What I "think" happened here? It's obvious.
Not as often as you might think
The Commanding General of the Army Air Force made a request to Air Materiel Command, Wright Field, Dayton Ohio and this is the answer he got after their intelligence and engineering people weighed in.
Example right here. The requestor, Brigader General Francis G. Schulgen was in fact assigned to (US Air Force, (having become a seperate service 5 days earlier they hadn't had time yet to change letter head or organizational charts and it would be the mid-50s before the public mentally accepted the service as a seperate entity) the Public Affairs Division. "Assigned" because he was already on track to retire about 8 months later (
http://www.generals.dk/general/Schulgen/George_Francis/USA.html) and he was therefore the "Commanding General" listed since he was in fact in "command" of the division.
Public Affiars (
https://www.publicaffairs.af.mil/) is the public 'face' of the Air Force and the official channel for interaction between the service, the public and the press. So the General in charge of Public Affairs wrote to the General in charge of Air Material Command for a statement and stance on these "UFO" sightings for disemniation to the public and press. Brigader General Nathan Twining head of the DIVISON that was Air Material Command was, within eight days of that memo assigned to the Alaska Air Command as its commander. A step down and to a place that at the time was NOT seen as the best of assignments. (
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/105367/general-nathan-f-twining/)
A threat to national security is about as serious as it gets. In August 1947, the Russians displayed the Tu-4, a reverse engineered B-29. That would be followed by the Tu-16 in 1954. No, there is no "new" Air Force here. National defense means you get the money you need.
:::SIgh::: No, in fact the US military would continue to face further and more major budget cuts when Truman was elected again in 1948. Truman had always prioritized domestic spending over anything else and further, while he 'favored' the "Big Stick" of Atomic Weapons and by default the Air Force since they were the only service that could deliver the weapons he still paid all military budget items LAST with whatever Federal funds were availalble. (The US could not attack Russia from the Continential US so the reverse was just as true) This policy would not shift until AFTER the Korean War had started. See attached graph.
The "new" Air Force would contract with the University of Colorado about 20 years later, and give the US public many of the the same, and in this case, also some of the least credible answers to the UFO problem in 1968. By January 1969, UFOs officially were no longer an Air Force concern. Decades later, nothing has changed.
Yes they did and because many of the reports were second and beyond hand exchanges many of the conclusions boiled down to unexplained, unknown, or indeterminant. Others were constrained by ongoing secrecy yes, (the Mantell Incident for example was likely the pilot chasing a high altitude balloon from Project Mogul which at the time was top secret). By 1969 the Air Force effort was useless due to interference and tampering by various "Civilian" UFO research and reporting groups who consistantly failed to follow proper procedure for witness statements and evidence/reporting cross-verification. Why keep something going when you can't get good data and are not even among the top three "organizations" someone thinks to contact?
It was litterally to the point where the witness' and reporters outside the military were activily hostile and uncooperative with Air Force investigators. Especially if the investigators didn't act like they fully accepted whatever the witness said and asked questions outside of the witness exeperiance.
Randy