bombers like B-47 Stratojet.
What was then known as the Air Technical Intelligence Center went so far as to publish a flight manual that was explicitly intended, in part, to give American pilots the knowledge required to steal a MiG-15 and fly to safety if they were caught behind enemy lines.
By 1961, the Air Force had established a dedicated Foreign Technology Division (FTD) within Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) to oversee FME efforts within the service. Hunting down MiGs and other Soviet and Chinese jets, as well as associated weapons, mission systems, engines, and other important components quickly became central to FTD’s work. Acquiring adversary surface-to-air missiles, like the iconic Soviet SA-2 Guideline, was another important focus area.
FTD worked hand-in-hand with the CIA, Army, and Navy, as well as foreign allies and partners, in these efforts. Aircraft and missiles, or parts thereof, were often retrieved directly or indirectly from crash sites.
As a prime example of the multi-faceted nature of all this, in 1966 the U.S. government got access to the remains of a Yak-28P Firebar interceptor, viewed as one of the Soviet Union’s most advanced combat jets at the time, after it crashed in West Berlin and was recovered by British forces there.
Crash zones with materiel U.S. teams might want to recover were not always on land. Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile testing in the Pacific starting in the 1960s, which often saw parts of those weapons fall into the sea, was a particular driving factor behind U.S. interest in underwater retrieval capabilities.
Interest in the Soviet Union’s burgeoning space programs was another area where the ability to snatch debris from the seabed was particularly relevant.
The U.S. Navy subsequently initiated programs to develop deep-diving submersibles and dedicated special mission submarines capable of recovering items from the seabed. One such program, nicknamed Sand Dollar, called for the creation of a crewed submersible capable of diving down to depths up to 20,000 feet specifically to be “capable of locating [missile nose cones] or space vehicle components of Soviet origin (or those of any other nation),” according to a formerly top-secret status report.
In 1969, the Navy put a unique nuclear-powered deep-diving mini-submarine, known as the NR-1, into service. NR-1 had the ability to manipulate and recover objects while operating down to depths of up to half a mile. It was utilized for a variety of scientific research and development and test and evaluation tasks, as well as salvage missions.
This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here thedrive.com
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“Yet the U.S. military and intelligence community’s shadowy crash retrieval programs are a very real thing,”
Of course they are, it’s a reasonable operation from where I stand. Whether they actually have off-world tech and bodies is the real question.
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