In 1977, France became the first country to establish a permanent government body dedicated to the investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena within its national space agency. The programme has operated continuously for nearly five decades under three successive names, accumulating approximately 5,300 investigated cases from 9,724 witness testimonies. Its public database has been searchable online since 2007. No other government programme in the world matches this combination of institutional permanence, methodological rigour, and public transparency.
GEIPAN, the Groupe d’Etudes et d’Informations sur les Phenomenes Aerospatiaux Non-identifies, is a technical department of CNES, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, France’s national space agency founded by President Charles de Gaulle in 1961. CNES operates under the supervision of three French government ministries simultaneously: Economy and Finance, Education and Research, and Defence. This triple-ministry oversight gives GEIPAN both civilian and military institutional legitimacy.
The programme’s institutional lineage runs through three phases. GEPAN (Groupe d’Etude des Phenomenes Aerospatiaux Non-identifies) was founded in 1977 under Claude Poher, an astrophysicist appointed by CNES director-general Yves Sillard. In 1988 it became SEPRA (Service d’Expertise des Phenomenes de Rentree Atmospherique, later renamed to cover rare aerospace phenomena more broadly), directed by Jean-Jacques Velasco until 2004. In September 2005 it was restructured as GEIPAN, adding an explicit public information mandate to the original study mission. Its current director is Frederic Courtade, a materials scientist with two decades of service at CNES, appointed in January 2024.
The Classification System
GEIPAN classifies each investigated case on two quantitative parameters. The first is strangeness: the residual degree of unexplainability after comparison with all known phenomena. The second is consistency: the quantity and reliability of the data, including the number of witnesses, precision of testimony, availability of photographic or video evidence, and coherence of accounts.
These parameters produce four categories:
Category A: Phenomenon perfectly identified. The investigation produced a near-certain explanation.
Category B: Phenomenon probably identified. A probable explanation exists but data gaps prevent certainty.
Category C: Phenomenon not identified due to insufficient data. The case cannot be worked with the available information.
Category D: Phenomenon not identified after investigation. Strangeness exceeds the explanatory threshold with sufficient data consistency to validate the classification. Since 2008, D cases have been subdivided into D1 (strange) and D2 (very strange).
Over 47 years and approximately 5,300 investigated cases, 24.6 per cent have been classified as Category A, 39.7 per cent as Category B, 32.4 per cent as Category C, and 3.3 per cent as Category D. For every D-category case, GEIPAN conducts on-site investigations including witness meetings and cognitive interviews, with final classification determined by a group of experts. Reclassification remains possible when new evidence emerges. In 2017, GEIPAN re-investigated 50 old D-category cases and was able to explain some of them, reducing the unexplained rate from earlier decades.
The intake pipeline runs through the French Gendarmerie, which is formally instructed to channel UAP sighting reports to GEIPAN. GEIPAN receives approximately 1,000 requests per year, of which roughly 200 lead to full investigations published on its website. Its oversight is provided by COPEIPAN, a steering committee chaired by General Pierre Bescond and comprising civil, military, and scientific authorities.
The Documentary Record
GEIPAN’s most scientifically documented case occurred on 8 January 1981 near Trans-en-Provence. A farmer named Renato Nicolai observed a disc-shaped object descend, land briefly, and depart, leaving a two-metre circular trace in the soil. Local gendarmes collected soil and plant samples within 24 hours. GEPAN coordinated laboratory analysis across four independent government institutions: the SNEAP laboratory, Toulouse University, the University of Metz, and INRA, the national agronomic research institute.
The published findings (GEPAN Technical Note No. 16, 1983) documented strong mechanical pressure consistent with substantial weight, thermal heating of soil to 600 degrees Celsius, and a 30 to 50 per cent weakening of chlorophyll pigment in adjacent vegetation. INRA’s analysis found that young leaves had acquired the biochemical characteristics of old leaves, an anomaly for which no known terrestrial agent could account. Velasco, the primary investigator, later presented his conclusion to the Society for Scientific Exploration: the effects were most consistent with “a powerful emission of electromagnetic fields, pulsed or not, in the microwave frequency range.” The case remains Category D.
The public database, searchable at cnes-geipan.fr since March 2007, contains cases dating back to at least 1965, including the Valensole incident of 1 July 1965, in which a farmer and former resistance fighter named Maurice Masse reported observing an egg-shaped craft and two humanoid beings in his lavender field. The site retained geometrically spaced indentations and soil anomalies. Jacques Vallee described it as “the best-authenticated close encounter incident in continental Europe.” It remains Category D.
The Wider French Structure
GEIPAN does not operate alone. Two additional bodies complete France’s institutional architecture for UAP investigation.
In 1999, a group of senior French military and defence figures published “UFOs and Defence: What Must We Be Prepared For?” under the name COMETA. Chaired by General Denis Letty of the Air Force, the committee included admirals, generals, engineers for armaments, a former President of CNES (Andre Lebeau, who wrote the preamble), and contributors from SEPRA. COMETA’s central conclusion was that the physical reality of UFOs under control of intelligent beings was “quasi-certain” and that the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the only one accounting for the available data. The report was sent to President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin before its public release. It was not formally endorsed by the French government.
General Pierre Bescond connects France’s structures: he is a member of COMETA (1999), a SIGMA2 expert, and the current chair of COPEIPAN, GEIPAN’s oversight committee.
SIGMA2 and the Technical Analysis
In 2008, the Association Aeronautique et Astronautique de France (3AF), the country’s professional aerospace society, created a technical commission on unidentified aerial phenomena within its professional engineering ranks. Refocused in April 2013 as SIGMA2, the commission analyses GEIPAN’s unexplained D-category cases with deeper technical and scientific resources. Where GEIPAN investigates in the field, SIGMA2 analyses in the laboratory.
The commission brings approximately 25 experts from aerospace engineering, radar analysis, image processing, atmospheric physics, and defence technology to bear on the unexplained record. They include Engineer General Pierre Bescond (former CNES director, COMETA member, and COPEIPAN chair), ESA astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, Dr Paul Kuentzmann (senior scientific advisor to ONERA, France’s national aerospace research centre), and Dr Francois Louange (image processing specialist and GEIPAN expert). The commission is chaired by Luc Dini.
SIGMA2 maintains formal cooperation agreements with Chile’s SEFAA, the US-based NARCAP, and the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. It has signed an agreement with the CNRS Lightning Research Laboratory and works with Ecole 42 on radar data processing and AI-based image analysis. In 2015, the commission published a formal progress report detailing its analytical methods and international partnerships. Its work with Jacques Vallee produced a co-publication on radiative energy values in UAP observations.
In October 2025, Bescond, Dini, and GEIPAN technical expert Michael Vaillant all presented at the Sol Foundation’s symposium in Baveno, Italy, bringing France’s three-pillar UAP architecture to the international academic stage. Dini presented on “Physical Observables of UAP: The 3AF/SIGMA2 Approach” alongside Bescond’s revisiting of the COMETA report and Vaillant’s account of two decades of GEIPAN investigations. SIGMA2 represents the engineering depth that complements GEIPAN’s investigative breadth: the same institutional architecture, viewed through a different lens.
From the Archive
The Sol Foundation post documents the October 2025 symposium at which GEIPAN, SIGMA2, and COMETA were represented:
France’s programme provides a standing counterpoint to the archive’s coverage of the American disclosure landscape:
- “Avi Loeb Asks Washington for Raw UAP Data, Not Processed Videos” (23 April 2026), Loeb’s argument for scientific data over processed releases echoes GEIPAN’s 47-year practice of publishing investigated case data directly
- The Black Vault: Thirty Years of Declassified Records, the FOIA-driven American approach to government transparency contrasts with France’s integrated institutional model, in which the space agency itself investigates and publishes
