When a major U.S. military organization suddenly changes its logo to include what appears to be a flying saucer along with what appears to be a top fighter jet belonging to a foreign (and currently hostile) major power, people sit up and take notice – as they well should. When that same U.S. military organization – responsible for aviation security and threat response – just as suddenly drops all reference to the new logo, people start to wonder if the powers in charge are losing their minds, made a major mistake or suffered a premature leak, or were perhaps the victims of a hoax. Even the mainstream media is puzzled by the announcement this week of a new logo for the National Intelligence Manager for the Air Domain, also known as NIM-Aviation, which was quickly removed from web sites and never acknowledged … until it was pressured by investigators into finally saying something about it. What happened, what does the strange logo mean, and why was it covered up?
“Not a bad new logo for the National Intelligence Manager for Aviation. A Lazar UFO in the official seal? Hahahhahaha. Radical. I still can’t believe they did this…” (@JeremyCorbell)
Most members of the mainstream, military and paranormal media and the public got word of the unusual logo unveiling by NIM-Aviation when Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell tweeted it. Corbell is best known as a documentary filmmaker and for releasing the videos and still images of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) reported by military pilots and personnel videos who saw them flying near naval operations, swarming ships like the USS Omaha and performing physics-defying maneuvers both above and below the water. He noticed the new logo on the National Intelligence Manager for Aviation website (https://www.airdomainintelligence.mil/) where it appeared without fanfare.
“The National Intelligence Manager for the Air Domain serves as the Director of National Intelligence's principle adviser on air domain issues. NIM-Aviation leads Intelligence Community efforts to identify, analyze, and integrate intelligence on threats and vulnerabilities in the air domain. NIM-Aviation coordinates with air domain community stake holders (defense, federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, international, private sector, and academia) to support and advocate for intelligence priorities and opportunities to strengthen the safety and security of the Air Domain.”
The mission statement of NIM-Aviation includes responsibilities to “guide intelligence collection and analysis to address current and emerging threats and vulnerabilities” and “integrate Intelligence Community (IC) and external partner efforts and capabilities to maximize the air domain enterprise's mission effectiveness” while reporting to Avril Haines, the current Director of National Intelligence and member of the president’s cabinet. This is the department responsible for submitting to Congress intelligence assessments of the threat posed by unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the progress of the Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) in understanding this threat. In other words, in the minds of the general public, they are the flying saucer people. And, with this new logo featuring a flying saucer, it appears they are publicly acknowledging it.
“The complete logo has four other air vehicle silhouettes, each in a different color – a dark gray drone, a blue wedge-shaped vehicle, a red Russian Su-57 advanced combat jet, a light gray airliner-sized aircraft. The drone silhouette appears to represent a twin-boom, pusher-propeller design. Multiple types of uncrewed aircraft in this general configuration are already in use by armed forces around the world today, including in China and Iran, and have also notably served as the basis for ‘kamikaze’ drones that the Ukrainian military has employed against its Russian opponents.”
The fine folks at The War Zone were kind enough to identify the silhouettes on the logo, and they note that the blue wedge-shaped jet in the lead with a curved trail behind it is most likely a hypersonic boost-glide vehicle. Throw in the flying saucer and these silhouettes could easily represent the various aerial threats faced by the U.S. – threats which are the responsibility of NIM-Aviation. (The bomber appears to be Russian, but the exact type is not known.) The aircrafts are flying over an image of North America and part of South America and imply they are flying from somewhere else. Is there anything wrong with a logo patch so boldly and completely reflecting the organization’s responsibilities?
Digging deeper, The War Zone found that the filenames of two versions of the new logo contain the words “final” and “new”, yet there is no explanation for this. To add to the confusion (or cover-up), the three other logos on the website were changed without explanation. The War Zone speculates at this point that the flying saucer logo could be “an in-joke or something similarly innocuous” – both of which have happened before in military announcements … even in some attached to top-secret projects. The War Zone and other media sites reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for comment, and CyberScoop received an emailed response:
“(The National Intelligence Manager for the Air Domain) erroneously posted an unofficial and incorrect logo.”
That statement eliminates hacking and hoax as a possibility, but it also confirms that someone in the department was seriously considering a logo with flying saucers and foreign hypersonic aircraft as a possibility. The logo was also analyzed by the military site Sandboxx, which said this about it and the government response:
“Of course, it’s not uncommon for government agencies (from all over the world) to accidentally include depictions of foreign aircraft in official graphics, but it seems extremely unlikely that an intelligence organization specializing in aviation would make such a mistake.”
Is NIM-Aviation, reporting to the Director of National Intelligence who reports to the President, planning to go public with something it is implying in this “unofficial and incorrect” logo? Jeremy Corbell calls it “radical” and links the UFO to Bob Lazar, who claims he reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology while working at a secret subsidiary of Area 51. Does NIM-Aviation really want to be linked to Lazar? Does it really want to be linked to flying saucers in general … considering so many of the most recent UAPs are shaped like Tic tac candies, not the traditional flying disks?
It is all puzzling, with plenty of unanswered questions and nebulous responses. Perhaps that was the point.
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