CIRVIS Intelligence Logs
Canada said it stopped investigating UFOs. The CIRVIS logs say otherwise. Military intelligence reports of unidentified aerial contacts kept flowing through NATO channels from 2010 to 2019.
The Collection
CIRVIS stands for Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings. NATO allies agreed on the protocol during the Cold War: a standardised channel for reporting aerial contacts that might threaten national defence. Canadian military personnel and Nav Canada air traffic controllers used it to log objects that did not match known aircraft, satellites, or atmospheric phenomena.
Canada's formal UFO programme wound down in the 1990s. The CIRVIS channel did not. These logs cover 2010 to 2019, capturing radar anomalies, pilot observations, and ground-based sightings near military installations. Reports arrived from Nav Canada centres and Canadian Forces personnel, filed through the chain of command like any other intelligence product.
A Nav Canada controller logs an unidentified target over Labrador. That report enters the same pipeline as a USAF pilot report from Alaska or an RAF radar contact over the North Sea. CIRVIS did not distinguish between allies or rank. Unidentified meant unidentified. The system treated every contact as a potential defence concern until someone proved otherwise.
Outside the Public Programme
The public line was clear: Canada no longer investigates UFOs. The CIRVIS logs contradict that. Military personnel kept filing reports. The system kept processing them. Intelligence analysts kept assessing whether contacts had defence implications. None of this ran through civilian channels or public reporting frameworks.
The entries themselves are terse. Observer, location, time, initial assessment. Some note radar corroboration. Others describe visual-only contacts from cockpits or control towers. No speculation, no analysis. What happened, where, when. Filed and logged.
Document Inventory
| Component | Description | Date Range |
|---|---|---|
| CIRVIS Intelligence Logs | Military reports of unidentified aerial contacts via NATO channel | 2010 to 2019 |
| Nav Canada reports | Air traffic control observations (within CIRVIS logs) | 2010 to 2019 |
| Canadian Forces reports | Military personnel sighting reports (within CIRVIS logs) | 2010 to 2019 |
Browse Canadian sighting records in the geographic database. The older Canadian government files (1940s to 1990s) are catalogued separately under NRC / RCMP / Canadian Forces UFO Files. The Falcon Lake incident demonstrates the kind of military-grade sighting that would have generated CIRVIS traffic. The Danish sighting reports use the same NATO intelligence channel described here. The Just Cause newsletter specifically covered CIRVIS and JANAP 146 military reporting secrecy.
Cold War Origins
CIRVIS was built for speed. A pilot or radar operator spots something unidentified, files a report, and intelligence analysts have it within hours. The protocol dates to the early Cold War, when unidentified aerial contacts over NATO airspace could mean Soviet incursion. The threat model changed. The reporting channel survived.
The 2010 to 2019 logs show Canadian military and civilian aviation personnel still encountering objects they cannot identify, still filing reports through the same Cold War infrastructure, still generating intelligence products that get assessed and archived. Quiet, continuous, undisclosed to the public.
CIRVIS (Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings) is a NATO and NORAD standard requiring military and civilian pilots to file immediate reports of unidentified aerial objects. The protocol is codified under JANAP 146, which carries statutory penalties for unauthorised disclosure of any report filed through the channel. A pilot who saw something and told a journalist rather than filing a CIRVIS report was in breach of a federal communications directive. The reporting obligation was not optional, and neither was the silence that followed.
The longer paper trail sits in the Canadian FOIA collection, covering NRC, RCMP, and Canadian Forces UFO investigations from the 1940s to the 2010s. CIRVIS picks up where those files leave off.
