AAWSAP

The Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) was a Defense Intelligence Agency program, funded at about $22 million from fiscal 2008 through 2010, that contracted a private company to study advanced aerospace technology, UAP cases, and, controversially, paranormal phenomena. It is the direct ancestor of AATIP and, through it, of today's AARO.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye, arranged the appropriation after discussions with Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow. The DIA issued a solicitation in 2008 for research on advanced aerospace weapon system applications; Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), created for the purpose, won the sole bid.

AAWSAP commissioned 38 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs) on speculative topics from warp drives to invisibility cloaking, written by mainstream and fringe-adjacent scientists. BAASS fielded dozens of investigators, built a UAP case database, partnered with MUFON for national case flow, and studied Skinwalker Ranch, which Bigelow owned, including alleged poltergeist-type "hitchhiker" effects following investigators home. Program managers later described its scope in the 2021 book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon. Funding ended in 2010; the DIA has said the program concluded because it was determined other priorities merited the funds. The narrower UAP-focused effort continued informally as AATIP.

James Lacatski, the DIA rocket scientist who ran it; Colm Kelleher, BAASS deputy administrator; Reid and Bigelow as patrons.

Defunct. Its DIRDs were released under FOIA; other work products remain unreleased or in private hands, with some surfacing in PURSUE-era files.

The paranormal scope is the flashpoint: skeptics cite werewolf-and-poltergeist material as proof taxpayer money chased folklore, and the sole-bid award to the patron's friend as cronyism. Program veterans respond that the anomalies were investigated because personnel reported them, and that the aerospace analysis was real. The AARO Historical Record Report treated AAWSAP's Skinwalker strand as a source of later mythology, a characterization its veterans reject.