WASHINGTON, June 27 — The U.S. Air Force’s first official UFO investigations, Project Sign and Project Grudge, are now fully declassified and preserved in the U.S. National Archives, offering a rare window into early Cold War military concerns over unexplained aerial sightings.
Project Sign launched in 1948, marking the military’s first systematic effort to study unidentified flying objects. It was followed a year later by Project Grudge in 1949. These early programs came before the more famous Project Blue Book, which would run for nearly two decades.
Think of it like the first draft of a mystery novel — rough, tentative, but setting the stage for everything that followed. The practical upshot for historians and UFO researchers is that these earliest records show how seriously the Air Force took the phenomenon from the very start.
The case files document a period of growing military anxiety. The Cold War was in its infancy, and any unexplained object in American skies raised immediate security questions. Were these Soviet spy craft? Secret American technology? Something else entirely?
Project Sign’s analysts worked with limited tools. No radar networks, no satellite imagery, just pilot reports and ground observer accounts. They compiled sightings, looked for patterns, and tried to separate genuine unknowns from misidentified aircraft or natural phenomena.
Project Grudge took a more skeptical approach. The Air Force seemed eager to close the books on the UFO question. But the sightings kept coming, forcing the military to keep investigating.
Here’s what it means today: these declassified files are a primary source for understanding how the U.S. government first grappled with UFOs. They show the bureaucratic process, the analytical methods, and the institutional caution that shaped official responses for decades.
The National Archives holds the original documents, preserved for public access. Researchers can examine the raw material — memos, reports, correspondence — that formed the foundation of American UFO investigations.
What to watch next: as more Cold War-era records become declassified, historians may piece together a fuller picture of how military intelligence viewed these early sightings. The Project Sign and Grudge files are just the beginning of a long paper trail that runs through Project Blue Book and beyond.
