A declassified U.S. Air Force document, designated Air Intelligence Requirements Memorandum Number 4 and recovered through FBI records, establishes that by 1948 the military had codified formal procedures for reporting sightings of unconventional aircraft and unidentified flying objects — including what the memorandum explicitly terms "the so-called 'Flying Discs.'" The document supersedes earlier Army collection memoranda dated January and March of that year, indicating an active and evolving institutional effort to centralize UAP reporting under Air Force authority.
Scope and Purpose of the Directive
According to the document, the memorandum serves two stated purposes: to articulate "continuing Air Force requirements for information pertaining to sightings of unconventional aircraft and unidentified flying objects," and to establish standardized procedures for reporting such information. The explicit inclusion of flying discs by name — hedged with the qualifier "so-called" — reflects an institutional posture that was simultaneously engaged with the phenomenon and cautious about its characterization.
The memorandum's rescission of two prior Army documents — Department of the Army Collection Memorandum Number 7, dated January 21, 1948, and a follow-on letter dated March 25, 1948 — signals that collection responsibility had formally transferred to Air Force agencies by the time this directive was issued. The prior Army documents had themselves been "transferred to Air Force agencies for action" before being superseded, suggesting a consolidation of the UAP intelligence function within the newly independent Air Force, which had separated from the Army only the previous year.
Reporting Chain: Wright-Patterson as Central Node
The memorandum establishes Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio — home of Air Materiel Command — as the primary routing destination for UAP reports. Overseas Air Commands and Air Attachés were directed to cable reports to the Director of Intelligence at Headquarters, United States Air Force, with instructions to include the phrase:
"Pass COMGENAMC WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, DAYTON, OHIO, ATTN: MCIAXC-3."
Domestic Air Commands within the Zone of Interior were directed to forward reports directly to the Commanding General, Air Materiel Command, at Wright-Patterson, with simultaneous copies to the Director of Intelligence at Headquarters USAF. Written reports were to be submitted on AF Form 112, a standard air intelligence report form. The Commanding General of Air Materiel Command was explicitly authorized to initiate direct contact with both overseas and domestic commands to develop information on the subject — an unusual grant of authority that suggests the subject was treated with operational seriousness.
Non-Air Force agencies — a category that would encompass other military branches, civilian federal entities, and potentially foreign partners — were also addressed. They were "requested" to forward reports directly to Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson, and were encouraged, where communications facilities permitted, to authorize subordinate elements to report directly, in order to "reduce the time factor involved in transmission of this type of information." The emphasis on speed implies that timely collection was considered operationally relevant.
Significance Within the Early UAP Intelligence Record
The memorandum predates Project Sign, the Air Force's first formal UAP investigation, which was stood up in early 1948, and is roughly contemporaneous with it. The document's routing structure — funneling reports to Wright-Patterson's Air Materiel Command — is consistent with what researchers have long identified as the institutional home of early UAP analysis, and aligns with the organizational lineage that would eventually produce Projects Grudge and Blue Book.
The document does not assess the nature or origin of the objects it seeks reports on. It is a bureaucratic instrument: a collection and routing directive, not an analytical product. Its significance lies not in any claim about what the objects were, but in what it demonstrates about how seriously the Air Force organized to collect information about them. The existence of a numbered, formal intelligence requirements memorandum — one that explicitly supersedes prior directives and addresses multiple command echelons including non-Air Force agencies — indicates that UAP reporting was integrated into the standard intelligence architecture of the early Cold War military, not treated as a marginal curiosity.
The document is sourced from FBI records, file reference 62-HQ-83894, Serial 164, a designation consistent with the Bureau's own parallel interest in UAP reports during the same period. The FBI's retention of Air Force intelligence directives points to inter-agency coordination on the subject that extended beyond the Air Force's internal reporting chain.