DoD Inspector General Opened Formal UAP Evaluation in May 20

DoD Inspector General Opened Formal UAP Evaluation in May 2021

A May 3, 2021 memorandum from the DoD Office of Inspector General announced an evaluation to determine the extent to which the DoD has taken actions regarding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, distributed to agencies including DARPA, DIA, NSA, and NRO.

Published

September 11, 2026

Declassified

Date not listed

Source agency

The Black Vault (FOIA archive)

doduapfoiainspectorgeneralopenedformalevaluation

DoD Inspector General Announces May 2021 UAP Evaluation

The Department General moved the question of how the Pentagon handles Unidentified Aerial Phenomena out of the realm of speculation and into the formal machinery of oversight. A memorandum dated May 3, 2021, announced that the office would begin an evaluation that same month, assigned Project No. 000.

The stated objective was narrow and administrative rather than sensational: to determine the extent to which the DoD has taken actions regarding UAP. That framing matters. The Inspector General did not announce that it would identify what any particular object was, nor did it promise conclusions about individual sightings.

It announced that it would examine whether the department, as an institution, had done what it was supposed to do. The memorandum was signed by Randolph R. Stone, Assistant Inspector General for Evaluations, Space, Intelligence, Engineering, and Oversight, and was addressed to a distribution list that reads like a map of the national…

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Based on the official release at https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/dod-oig-announces-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-uap-evaluation-for-may-2021/

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