Showing posts with label Project Moon Dust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Project Moon Dust. Show all posts

Monday, April 23, 2018

Moon Dust and the 4602nd AISS

AISS Patch/Logo
Credit: CUFON

      For years, decades really, there has been this idea that Project Moon Dust began with the creation of the 4602nd Air Intelligence Squadron (AISS) in early 1953. Ed Ruppelt, one time chief of Project Blue Book, had complained to his superiors after the massive UFO sighting wave of the summer 1952, that he needed help in the investigations. He was surprised when it was suggested, and later put into an Air Force regulation, that the investigation of UFO sightings would be accomplished by the 4602nd.

By Kevin Randle
A Different Perspective
4-16-18

If you go back and read what Ruppelt wrote, and if you look at the unit history of the 4602nd along with an examination of the Project Blue Book administrative files, you’ll see what was going on. The 4602nd was created at the time of the Korean War and during the Cold War in which military, governmental and strategic planners were worried about an aerial assault on the continental United States. This means, naturally, they worried about a Soviet bombing campaign which would see bombers shot out of the sky and Soviet airmen trying to escape and evade inside the US borders.

The thought was they needed trained teams who could search for these downed crewmen, who had lots of skills that normal service members didn’t need such as riding horses, Russian language skills, the ability to question civilians who might have seen something in the sky, and other similar skills. The 4602nd was designed with this in mind and to gain experience in interrogating civilian witnesses, they would be investigating UFO sightings. This put them in contact with untrained, sometimes uneducated, and often nervous civilians who had seen something strange. They would become experienced investigators.

Regulations written dictated this and it was, in fact, implemented. Going through the Blue Book files, there are sighting reports that were written by members of the 4602nd about their investigations of UFO sightings. There is correspondence from the commanders of the 4602nd to ATIC and other offices about UFOs. There is no dispute that this happened, and it interesting if only because it wasn’t until much later that this connection was made.

But, that does not give us the date of the beginning of Moon Dust. Others, and me among them, have suggested it and run with that idea that the 4602nd was the beginning of Moon Dust. It seemed to be a logical conclusion, but it wasn’t actually supported by the documentation.

This idea was reinforced when New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman, working with Cliff Stone of Roswell, requested information about Project Moon Dust from the Air Force. Lieutenant Colonel John E. Madison, of the Congressional Inquiry Division, Office of Legislative Liaison wrote, “There is no agency, nor has there ever been, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, which would deal with UFOs or have any information about the incident in Roswell. In addition, there is no Project Moon Dust or Operation Blue Fly.”

Documentation obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, first by Robert Todd, later by Stone, and also by me, proved the statement to be untrue. I found, in the Project Blue Book files four cases that had been marked as “Moon Dust.” Clearly, the project existed.

When that documentation was presented to the Air Force, they changed their response. Colonel George M. Mattingley, Jr., wrote that they wanted to amend their response, suggesting that Moon Dust did exist. Mattingley wrote:
In 1953, during the Korean War, the Air Defense Command organized intelligence teams to deploy, recover, or exploit at the scene of downed enemy personnel, equipment, and aircraft. The unit with responsibility for maintaining these teams was located at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. As the occasion never arose to use these air defense teams, the mission was assigned to Headquarters, United States Air Force in 1957 and expanded to include the following peace-time functions: a) Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs); b) Project MOON DUST; to recover objects and debris from space vehicles that had survived re-entry from space to earth; c) Operation BLUE FLY, to expeditiously retrieve downed Soviet Bloc equipment.
This is the earliest reference that I have found to Moon Dust. We also know that it had a UFO component based on other documents that define several terms including UFO and that there are reports in the Blue Book file that refer to Moon Dust.

Note also that Mattingley mentions that the mission was given to Headquarters, USAF in 1957, which corresponds with the launch of Sputnik, and the message issued by that Headquarters in 1957. The creation of the 4602nd, then, was not the beginning of Moon Dust.

The upshot of all this is that Moon Dust did not begin in 1953, but late in 1957. It was in operation until 1985, and contrary to Mattingley’s claim, it was deployed and was not shut down. When the name was compromised in 1985, the code name was changed. In a letter to Robert Todd, dated July 1, 1987, he was told the “nickname Project Moon Dust no longer exists.” The new name was not releasable because even the code name was classified.

In the years that followed, we have not been able to learn the new name, and we don’t know if it is still in operation today. All I can say for certain is that we know, based on other information, that the Pentagon did engage in UFO research not all that long ago and though they say that project ended, we don’t know if that is true. After all, they told us that Project Sign, the first official UFO project had ended, but the name was merely changed to Grudge. We were told that Grudge had ended, but the name was changed to Blue Book. We were told that Blue Book had ended, but we know that Project Moon Dust survived the end of Blue Book and was still in operation in 1987 when the name was changed.

What we really see here, and what we can document, is a long history of Air Force investigation of UFOs, Air Force saying one thing and doing another, and that UFO investigation continued beyond the end of Blue Book, and that other studies of UFOs have been conducted into the 21st century. What this tells us that there are many aspects of the UFO problem that have not been revealed to us and that there are still secrets being kept.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Plenty More UFO-Related Governmental Material Can Be Found

CHRONOLOGY 1982 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing

Paul Dean By Paul Dean
ufos-documenting-the-evidence.blogspot.com
7-21-15

     One of the things that never ceases to stagger me about the UFO issue is the sheer quantity of governmental material that has been generated because of it. Its now been 70 years worth. For a subject that is, supposedly, mere fantasy, there seems to be no limit, no slowing down even, to the discovery of unseen, unapprised, once classified documentation pouring in from a growing assortment of sources. If one knows what they are looking for (which is half the battle) they can pretty much be sure to discover something that they, and no one else often, have ever seen before. This may sound baffling to a person who has never tried. The notion that so-called “UFO files” (a term that gets thrown around too loosely, too often) can be simply weeded out of official sources whenever one feels like it, seems implausible, right? Well, to my daily and nightly amazement, it’s not.

I recently stumbled upon a few large databases of American military and intelligence publications (870 to be exact) at the site archive.org that have been wholly, or at least partially, declassified by their “originating agency”, or, more formally, their “Office of Primary Responsibility” (OPR). Now, for those interested, and most people sadly are not, any file created by any Directorate, Major Command, Field Agency, Fleet, Component or whatever, within any branch of the US Department of Defence (Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines), is “owned”, or “promulgated”, by that organisation, or its successors, for eternity; and, in the case of the lists I am going through now, we are spoilt for choice. There are hundreds of files from seemingly every major component of the whole US DoD represented.

Anyway, In a little over five weeks, I have managed to painstakingly go through 400 or so (of 1000’s) and have already found 24 publications that in some way do, or may, relate to the UFO matter - and some of them relate very openly. Maybe more importantly is that some of these records not been been seen by UFO researchers yet. I have consulted some of the researchers who do this sort of thing day and night, and a good number of these files are completely new to them.

So what’s in the assortment so far? Below I detail two of the more interesting ones, with plenty more to come in future blog posts.

The first one I came across is a modestly laid out 9 page document which lists various important events and milestones of the US Air Force’s 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing for the year 1982. Titled, “CHRONOLOGY 1982 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing”, the document is a loose tabulated list with dates on the left-hand side of the page, and events in the main middle-to-right-hand side. Typical entries include things like “5 Mar The 9th and 100th Wings participated in a joint Short Sprint readiness exercise” and “16 April The Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to continue Operating Location – OF at Patrick AFB, Florida indefinitely”. Important stuff most would agree, no? What then do we make of this entry on page 7 which states:
9 Oct A detachment 4 U-2 on a higher headquarters mission experienced an unusual incident.
What is meant by “unusual incident” is unclear. Such phrasing is usually a euphemism for an event that higher headquarters would prefer not to be known. How many options for this are there for a U-2 in flight? A mechanical issue would likely be stated as such. It is possible that the aircraft experienced a missile attack from the air or ground, again something likely to be stated as such in an internal document. Could there have been a UFO sighted, surely an unusual incident? UFO incidents have been known to be vaguely described in unit histories. Maybe someday what this was will be known. Above top is an image of the page in question.

The second publication I saw which contained something of significance is titled “History of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence: July – December 1967”. This particular file seems to be focused solely on the functions and responsibilities of the 1127th Field Activities Group (FAG), and starts off, for reasons unknown, at Page 46. For those readers who don’t know, the 1127th FAG, historically, relates to the USAF’s painful reaction to the UFO issue. The organisation started out its shadowy life as the 4602nd Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS) in January 1953, when Air Defence Command Regulation 24-4 created it for a wartime mission of exploiting downed enemy people, papers, and hardware. In March 1953, the decision was made to use the 4602nd AISS in UFO investigations and, by the end of December 1953, a working agreement existed between the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) and the new 4602nd AISS. In fact, all UFO reports were to go through the 4602d AISS prior to any transmission to Project Blue Book at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base – Project Blue Book being the publicly admitted UFO “investigative” desk, if you can call what they did as “investigations” that is. Anyway, in July 1957 the 4602nd, became the 1006th AISS, then in April 1960, it was reorganised as the 1127th FAG! Furthermore, through the years, these organisations ran the infamous “Project Moon Dust”, which many of you will know of. For those that do not, put simply, the original mission of Project Moon Dust, as stated by US Air Force Message #54322, dated December 23, 1957, was to “to collect and analyze raw intelligence reports from the field on fallen space debris and objects of unknown origin”.

Now, in regards to the publication I am discussing here, some half way through the document, we see the sub-heading “MOON DUST.” It goes on to read:
“Secret/No Foreign Dissem) During the last half of 1967, the Operations Plans Branch (AFNIAAB) received from the 1st Aerospace Control Squadron (SPADATS) at Ent AFB, Colorado, notifications of the deorbit of 49 Soviet space objects (rocket bodies, payloads and space platforms), and of 17 US space objects considered to be of special importance.”
Below is an image of the page in question:

Moon Dust Doc

On the next page, a further 6 lines of text have been completely redacted, or, “blacked out”, by USAF declassification review authorities. The act of redacting certain lines of text, or even whole pages, is done when dedicated records management units review any wholly classified material. Such redactions are done under the guise of one or more of the the specific exemptions allowed which relate to national security. Considering the publication I am presenting here is from 1967, and we are now in 2015, one really wonders if such actions are even remotely necessary. Not all is lost though, for this special portion of the document goes on to finally say:

“Inspection by US authorities was precluded by the strained diplomatic relations which have resulted from the Arab/Israeli conflict, but AFNLAAB has received a report that a mission composed of 13 Soviet scientists and technicians did examine the object in October, 1967. No further details are available.”
Below is an image of this page.

Moon Dust Doc (2)

Looking at the bigger picture, the only thing these obscure publications really prove is that there is more UFO-related, governmental (usually of military providence) to be found. As stated above, I found this material at archive.org. There are dozens more under-utilised databases and archives that will surely contain significant, at least historically, material. None of this of course will solve the UFO matter. It will, however, fill in little parts of history, and, sometimes, lead us to more discoveries. If anyone wants copies of the whole files I have discussed above, please email me.

Thursday, April 03, 2014

Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (Pt II)


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Majestic Twelve Project, Annual Report, Summer 1952

By Kevin Randle
A Different Perspective
3-23-14

      There is another alleged MJ-12 document that suffers from many of the same problems as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary and this is the Majestic Twelve Project, Annual Report which is believed to have been created during the summer of 1952. This is another of the documents provided by Timothy Cooper through his source of Thomas Cantwheel, that unidentified man who claimed to have been on the inside of UFO crashes investigations and with the Majestic Twelve or some such.

These are the conclusions from a larger document which rehashes some of the information from other documents and adds to the knowledge that we have been told is highly classified. It is clear from the document that, “…no country on this earth has the means and the security of its resources to produce such [meaning an interplanetary craft].”

It is noted that “The occupants of these planform vehicles are, in most respects, human or human-like. Autopsies, so far indicate, that these beings share the same biological needs as humans.”

One of the things that would become important in understanding the veracity of the document said, “The ATIC Interrogation Reports, numbered 1 to 93 (the last dated December, 1950), present significant information on a broad variety of subjects and areas where witnesses were obtained subsequent to the post-1947 incident. The un-published documents consolidate records of interrogation derived from the accumulated reports of interviews of selected witnesses from New Mexico and military personnel involved in removal of evidence.”

It is after Section P labeled as “Government Policy of Control and Denial,” a list of statements about all these events is found. For example, it said, “The Panel’s review of the AEC and AFSWP investigation of Site L-1 and the Air Force Site L-2, has led the Panel to conclude that the objects under study, are the result of a high altitude ejection of a [sic] escape cylinder from a fatal mid-air collision of two unidentified circular planform aircraft of interplanetary nature.”

As had been seen in the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, there are the coordinates for L-2 [which is why the two documents can be tied together] and they are written in the same weird format, meaning “Lat. 33-40-31, Long. 106-28-29.… this site yielded the most material for analysis.”

We learn that Site L-2 is associated with Site L-1, again for which no coordinates are provided, which also seems strange. The descriptions of both sites seem to match to some degree and that “impact and the debris pattern… and debris pattern suggests that the craft hit the ground at a sharp angle and continued to remain airborne until coming to rest at Site L-2.”

Then comes a statement that turns part of this upside down. According to the document “The second craft that impacted at Site L-3, provided very little evidence that it too was similar in design, so the impact was vertical in nature and at very high speed. It is believed that the debris discovered on 2 July 1947, by a local rancher was the result of a mid-air collision with an X-plane from HAFB [Holloman Air Force Base]; another unidentified object; or possibly collided with both…”

According to the document, “There were five recovered bodies, two of which were found in a severely damaged escape cylinder, and the remaining three were found some distance away from the cylinder. All five appeared to have suffered from sudden decompression and heat suffication [sic] (recovery and autopsies of the occupants are covered in detail in a separate study GRAY SUIT within Projects 612 and 621…”

Later, it is noted that tissue samples from the contamination of four technicians involved in the recovery were being held at Fort Detrick, MD.

And to make matters worse, there is the note, “Detection of a high altitude explosion was recorded by a Project MOGUL constant level balloon on 4 July 1947.”

At another point it said, “On 6 December 1950, MAJCOM-4 alerts MAJCOM-1 of a breach in DEW Greenland of a UFO on a south-westerly course. HQ IPU alerted and dispatched a scientific team to El Indio-Guerrero on the Texas-Mexico border. MAJCOM-4 orders a recovery team from Project Stork and MOON DUST to crash site…”

But here’s the problem with those things mentioned above. They are out of place. They shouldn’t be in this document because they didn’t exist at the time it was supposedly written. Or other, better information has superseded it. Newer information has shown where the older data are wrong. For example, the document states that “…ATIC Interrogation Reports, numbered 1 to 93 (the last dated December, 1950), present significant information on a broad variety of subjects…” But, according to Brad Sparks, ATIC wasn’t formed until May 1951 and therefore could not issue a series of reports before its existence.

Although there is the discussion about some sort of mid-air collision, the best evidence today is that there was a single craft that scattered its debris over three sites, all of them between Corona, New Mexico and Roswell. There is no evidence of a crash near the Trinity Site, other than in the MJ-12 documents. While an argument can be made that the information we have today does not completely eliminate the collision scenario, it can also be argued that it is out of date information that was the current thinking by some in the mid-1990s. That dates the creation of the document to that time.

Then, unlike the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, this document adds a third site. This might be an attempt to account for the later information coming from UFO researchers in the 1990s. Realizing that something else had come down between the Brazel ranch debris field and Roswell, the forger added this new detail to conform to the new and better information. As an aside, this information should have appeared in the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, since it would have been available in July 1947. This all, of course, is indicative of a hoax rather than the truth.

Worse still, is the suggestion that Mack Brazel had found the debris field on July 2. It has been claimed by some that the crash took place either late on July 2 or early on July 3. Brazel found the debris on July 3 or 4, according to some of the scenarios, but none of them include finding debris as early as July 2.

The idea of a collision between an experimental aircraft out of Holloman is not borne out by research. Air Force investigation showed that no military aircraft, either in the regular inventory or in the experimental stages disappeared in early July 1947. Those on the inside of these organizations, with the clearances necessary, would know this. They might speculate about a collision with an unknown object but they would know that it was not an aircraft of any type.

We move into trivia again. Holloman Air Force Base was, in fact, the Alamogordo Army Air Field in 1947, but I suppose you could argue that someone writing about this in 1952 would use the current name of the air field rather than the older name.

Almost the same could be said about the tissue samples were sent to Fort Detrick. The problem here is that Fort Detrick was Camp Detrick in 1952. The new designation would not be made until some four years after the document was allegedly written. Yes, you could say that it is a minor mistake that might have been made by someone who was not fully aware of how the Army designated their installations. Even someone inside the Army might not understand this. The question to be asked is how many of these sorts of errors are allowed before it becomes clear that the document was not written by an insider?

Part of that answer is found in the next statement about a MOGUL balloon detecting the collision or explosion on a July 4. First, there was no July 4 MOGUL flight and there is no indication that any sort of explosion detected by MOGUL. This is not to mention that it contradicts the other information suggesting that Brazel found the debris on July 2. If the alleged detonation was detected by the July 4 flight, then how is it linked to an event that happened two days before it was launched?

But it is the next paragraph that proves the document a hoax. It begins with a date of December 6, 1950, and claims that the UFO breeched the DEW in Greenland. The problem is that the DEW line didn’t exist in 1950 and according to Brad Sparks the name wasn’t even “coined until the MIT Project Lincoln Summer Study Group report of September 1952. The DEW line was not started until 1954.”

Even worse, according to the document, “HQ IPU alerted and dispatched a scientific team to El Indio-Guerrero on the Texas-Mexico border.” This is based on the testimony of Robert Willingham, who claimed that as a high-ranking Air Force officer and fighter pilot, he had seen the crash. The trouble is that Willingham was neither an officer nor a fighter pilot and his story has been discredited. It would seem that a tale, invented in the 1960s by Willingham and that has undergone several revisions since then, would not appear in an authentic document created more than a decade before Willingham made his first claim.

Finally, we know that Project Stork was the analysis done by Battelle and had nothing to do with crash retrievals. Although it began early enough to be mentioned in this document, it is clear that the author didn’t know what Project Stork was.

Attached to this is the mention of the MOON DUST team but this is a real problem. According to documents that I located in the Project Blue Book files and a letter dated December 12, 1957, MOON DUST began in the fall of 1957. In other words, it would not exist for five years and there is no way for it to deploy a team in 1950.

To summarize (which is to say, let’s beat this dead horse), this document is filled with internal contradictions, it is filled with inaccurate information, and it contains information that would be correct if the programs, units and projects actually existed in 1952. While it might be argued that this is a draft (which would have been destroyed when the final draft was completed) so that you might expect the typos, misnamed military organizations, and some inaccurate information, all of which would be corrected in the final draft, there is no way to explain the predictions for the future. There is no way for the author to know the DEW line would be created two years in the future, would know that it would be called the DEW line before the name was coined, and no way to know that MOON DUST would be created some five years later. These, to me, are the fatal flaws.

For those interested, there are more examples of this in the document. I just didn’t bother to enumerate all of them. And yes, I know that the comment will be made that the way to discredit a leak of classified information is to pump false information into it so no one knows what is accurate, what is false, and the whole thing is rejected. But that isn’t the point here. These documents just appeared in Timothy Cooper’s mail box and the trail basically ends there.

Without a provenance, without an eyewitness, without anything to allow us to validate the documents, there is but one sane course. Ignore them. Reject them. Move our research efforts into another arena. Unfortunately, the facts about this document are not enough to remove it from the case. Instead it is considered highly reliable by some in the UFO community.

There is one other thing to be said. During all my investigations into the MJ-12 documents, regardless of source, Stan Friedman, Dr. Robert Wood and Ryan Wood, have answered most of my email questions. All are aware of my personal belief in MJ-12 but they do respond and I appreciate that. It would be simple for them to ignore my questions but they don’t. I thank them for putting up with my questions.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Project Moon Dust Revisited


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Moon Dust Report


By Kevin Randle
A Different Perspective
11-12-13

      As I worked on a new book about the UFO secrets found in various government files, I was scanning one of the Project Blue Book microfilms, searching for a specific case. As the files slipped by I thought I saw the words “Moon Dust.” I stopped and reversed course much more slowly. On one of what they called the “project card” which was a short summary of the case, I did see the term Moon Dust.

I located several different project cards that contained “Moon Dust” references. In those few files, I found indications that there was coordination between Blue Book and Moon Dust, at least briefly. Several of the cases do reference Moon Dust though they seem to have conventional explanations, at least according to the information in the file.

The first of these cases came from Ramey Air Force Base (which was not named for Roger Ramey of Roswell fame), Puerto Rico on September 15, 1960. This file, which noted one of the addressees on the message as Moon Dust, said:

Round Object with Tail (Moon Dust Report)  9-15-1960
Round object with a tail, size reports vary from the size of a pea to half dollar, color reports vary from bluish-white to dusky red. Tail aprox [sic] 3-5 times the size of the object. No sound. Object reported to have broken up into several fireballs. One report stated that object finally fell into ocean.

It is possible that this object was a very slow meteor. However it is more probably a reentry of the 1960 Epsilon vehicle, parts of which reentered during Sep and Oct 1960. Epsilon had an inclination of 64 [degrees], therefore the heading would be about 26 degrees.

A series of sightings on September 21, 22, and 23, 1960, from Bermuda, were listed as “ATIC possible Mon [sic] Dust. The witnesses are identified only as civilians. The case said, “Reported sightings by local people of dull orange object on 21, 22, 23 Sep [sic] accompanied by weird [sic] whirring sound, in evening.”
The original message said that further investigation was being conducted but no follow up information had been received. There was insufficient data for any sort of scientific analysis and I suspect that if anything interesting was found, it would not have become part of Blue Book. I also suspect that if nothing more was found, no one bothered with a follow up report.

Another of these Moon Dust cases took place on September 23, 1960, at Bitburg AB, Germany. The source of the sighting was listed as “Moon Dust.” It said:
Luminous Streak (Moon Dust Report)  9-23-1960
Luminous streak, like shooting star, colors red and yellow. Object left a trail. Object appeared very suddenly and was red in color, gradually changing to bright yellow. Appeared much larger than meteor… Path momentarily broken and when reappeared was red in color, no smoke but numerous sparks.

Description conforms to satellite reentry. As to direction, color and breaking up. 1960 Lambda II (rocket body) reentered this date. Case evaluated as satellite reentry based upon general description, although duration of sighting was omitted.
This seems to be a reasonable explanation, especially since there was documentation to back up the solution. A few days later, on September 26, 1960, northeast of Bermuda, an object that was yellowish-green and described as a “falling star or object” was seen.

A teletype in the Project Blue Book files, received on 26 Sep 60, said, “PD Moon Dust falling star or object sighted by GULL special at 0527Z 26 Sep.” There was no explanation or definition of Gull. It might have been the name of the mission or the name of the witness. It was in sight for one second.

A Moon Dust case, like these others, meaning with little information, came from Thule, Greenland. A teletype message said, “Bright comet like object presumably MOONDUST sighted at Thule AB Greenland… on 24 Sep 60. Estimated elevation less than ten degrees. Direction: Appeared from south east and disappeared into the west… Observed time 5 seconds.” It was written off as a possible meteor.

Finally in September, a sighting was made in Wethersfield, England. The teletype message said, “Flare-like appearance, light green to white in color. Travelling northwest to southeast.” It was noted that the “Information too limited for valid conclusion.”

These cases are of importance because of the connection to Moon Dust. It proves that Moon Dust had a UFO component but more interesting is the fact that after this point, that is late 1960, I have found no other references to Moon Dust in the Project Blue Book files. This doesn’t mean that someone else might not find such a connection, just that I didn’t find one. My mission, at the time of the discoveries was research on a book about the secrets in the government files, so my research took in a wide range of government organizations. Just think how vast that target is.

These were cases that I stumbled across as I worked on one chapter of the book, but of course, will be found in the chapter in which I deal with Moon Dust. I believe that research will add to our knowledge of that project, taking us beyond what has been reported in the past.