David Norquist

David Norquist is a U.S. Department of Defense official who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense. In his capacity as Deputy Secretary, Norquist established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) on August 4, 2020, a significant initiative to detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security. This task force, which fell under the Navy's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, represented a major escalation in the Pentagon's formal investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena after a hiatus following the closure of Project Blue Book in 1969. Norquist's approval of the UAPTF formalized efforts that the Department of the Navy had been leading since approximately 2018 regarding UAP assessments.