Yankee Blue
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 📖 Term
Contents 5
| Type | Term |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Yankee Blue briefing |
Yankee Blue is the name reported for a fake program used in a U.S. Air Force induction briefing. For decades, some new commanders of highly classified programs were shown a photo of a supposed flying saucer and told that their program was trying to reverse-engineer it.[2][3] The Wall Street Journal revealed the practice in June 2025, in the first part of a two-part series on how the Defense Department had helped create and spread UFO mythology. Its source was an internal inquiry by the Pentagon's UFO office, AARO, under its first director, Sean Kirkpatrick.[2][3] The Journal's own article could not be read here, so this account relies on reports that quote it.[1]
The briefing
As quoted by Gizmodo and Jezebel, the Journal reported that, for decades, certain new commanders of the Air Force's most classified programs were handed a sheet of paper with a photo of what looked like a flying saucer during their induction briefings.[2][3] The craft was described as an "antigravity maneuvering vehicle." The officers were told the program they were joining, dubbed Yankee Blue, was part of an effort to reverse-engineer its technology, and that they must never mention it again.[2] Many never learned it was fake.[2]
Kirkpatrick found that the practice had begun decades earlier and appeared to be continuing. In spring 2023 the defense secretary's office sent a memo across the service ordering it to stop immediately, "but the damage was done."[2] Officials who spoke to the newspaper called it a "hazing ritual" that had spun out of control. The Journal reported that investigators were still trying to work out why officers had misled their subordinates.[2][3]
The wider investigation
The Journal's report drew on interviews with two dozen current and former officials, scientists and contractors, and on thousands of pages of documents, recordings, emails and texts.[3] Kirkpatrick told the paper the government had at times "fabricated evidence of alien technology" to distract from real secret weapons programs.[2] Other episodes in the series included:
- Area 51. The Journal reported that the military deliberately encouraged UFO stories around the base, including by giving fake UFO pictures to a local bar. Leaders feared locals might glimpse test flights of aircraft such as the F-117 stealth fighter.[3]
- Starlink. Kirkpatrick said reflections of the sun from Starlink satellites explained many pilot accounts of floating orbs.[3]
- Malmstrom, 1967. Former Air Force captain Robert Salas says a "glowing reddish-orange oval" was seen over the gate of his nuclear missile facility, and the missiles were then found disabled.[2] Kirkpatrick's team concluded that an Air Force electromagnetic-pulse generator, mounted on a platform 60 feet above the site to test whether missiles could survive a nuclear blast, could glow orange and fire bursts of energy resembling lightning.[2]
See also disinformation, special access program and legacy program.
Reaction
Gizmodo said the anecdotes were new but the broader finding was not. Critics had long argued that UFO mythology grew partly out of disinformation meant to hide earthly secrets, as Mark Pilkington argued in his 2014 documentary Mirage Men.[2] It asked whether Yankee Blue was really hazing or an internal disinformation effort to protect the programs. It concluded there was "no way to tell," and that statements from current or former officials on UFOs are hard to trust.[2]
A Jezebel writer called the Yankee Blue explanation unconvincing. A "hazing ritual" with no stated purpose, they wrote, would endanger intelligence work by misinforming officers, and it could not explain the many UAP reports from inside and outside the Air Force, especially from the Navy.[3] The writer also questioned Kirkpatrick's credibility, pointing to factual errors in AARO's 2024 historical report and to Christopher Mellon's critique of it.[3] They noted that George Knapp disputed the Area 51 explanation, and that Robert Hastings, author of UFOs and Nukes, cited an officer who said crews were told a UFO had caused the Malmstrom missile failures.[3] The writer nonetheless accepted that the Pentagon had sometimes fanned UFO stories, which they called old news.[3]
Notes on the earlier version of this article
- Unreadable source. The Wall Street Journal article could not be read here (it is behind a paywall). Its contents are cited through Gizmodo's and Jezebel's quotations.[1][2][3]
- When the practice ended. The earlier version said the practice continued until the spring 2023 memo. Gizmodo's quotation says Kirkpatrick found it "appeared to continue still" when the memo ordered it stopped.[2]
- Jezebel author. The earlier version named the Jezebel writer. The page text read here does not show a byline, so the name is not covered in the sources read here.[3]
References
- "The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America's UFO Mythology", The Wall Street Journal (Jun 2025) · wsj.com · archived copy
- "The Pentagon Has Been Pushing Americans to Believe in UFOs for Decades, New Report Finds", Gizmodo (11 Jun 2025) · gizmodo.com · archived copy
- Jacob Weindling, "Debunking the Wall Street Journal's UFO Debunking Report", Jezebel (2025) · jezebel.com · archived copy
This page was last edited on 31 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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