INDEPENDENT FIELD ARCHIVE02 — Government UAP Bodies, by Country
Who actually investigated, from when, and whether they still exist. Status today is the column
that matters for a "who's still watching" page.
Europe
| Country | Body | Active | Status today | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| France | GEPAN (1977) → SEPRA (1988) → GEIPAN (2005) | 1977– | Operating, CNES, Toulouse | Best public archive in the world; gendarmerie/Police/Air Force/CNRS/Météo-France as partners; director Frédéric Courtade since Jan 2024; archives online since March 2007 |
| United Kingdom | Flying Saucer Working Party (1950–51) → MoD Sec(AS)2 "UFO desk" → Project Condign (Defence Intelligence Staff, 1997–2000) | 1950–2009 | Closed (desk shut 2009) | ~50k pages transferred to The National Archives in tranches 2008–2013; Condign itself disclosed 2006 after FOI |
| Spain | Ejército del Aire air-defence files (Manises 1979 etc.) | 1962–1990s | Decommissioned; file collection closed | Spanish Air Force investigated reports until it closed the file series; Manises report later released |
| Belgium | Air Force + Glons CRC/radar, official 1990 report | 1989–1990 | Ad hoc only | Official report on the 30–31 Mar 1990 night published by the Belgian Air Force |
| Soviet Union / Russia | Institute 22 (military, from 1978) + Setka-AN / Setka-MO grids (Academy of Sciences, 1978–1990) | 1978–1991 | Dissolved after 1991 | Term used officially was "anomalous phenomena", not UFO; grid reporting networks across ministries |
| Italy | Aeronautica Militare interest 1950s–70s ("wave of 1954"); no standing body | — | None | Cases exist (Trans-en-Provence-adjacent Italian wave, Zanfretta 1978) but no continuing office |
| Nordics | Finland (Pudasjärvi 1967–71, Finnish Air Force 1969), Sweden, Norway (2009 spiral) | — | None standing | Spiral anomalies 2009 attributed to a failed Bulava launch |
| Ukraine (Soviet era) | Setka coverage; 1982 Usove missile-base account | — | — | 1982 account is veteran testimony, not an archived official file — treat as C |
Americas
| Country | Body | Active | Status today | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Project Sign/Grudge/Blue Book (1948–69), AAWSAP/AATIP (2007–12), UAPTF (2020), AARO (2022–) | 1947– | Operating | Congress-mandated annual reports; online releases via war.gov/UFO; 6 releases by Sept 2026 |
| Brazil | SIOANI (Air Force, created 1969) → Operação Prato (FAB, 1977–78) → Air Force Command for Aerospace Operations (COMAER) document releases | 1969– | De facto: files at Arquivo Nacional | Brazil declassified UFO documents to the National Archive; SIOANI rediscovered through that transfer |
| Chile | CEFAA (Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos), under DGAC | 1997– | Operating | Mixed civil/military/academic committee; DGAC director sits on it |
| Uruguay | CRIDOVNI (Uruguayan Air Force) | 1979– | Operating | One of the longest-running official bodies; published analysis of 19 official cases (2002); has met with AARO |
| Canada | Project Magnet (1950–62, Dept. of Transport, Wilbert Smith) + Project Second Storey (1952–54 committee) | 1950–1995 | Collecting ended 1995 | NRC's Herzberg Institute gathered non-meteoric sighting reports; stopped collecting in 1995; archives at Library and Archives Canada |
| Argentina | Ad hoc Air Force investigations (1962, 1965); CEFAE (Comisión de Estudio de Fenómenos Aeroespaciales) from 2011 | 1962–65; 2011– | CEFAE operating (Air Force) | Air Force scrambled Gloster Meteors from Morón AB in July 1965. CEFAE, created 2011 inside the Argentine Air Force, is the standing body that evaluates reports involving national airspace through a panel of military officers and civilian scientific advisers — resolving the earlier "no verified body" caveat |
| Mexico | Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (2004 Campeche release) | 2004 | Ad hoc | IR video released by the Defence Dept in May 2004; leading explanation oil-platform flares |
| Peru | DIFAA (Departamento de Investigación de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos), Peruvian Air Force | 2001–08; 2013– | Revived 2013 | Created 2001, dormant from ~2008, reopened in Oct 2013 in response to reported "increased sightings"; documented by Reuters/Guardian/Taipei Times reporting — resolves the earlier "unverified" caveat |
Asia-Pacific / Africa / Middle East
| Country | Body | Active | Status today | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | RAAF investigations, 1950s–70s (Westall 1966 context) | — | None standing | No released national archive comparable to the UK's |
| New Zealand | Reports logged by Civil Aviation/RNZAF; Kaikōura 1978 became a UN mission document | 1978 | None standing | New Zealand's UN Mission filed a document on the Kaikōura lights in 1979 |
| Japan | Cross-party parliamentary UAP caucus formed 2024; MoD mandated to log UAP | 2024– | Forming | Japan began analysing US-released files with sightings near Japan; a 2024 "football-shaped" UAP video appears in the Pentagon trove |
| India | None; Indian Air Force responds reactively (Imphal 2023 — Rafales scrambled) | — | None | No published national UAP archive |
| China | None public; authorities typically attribute sightings to launches/debris | — | None | 2020s Beijing sighting attributed by experts to a SpaceX Starlink launch; Xi'an sighting officially acknowledged but explained locally |
| Iran | Imperial Iranian Air Force (1976 Tehran) + US DIA report | 1976 | N/A (regime change) | The 1976 case survives as a US DIA document |
| South Africa | No standing body; private/amateur groups (e.g. UFO Afrinews era) | — | None | Continental gap: no African government runs a UAP office |
The pattern to draw from this
- Cold-War era (1947–1991): many states investigated, all framed as threat assessment (Soviet Setka, UK Working Party, US Blue Book, Canadian Magnet).
- Retrenchment (1990s–2010s): desks closed, files released, "no threat" conclusions published — the disclosure era is really the decommissioning era.
- Re-institution (2017–2026): US AARO, Japan's caucus, Chile/Uruguay continuity, France never having stopped, plus the newer Argentine CEFAE (2011) and the revived Peruvian DIFAA (2013). The new framing is flight safety + air-domain awareness, not aliens.