SEFAA
Sección de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (formerly CEFAA, 1997-2022)
Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC)
Chile's national UAP investigation body — established 1997 as CEFAA and restructured / renamed SEFAA in 2022 — sits inside the civil aviation authority. The most widely cited South American program alongside France's GEIPAN as a model of methodologically rigorous, openly published state UAP investigation. SEFAA publishes quarterly case reports.
About the program
CEFAA was established in 1997 within the Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC), Chile's civil aviation authority. Its mandate has stayed essentially constant: investigate UAP reports that come in through Chilean controlled airspace, with case files dispositioned by an internal committee of credentialed scientific advisors.
The agency works closely with the Chilean Air Force (FACh) for radar and pilot data and has historically been more public-facing than peer programs in neighboring countries. Director General Ricardo Bermúdez (USAF-trained meteorologist; CEFAA director 1997-2002 and 2010-2015) made many of the agency's case findings available to international researchers, and his successors have continued the practice.
In 2022 the program was administratively restructured and renamed SEFAA (Sección de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos). The methodology and remit are unchanged; the new website at sefaa.dgac.gob.cl now hosts the published case archive, and quarterly case summaries are issued there. By the end of 2021 the predecessor commission had logged over 1,700 reports.
The most internationally cited Chilean case is the 11 November 2014 'El Bosque' video — gun-camera footage from a Chilean Navy helicopter showing an unidentified airborne object trailing a thermal plume. The two-year investigation could not identify the object and the case file was published in full.
Landmark documents
Direct primary-source links. Where a backup mirror exists for a known link-rot risk, we name the host.
- Case collection · Quarterly publication; archive 1997 → present
SEFAA published case archive (quarterly reports)
Selected case investigations published by SEFAA, including pilot reports, radar contacts, and the agency's internal scientific panel review. Quarterly cadence began in 2020.
- Case file · Incident 11 November 2014; CEFAA report 2017
El Bosque (Chilean Navy helicopter gun-camera) case file
Two-year scientific investigation into FLIR footage from a Chilean Navy AS532 Cougar helicopter. Concluded the recorded object could not be identified after exhaustive analysis. The most internationally cited South American UAP case file.
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