Program · December 1996 – December 2000 · Old War Office Building, Whitehall, London
Project Condign
Also known as Condign, Condign Report, Condign study, DI55 UAP study
Project Condign was the Ministry of Defence's last study of unidentified aerial phenomena, carried out for the Defence Intelligence Staff's branch DI55 between December 1996 and 2000 by a single contractor, whose name the MoD has withheld. Its aim was to decide whether the UAP reports the MoD had collected for some 30 years were of any value to Defence Intelligence: whether they showed a threat to the UK and, secondly, any military technology of interest. The author built a database of the reports, studied a statistical sample of those received from 1987 to 1997 and examined hundreds more by hand.
The result, "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region" (Scientific & Technical Memorandum 55/2/00: an executive summary and three volumes), found no evidence that any UAP were craft of intelligent extraterrestrial or foreign origin, attributed the reports to misidentified man-made objects, ordinary natural phenomena and rare, poorly understood ones, above all buoyant charged plasmas, and recommended that DI55 stop monitoring UAP reports. It did: from December 2000 reports were no longer forwarded to the DIS. The study was classified until the MoD released it, redacted, in response to a Freedom of Information request, which the historian David Clarke had been pressing, and published it on its website on 15 May 2006. The MoD said its name, "Condign", was randomly generated.
Its plasma theory is the study's own hypothesis, not an established finding: the report itself says the formation and persistence of such plasmas is "incomplete or not fully understood".
Sources: Executive Summary of the report (MoD release, 2006; local copy) · MoD FOI publication-scheme page (web archive) · MoD UFO files at The National Archives: DEFE 24/1986/1, DEFE 24/2068/1, DEFE 24/2090/1 (local copies)
Facts and claims
- documented The MoD's release page says the study arose from a 1996 policy review of how UAP sighting reports were handled, “to determine the potential value, if any, of such reports to Defence Intelligence”: principally whether there was any evidence of a threat to the UK, and secondly any potential military technologies of interest. Source: web.archive.org
- documented Answering David Clarke's FOI questions in 2006, the MoD said the author, a contractor and consultant, “commenced work on the report in December 1996”, spent 50–60% of his working week on this and other tasks, and stayed on as a DIS consultant “until completion of the report in March 2000”; the report “was not passed to any MoD Ministers” and went to only three senior MoD and RAF officials. Source: defe-24-2090-1.pdf
- documented The same answers say the study's UAP database, an ‘Access’ database, had been destroyed “in accordance with the commercial and security procedures in place at the time”, with all hard-copy extracts, and that the DI55 files used to compile it were among archives contaminated with asbestos. Source: defe-24-2090-1.pdf
- documented Asked whether the name echoed the U.S. Condon study, DI55 replied: “It is confirmed that ‘Condign’ was the word used to describe the report. The word ‘Condign’ was randomly generated and any similarity with the word ‘Condon’ is purely coincidental.” Source: defe-24-2090-1.pdf
- documented In an early paper on the task, filed in DEFE 24/1986/1 (PDF page 419), the author describes building a relational database of the UK reports from scratch and asks: “Please do not use the term UFO on the phone to this number”; his secretary would “understand the words PROJECT CONDIGN and relay any messages.” Source: defe-24-1986-1-2.pdf
- documented The study concluded that UAP reports have no significant Defence Intelligence value and that “There is no evidence that any UAP, seen in the UKADR, are incursions by air-objects of any intelligent (extra-terrestrial or foreign) origin, or that they represent any hostile intent.” It put many reports down to buoyant, electrically charged plasmas in the atmosphere. Source: doc-project-condign-2000.pdf
- documented In 2006 the MoD's UFO desk told an FOI applicant that the study “was not conducted to establish the existence of extraterrestrial lifeforms”, only whether the reports were of value to the DIS, and that “since December 2000, UFO reports have not been forwarded to the DIS.” Source: defe-24-2068-1.pdf
- documented In March 2006 David Clarke asked the MoD for an update on “my FOI request for the UAP report”, hoping it might “soon be in a position to release the redacted report”; the MoD's release page says the report was released “in response to a Freedom of Information request” and published on its website on 15 May 2006. Source: defe-24-2090-1.pdf
Connected files
Documents
- Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region: Executive Summary (Project Condign, 2000) (documented in) — The study's Executive Summary, Scientific & Technical Memorandum 55/2/00
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 12 July 2012 (25 files) (documented in) — DI55's 2006 answers to David Clarke's FOI questions about the study's author, database and name
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 3 March 2011 (35 files) (documented in) — An early paper by the study's author asks that phone messages refer to “PROJECT CONDIGN”
Organizations
- Ministry of Defence (UK) (run by) — Carried out for the Defence Intelligence Staff's branch DI55, whose material it was “entirely based on”
People
- David Clarke (researched by) — His 2006 FOI correspondence pressed the MoD to release “the redacted report”
- Nick Pope (discussed by) — He describes it as having attributed some sightings to exotic atmospheric plasmas
Mentioned in this file
- The National Archives: guides to the Ministry of Defence UFO files (2008–2013) (Document)
- National Archives and Records Administration (Organization)