GEIPAN
Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non identifiés
Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES)
France's national space agency operates the world's most transparent state-run UAP investigation program. Every case GEIPAN logs — pilot reports, radar contacts, civilian sightings — is published to a public, searchable database with witness statements, investigator notes, and a final disposition.
About the program
GEIPAN is the lineal descendant of GEPAN, founded in 1977 within the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) by physicist Claude Poher. Its remit has been continuous and unusually open: collect, archive, and publicly publish every report of an unidentified aerospace phenomenon transmitted to it through the French gendarmerie, civil aviation authority (DGAC), and military.
Reports are categorized A through D — A: identified; B: probably identified; C: insufficient data; D: unidentified after analysis. The D classification is the operationally meaningful one and what most academic citations point to. The agency's published case files run from the mid-1970s to present and include radar tapes, photographs, and the original gendarmerie procès-verbaux.
France's openness predates the modern Anglophone disclosure cycle by more than four decades and is the standard against which other state programs are usually measured. The COMETA report — produced in 1999 by a panel of retired French generals and aerospace officials — was published independently of GEIPAN but draws heavily on the GEIPAN dossier.
Landmark documents
Direct primary-source links. Where a backup mirror exists for a known link-rot risk, we name the host.
- Case file · 8 January 1981
Trans-en-Provence case file (Renato Nicolaï observation)
GEIPAN's most-cited Class D case. Soil and vegetation samples taken from the landing trace by gendarmerie were analyzed at INRA Toulouse and showed measurable biochemical changes. The full investigation file remains the textbook example of physical-trace UFO investigation.
- Case collection · 1977 → present
Public case database (over 3,000 catalogued sightings since 1951)
Searchable database of every UAP case GEIPAN has reviewed, with full witness statements, investigator notes, and final classification (A/B/C/D). Updated continuously.
- Case file · 29 August 1967
Cussac case file (children's encounter, Cantal)
Class D close-encounter case investigated by gendarmerie in 1967 and re-analyzed by GEIPAN in the 2000s. Often cited alongside Trans-en-Provence as a touchstone French case.
Have a primary-source document or release we've missed? The catalog is curated and versioned in the public repository — see About for how to send corrections.