COMETA

And then afterwards, fast forward several years and...

When I read Leslie Kane's book and I saw the picture right there, I saw the reference of the Cometa report, I started researching again on the picture that I recall seeing as a kid.

And that's when I got in contact with the public registry of Costa Rica to obtain an authenticated or certified copy of the picture.

I started to get in contact with Leslie Kane.

She's a big fan and champion of the photograph.

It really helped kicked off her interest in the topic.

And in the late 90s, she got a copy of the Cometa Report.

And the Cometa Report is a famous French report, which is their version of generals and admirals and people within the government saying that this phenomenon is real.

And I didn't

know that it was on the cover of the Cometa report.

or inside of Leslie Kane's bestselling book.

Like I didn't understand that it was, you know, the UFO photo.

Back in 1999, the Comité d'Études Approfondies, a private association that drew heavily from former high-ranking officers of France's Institut des Hautes Études de la Défense Nationale, took it upon themselves to compile a document that would challenge the prevailing perception that UFOs were either harmless curiosities or outright hoaxes.

They wanted the French defense establishment to acknowledge an almost certain physical reality that might impact national security, and the result was what came out of the press as the COMETA report titled Les Ovnis et la Défense, Que Faut-on Préparer? The authors did not claim to have concrete proof of extraterrestrial visitors, but they were quite explicit in their insistence that the sheer number of documented sightings, some with corroborating radar tracks, others involving multiple eyewitnesses from trained military observers, made it impossible for a competent defense analysis team to dismiss UAP as mere atmospheric or technological anomalies.

Instead, the report argued that this phenomenon should be integrated into existing surveillance doctrines and risk assessment protocols.

The implication, according to COMETA's authors, was profound.

If a foreign adversary could develop or deploy a craft with such extraordinary flight characteristics, rapid acceleration, sudden direction changes without visible propellant, sustained hover in high-altitude airspace, they would have an asymmetric advantage that no conventional system was designed to counter.

Thus, the report urged a systematic study of potential countermeasures, sensor enhancements, and interagency cooperation across defense, civil aviation, and scientific research communities.

When you look at the structure of the document itself, it's roughly 90 pages long, split into an introductory survey of known sightings in France, an examination of the technological implications for air traffic control, and a series of concrete recommendations to the French Ministry of Defense.

You begin to see that COMETA was less about producing flashy sensational claims and more about filling a procedural void.

Welcome to the UFOs and Aliens podcast.

Today we're diving into France's 1999 COMETA report, a private defense study that pushed the nation toward new UAP policies and looking at what it really tells us about evidence, secrecy, and whether aliens are a real risk.

Now let's explore one of the most fascinating mysteries in UFO history.

In July 1999, a group of former military officers and defense specialists published a 90-page study in France that some people have dubbed the COMETA report.

The document is called UFOs and Defense.

What should we prepare for? It never received official governmental endorsement.

It wasn't signed by a ministry or agency head.

Second, its distribution was limited to a handful of French officials and then quietly archived.

Welcome to the UFOs and Aliens podcast.

In this episode, we track how an unofficial French study called COMETA shifted France's defense conversation on unidentified aerial phenomena.

And now let's explore the evidence, testimony, and competing explanations behind today's case.

The COMETA report arrived on the French press in mid-nineteen ninety-nine with a bang bang that made both ufologists and defense analysts sit up and look at the sky for real.

It was published by an association called Comité d'Études des Profondes, not the Ministry of Armed Forces or any official body.

Its title, UFOs and Defense, What Should We Prepare For, signals a deliberate framing that links strange sites to national security.

These case studies illustrate a pattern.

Aircraft in hostile environments, sudden radar returns that disappear when pilots investigate, and witnesses describing shapes that defy ordinary aircraft design.

And, uh, J. Allen Hynek had reviewed this photo, and it made its way around, uh, the community in, in the late '70s.

Um, it eventually found its way to the cover of a French report called the COMETA report, and the COMETA report is the French version of generals and admirals and, uh, people within the government saying that the likely scenario for some of these incidences and occurrences is the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

So it's been kind of a cornerstone in some of the, some of the study of UFOs.

This happened, like we said, in 1971, but it wasn't one of those instances where the UFO was spotted in the moment, uh, which is interesting.