BAASS Monthly Report, June 2009 — Department of War File
This June 2009 Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) progress report summarizes contractor activities for the period June 1–30, 2009. The report addresses staffing growth, expansion into new facilities, progress on contracted technical papers, investigative activity based on…
Incident Overview
This report was produced by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), the Las Vegas contractor that ran the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), and is dated June 2009. It was declassified and published on October 23, 2026 as part of the seventh tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The released copy carries redactions.
What the government released
This document is an administrative, programmatic, or contractor-produced record related to the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)-administered program active from 2008 to 2012. AAWSAP’s official scope of work identified 12 technical research areas relating to potential aerospace threats over a time horizon of more than 40 years. As part of the broader program record, the file documents how AAWSAP was scoped, organized, tasked, funded, executed, or described at a particular point in time.
This June 2009 Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) progress report summarizes contractor activities for the period June 1–30, 2009. The report addresses staffing growth, expansion into new facilities, progress on contracted technical papers, investigative activity based on information received via the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a BAASS deployment to Brazil, an update on “Project Northern Tier,” and continued review of UAP-related materials released by foreign governments. It also documents BAASS’s continued investment in field investigation capacity, foreign liaison-building, and UAP case acquisition, while recording BAASS’s proposal to reduce MUFON’s monthly stipend pending further performance review. Overall, the file reflects program activity, particularly in UAP reporting intake, foreign case investigation, and organizational expansion in support of those functions.
The case in this archive
This record is a primary source for the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, written up here at length from the contemporary record. The file and the case history are worth reading against each other: the document is narrower and more cautious than the account that grew up around it, which is usually the point.
The underground vault
The part of this report that drew the most press attention is a short passage headed “Underground Vault”. It says the contractor’s administrator saw a need for a highly secure underground store. The stated reason was a BAASS priority “to pursue and acquire recovered hardware and biological samples from the corporate world and/or from private individuals and groups located elsewhere, including in Brazil”. The report adds that BAASS had no secure place “to store exotic material or tissue that the organization could obtain.”
The plans are specific. The report describes a 5,000 square foot vault with three-foot-thick walls, ceiling and floor. A concrete tunnel would lead to several security doors, one of them a steel vault door. The structure would sit under 15 to 20 feet of earth at the Bigelow Aerospace site in North Las Vegas, with any surface structures camouflaged. Occupancy was expected in late 2009 or early 2010, subject to building permits. The same section records the purchase of five office buildings, including a 5,000 square foot laboratory with a secure physical evidence store and a secure conference room (a SCIF).
Read it for what it says. This is a contractor’s own account of plans it drew up. The released text does not say the vault was built, does not say it ever held anything, and does not say what “recovered hardware” or “biological samples” it had in mind. Nothing in the file shows that any such material was acquired. It does show a Pentagon-funded contractor treating the collection of physical samples as an aim of the program, which is why the passage is worth reading in full.
Status of the case
This is a contractor’s report to the government, written by a firm that was paid to study the subject and had its own reasons to show that the work was worth continuing. Its statements are the contractor’s claims, not Defense Intelligence Agency findings, and the Department of War’s release carries no endorsement of them. Where the report relays witness accounts, many of them taken from the Mutual UFO Network’s case files, those accounts were not independently checked in any way the pages show. Its value is as a record of what the program actually did month to month, which is the question public argument about AAWSAP has most lacked documents to answer. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has made no determination about this record.