ith the rest of the staff at ADC, were truly
great officers. None of them were believers in flying saucers, but
they recognized the fact that UFO reports were a problem that must be
considered. With technological progress what it is today, you can't
afford to have _anything_ in the air that you can't identify, be it
balloons, meteors, planets or flying saucers.

The plan that ADC agreed to was very simple. They agreed to issue a
directive to all of their units explaining the UFO situation and
telling specifically what to do in case one was detected. All radar
units equipped with radarscope cameras would be required to take
scope photos of targets that fell into the UFO category--targets that
were not airplanes or known weather phenomena. These photos, along
with a completed technical questionnaire that would be made up at
ATIC by Captain Roy James, would be forwarded to Project Grudge.

The Air Defense Command UFO directive would also clarify the
scrambling of fighters to intercept a UFO. Since it is the policy of
the Air Defense Command to establish the identity of any unidentified
target, there were no _special_ orders issued for scrambling fighters
to try to identify reported UFO's. A UFO was something unknown and
automatically called for a scramble. However, there had been some
hesitancy on the part of controllers to send airplanes up whenever
radar picked up a target that obviously was not an airplane. The
directive merely pointed out to the controllers that it was within
the scope of existing regulations to scramble on radar targets that
were plotted as traveling too fast or too slow to be conventional
airplanes. The decision to scramble fighters was still up to the
individual controller, however, and scrambling on UFO's would be a
second or third priority.

The Air Defense Command UFO directive did not mention shooting at a
UFO. This question came up during our planning meeting at Colorado
Springs, but, like the authority to scramble, the authority to shoot
at anything in the air had been established long ago. Every ADC pilot
knows the rules for engagement, the rules that tell him when he can
shoot the loaded guns that he always carries. If anything in the air
over the United States commits any act that is covered by the rules
for engagement, the pilot has the authority to open fire.

The third thing that ADC would do would be to integrate the Ground
Observer Corps into the UFO reporting net. As a second prio