Air Force 2025
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
| Date | May 1996 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Disinformation & hoaxes (topic) |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 124 |
| Year | 1996 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1996 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 4 |
Air Force 2025 was a large forecasting study ordered in 1995 by U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Ronald Fogleman to imagine the capabilities the Air Force might need about thirty years in the future. Completed in 1996, it produced a 3,300-page, ten-volume report.[1][2]
The study
The study was produced at Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, headed by Colonel Joseph Engelbrecht Jr., with input from technologists, futurists, science-fiction writers, scientists, historians, active-duty officers and retired generals. Its teams first sketched the most stressful future worlds the Air Force might face — from a hostile Asian "meganation" to networks of transnational corporations and swarms of robotic "insects" — and then looked for capabilities that would matter in all of them. Fogleman also asked for a nearer-term scenario, "Crossroads 2015".[1]
Findings
The study concluded that the Air Force of 2025 would be oriented far more towards space than air, and its authors debated whether a separate "Space Force" should be created. It weighed 43 capabilities and identified a core group, including a global information system with a three-dimensional "holographic war room", stealthy "sanctuary" bases, uninhabited combat aircraft, and space-based and solar-powered high-energy lasers that might even modify the weather.[1]
The holographic projector
The study's operational-analysis volume, by three officers at the Air Force Institute of Technology, ranked the 43 concepts; one was an airborne holographic projector that could display a three-dimensional image in the sky for deception or psychological operations.[2][3]
UFO interest
These were speculative ideas rather than programs. UFO researchers often cite the holographic projector concept as evidence that the military considered faking aerial phenomena, which could explain some sightings or be used for deception. There is no evidence such a device was built.[3]
People and topics
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
On the Timeline
- Las Vegas data-gathering meeting (1996) (28 January 1996) — Military, scientific and corporate figures meet in Las Vegas about gathering UAP data.
- Mathew Bevan (Kuji) arrest (21 June 1996) — A British hacker is arrested over intrusions into U.S. military and NASA systems.
See every 1996 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- John A. Tirpak, "The Air Force 2025 study", Air Force Magazine (Dec 1996) (PDF) · airandspaceforces.com · archived copy
- Air Force 2025: operational analysis (PDF), DTIC · apps.dtic.mil · archived copy
- "Air Force 2025 study", UFO Scans · ufoscans.com · archived copy
- apps.dtic.mil · apps.dtic.mil · archived copy
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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