CONDIGN UN-REDACTED
MoD lifts the lid on missing sections of the UK UAP study
In a Substack post from 2023, Lost and Found, I revealed how the UK Ministry of Defence had rediscovered one surviving original copy of its important 3-volume study of UFOs.
I learned of the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region, or ‘the Condign report’ as it was code-named, a quarter of a century ago. It later emerged that defence scientist Ron Haddow was commissioned to write the report in 1996 as he was regarded by DI55, the Defence Intelligence branch responsible for UFO investigations, as their expert on the subject.
Haddow’s report was completed in 2000 and classified ‘Secret UK Eyes Only’. I learned of its existence through my contacts at the ministry. In 2006 I used the new Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the hefty 300+ page study. It was handed over to me in MoD Main Building by Linda Unwin who was at that time the penultimate UFO desk officer (the post was abolished in 2009, a victim of cuts to defence).
I immediately shared my copy with the BBC and The Sunday Times who published it as a world exclusive in May 2006.
Whilst most of the report was declassified some intriguing sections, covering radar detection of UFO and the capabilities of UK radar, foreign liaison and black project aircraft remained redacted. These sections remained censored despite numerous follow-up FOI requests by myself and others. What remained included illustrations that showed head-on silhouettes of the F117 and B2 ‘Stealth’ aircraft, ‘the body/fuselage shape of which can be reported respectively as “saucer or arc/boomerang shaped” under certain silhouette and lighting conditions’. The caption added: ‘These aircraft types are unfamiliar as they are rarely spotted in UK airspace’.
For two decades the MoD insisted that sections of volume 2 - stamped NATO Secret -including text and two images that relate to ‘Black and other aircraft as UAP [UFO] events’ must be kept secret as they engage exemption 24 (National Security) and exemption 27 (international relations) of the FOIA.
As recently as February this year MoD rejected a fresh FOI after reviewing these redactions, saying that:
‘Even from this distance in time, its disclosure could still provide adversaries with an insight into the developments of US/UK aircraft technology, compromising the military capabilities of US partners and our own Air Force assets’.
Yet despite this apparently unequivocal conclusion four months later they released the requested images and text, with zero redactions, in response to another FOI submitted by someone who wishes to remain anonymous. He has supplied the images used in this blogpost.
What was hidden behind such excessive secrecy?
Do the layers of ink cover images of Top Secret US military technology that might explain puzzling UFO stories such as the Tic-Tac or the diamond-shaped object shadowed by jets over Calvine in 1990?
Far from it.
What was being concealed are two speculative paragraphs that give credence to the rumoured existence of two US experimental ‘black’ programmes. Far from being ‘sensitive’ from a national security point of view, they were subject to intense speculation in the media and aeronautical press during the early 1990s. One of these was the Aurora/Astra programme:
The Fig 2 referred to is a drawing that resembles the ‘paper dart’ shape widely interpreted by imaginative artists for magazines such as Flight International and Aviation Week at the time. It appears Haddow and the Defence Intelligence staff were believers too!
The second piece of text redacted from volume 2 of covers the ‘Black Manta’ or TR3A, a rumoured, highly speculative USAF stealth aircraft. In military and aviation lore it is described as a subsonic, flying-wing spy plane used for tactical reconnaissance and laser designation during Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf War. A press report published in 1992 described it as ‘a perfect triangle…and is virtually noiseless both at low and high altitudes’. It added:
‘Experts think that the aircraft has been classified as operational and that a certain number have been deployed in USA air bases most probably in Great Britain. Many observers who saw the aircraft in Belgium [during 1989-90] thought that they had seen a UFO. It is rumoured that a few…were deployed during the Desert Storm operation on reconnaisance missions for the F-117A [Stealth fighter]’.
The newly unredacted section of the Condign report says:
In Figure 5 the Black Manta is sketched as a dark triangular shaped aircraft with angular facets. Some have suggested it operated via exotic anti-gravity propulsion systems that might account for its silent operation and impossible maneuvers.
Notes appended to Fig 5 say the TR3 has a 60ft wingspan, is 42 ft in length and is ‘covert survivable in weather strike/recce’. There are two variants: ‘seen with sausage-shaped contrail (or smoke?)’ and ‘probably/possibly with pulsating motor’.
The problem with all of this speculation is simple: there is zero hard evidence that either Aurora/Astra or TR3 Black Manta ever existed as operational military planes. Thirty years have passed since the Condign report was completed. Today the US government and military deny either programme ever flew and sceptics have dismissed many of the sightings of triangular craft attributed to these legendary aircraft as hoaxes, misidentifications of conventional aircraft and, more recently, drones and UAVs.
That may be so but it misses an important point. The author of the Condign report and others at the Defence Intelligence staff at that time (1989-1999) clearly believed the Americans were flying something that was stealthy, triangular or diamond shaped, and capable of unconventional maneuvers.
And what is more they were convinced that these craft had transited through UK airspace with or without formal permission. Indeed, in his report, Haddow says the Americans had flown the SR-71 Blackbird high altitude reconnaissance spyplane since the 1960s. The last SR-71 departed from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk in 1989. For MoD desk officers it seemed completely plausible that whatever had replaced the SR-71 would at some point - particularly during the Gulf War - have visited the UK.
Then in 1991-92 the MoD was bombarded with Parliamentary Questions from Scottish MPs who were convinced that the Americans were operating a spy plane from RAF Macrahanish on the Kintyre Peninsula. Again the MoD issued denials but privately intelligence officers briefed that they ‘would not be surprised’ if such a secret programme existed.
Indeed, at that time the MoD was in possession of a series of colour photographs that showed a hovering diamond shaped object, shadowed by two military jets, in the Scottish highlands. One of these images surfaced in 2022 when I published it exclusively in The Daily Mail.
Did it show the TR3 Black Manta or another top secret prototype, shadowed by escort planes, as one of my sources implied?
Or was it ‘a spoof…part of the Aurora saga’ as opined by the British Air Attache in Washington at the time.
Only time will tell.