Foreign Technology Division
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🏢 Organization
Contents 6
| Type | Organization |
|---|---|
| Also known as | FTD |
| On the Timeline | 6 events, 1956–1989 |
The Foreign Technology Division (FTD) was the U.S. Air Force's centre for analysing foreign aircraft, missiles and other technology from 1961 to 1991, based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. As the successor of the Air Technical Intelligence Center, it was the home of Project Blue Book during the 1960s until the project closed in 1969.[1][2]
Origins
FTD was formed on 1 July 1961 from the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC), which had been created in 1951, and was assigned to the new Air Force Systems Command. The unit's roots went back to a foreign data section set up at McCook Field in Dayton in 1917 and to the wartime evaluation of captured enemy aircraft.[1]
Foreign technology
FTD studied Soviet and other foreign weapons. It tested captured Soviet fighters with the Air Force's test centre and at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, and in 1971 it translated and published a Soviet paper by physicist Pyotr Ufimtsev on how objects reflect radar waves, which the National Air and Space Intelligence Center credits as a basis of American stealth aircraft design.[1]
Project Blue Book
The Air Force's UFO investigations were run by the intelligence centre at Wright-Patterson from the late 1940s, and during the 1960s Project Blue Book was part of FTD; by 1968 the division had an "aerial phenomenon office". After the Condon Report concluded that further UFO study was unlikely to be useful, the Air Force decided in 1969 to end Blue Book and move its records to an archive.[1][2]
Later names
FTD was renamed the Air Force Foreign Technology Center in 1991 and, after further changes, became the National Air and Space Intelligence Center in 2003.[1]
On the UAP Timeline
- Bernard Schriever and Wright Field technical intelligence (1956) — Gen. Bernard Schriever's testimony describes close work with technical intelligence at Wright Field.
- Philip Corso's Roswell claims (1961) — Army Col. Philip Corso claims he handled autopsy reports and recovered alien artifacts.
- Moon Dust, Blue Fly and UFO draft policy (1961) (13 November 1961) — An Air Force draft policy names intelligence teams for Projects Moon Dust, Blue Fly and 'UFO'.
- Howell McConnell and post-Blue Book analysis (28 October 1972) — An NSA official tells Vallée a Wright-Patterson office kept secretly analyzing UAP after Blue Book.
- Dale Graff and Wright-Patterson remote viewing (1979) — Dale Graff is said to have run a remote viewing program at Wright-Patterson, then moved to the DIA.
- Osedacz thesis on fastwalkers (1989) (June 1989) — An Air Force captain writes that a database of UAP in near-Earth orbit has long existed.
References
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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