CIAE Informe de Casos 2021

Brief

The Centro de Identificación Aeroespacial (CIAE), established April 4, 2019 under the Argentine Air Force, processed 45 citizen-reported sighting cases in 2021, resolving each as a known phenomenon — artificial satellites, lens flare, bird or insect traces, or hot-air balloons. Ten additional reports were rejected at intake for lacking the mandatory combination of witness testimony and physical evidence. The center borrows France's GEIPAN binary classification: Type A for cases with irrefutable evidence, Type B for cases explained by strong but circumstantial supporting elements. Director Com. Rubén Lianza signed the introduction and explicitly invited competing scientific evidence while barring social-media objections from being treated as valid rebuttals.

Metadata

Agency

Centro de Identificación Aeroespacial (CIAE) / Fuerza Aérea Argentina

Release

2022-01-01

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

109 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

CIAE, GEIPAN

Tags

Argentina, satellite, Starlink, Iridium, lens flare, hot air balloon, bird trace, insect trace, orb photography, space debris, GEIPAN classification, 2021 annual report, Occam's Razor methodology

Key points

• CIAE was established April 4, 2019 with the mandate to organize, coordinate, and execute investigation and analysis of aerospace events of interest to Argentine defense.p.2
• 45 cases were admitted in 2021, each required to supply both testimony and physical evidence; 10 further reports were rejected for failing to meet one or both requirements.p.2
• All 45 analyzed cases were attributed to known conventional causes; the report records zero unexplained residual cases.p.2
• France's GEIPAN binary classification is adopted: Type A (definitively explained, irrefutable evidence) and Type B (explained with supporting basis, no mere conjecture).p.2
• Case 1 (Labarvera, Pilar, Buenos Aires, 4 January 2021) was resolved via Stellarium simulation confirming the sighted light was Starlink satellite 1405 transiting north to northeast.p.5
• Case 3 (Wacker, Lago Mascardi, Rio Negro, 24 February 2019) was resolved via Orbitron loaded with historical February 2019 orbital parameters, identifying the photographed light trail as Iridium 114 ascending from azimuth 155° to 150°.p.10
• Case 7 (Gervasi, San Gustavo, Entre Rios, 28 December 2020) was resolved by optical geometry: connecting the presumed object to the sun through each frame's optical center confirmed equidistant lens flare (Lens Flare) across all four submitted photographs.p.18
• Case 5 (Macherione, Buenos Aires, 14 December 2016) was resolved as a Chinese lantern using meteorological wind data consistent with the object's drift direction and IPACO software color analysis returning 'probable' for linterna china.p.13
• Case 44 involved field recovery of a radiotransmitter balloon that had circumnavigated the globe (Castelar, Buenos Aires, 14 August 2021); Case 45 was a laboratory analysis of 1991 space debris fragments from Entre Rios misidentified by witnesses as 'translucent' objects.p.4

Verbatim

• Los cuarenta y cinco (45) casos listados más abajo han sido enumerados por orden de llegada y comprenden aquellas denuncias de avistamientos recibidas durante 2021 que han cumplido con los requisitos de: Testimonio + Evidencia.

  p.2

• Cualquier oposición expresada en redes sociales o foros no académicos sin habernos enviado todos los elementos de análisis utilizados en su elaboración, no será considerada una refutación científicamente válida.

  p.2

• Si las evidencias presentadas resultan ser más relevantes que las expuestas en nuestros Informes, estamos siempre dispuestos a revisar completamente el caso.

  p.2

• desde el objeto caían luces blancas que eran muy nítidas y tenues, que caían en línea recta perfecta. Esas luces blancas parecían caer bastante lento, como si no cayeran por su propio peso

  p.14

• La simulación Stellarium para la fecha y hora de la observación, confirma que desde las 20:35 57" (primer recuadro azul de arriba) hasta las 20:36´ justo desde el Norte hacia el Noreste se pudo observar a simple vista al satélite Starlink 1405 descendiendo lentamente hacia el horizonte.

  p.5

• NAVAJA DE OCCAM: Axioma metodológico que sentó una de las bases de la ciencia moderna, atribuido al fraile franciscano Guillermo de Ockham (1280-1349), según el cual : "En igualdad de condiciones, la explicación más sencilla suele ser la más probable".

  p.5

Most interesting

• UAP investigation is explicitly a secondary function for CIAE — its primary mission is generating operational aerospace intelligence for Argentine military command.
• The case index spans incidents from 1991 through December 2021, demonstrating that the center accepts retrospective submissions years or decades after the original sighting.
• IPACO, a French image-analysis software developed in collaboration with GEIPAN, is used to compute the dominant color of a light source and assess its compatibility with known categories such as planets or Chinese lanterns.
• The backscatter orb phenomenon — nighttime flash reflecting off dust or insects within the minimum focal plane — is presented in extended methodological detail as a pervasive and underappreciated source of UFO photo reports.
• Case 44 is a hands-on field investigation ending in physical recovery of an object: a radiotransmitter weather balloon that had traveled around the world before landing in Castelar, Buenos Aires Province.
• Case 45 is one of the few in the report involving physical material evidence — space debris fragments from a 1991 Entre Rios event submitted for laboratory analysis after witnesses described them as translucent anomalies.
• The report explicitly benchmarks its methodology against France's GEIPAN, the only other government aerospace-phenomena office cited as a peer reference.
• Stellarium and Orbitron — both open-source, freely available astronomical and satellite-tracking programs — are the primary digital tools used to resolve the satellite-sighting subset of cases.