Chile: Controversial Book Declassifies UFO Phenomenon

Source: Publimetro.cl & Planeta UFO
Date: 11.04.10
Reported by: Arturo Figueroa

Chile: Controversial Book Declassifies the UFO Phenomenon in Chile

Rancagua, November 2003; La Unión, October 2000; Arica, October 1997 and January 1963; Santiago, March 1986 and October 1979: Months and years in which the most consistent sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena in the nation’s history have taken place.

Rodrigo Bravo, an Army officer and military pilot, has written a controversial book with paleontologist Juan Castillo: Ufología Aeronáutica delves into the deepest details of eleven cases reported in the country, with information gleaned from the recently created Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (CEFAA) of the Office of Civil Aeronautics. It even transcribes revealing recordings of conversations between pilots and the control tower. Information that this text from Mago Editores makes accessible to the public at large for the first time ever. The book launching for Ufología Aeronáutica will take place on Thursday, November 04, 2010 at 20:00 hours at the Santiago Book Fair.

This book takes no prisoners. While proposing a footnoted, scientific and aeronautic study on UFOs and FANI (Fenomenos aereos no identificados, or UAPs in English), it fires a broadside against those who have monopolized the study and dissemination of these cases: ufologists.

It faults them associating the phenomenon “indiscriminately with the possibility of extraterrestrial life” and from “detouring” attention from serious research to “laughable” hypotheses that lead to the “explosive growth of new ideologies, movements, cults and others who take anomalous aerial phenomena even further away from its real context for reasons of financial gain.”

The author and military man himself gives a strong and clear response: “For decades, the scientific community has been suspicious of this subject and has avoided mentioning it, given that those involved in its research do not necessarily have the knowledge to interpret the existing information. Ufologists are to blame for this,” accuses Bravo.

The tone of this book did not please journalist and UFO disseminator Juan Andres Salfate. [UFOs] have no owner. The worst thing that could happen would be for the subject to remain within the realm of the military and the scientific. They work in a vault and believe themselves to be the only competent ones to deal with it. This is false.”

One Case: “Incredible”

On 7 October 1997, at 21:05 hours and for nearly 9 minutes, the sighting of an object gave rise to the following exchange between the pilot of a Casa T-212 and the control tower at the Chacalluta Airport in Arica. Transcript of the recording, not known to the public at large:

Tower: Eco Inca-Arica.
Airplane: Go ahead, Arica.
Tower: From your position and toward the Cerro Chuño, El Buitre sector...can you see another object?
Airplane: Toward the El Buitre sector?
Tower: Correct.
Airplane: Nothing strange or unusual can be seen from my position...now I’ve got an object approximately on my three o’clock. I estimate a light that’s slightly higher than the last lights east of the city.
Tower: Understood.
Airplane: Now it’s gone, now it’s back again.
Tower: We’ve received several calls from the city, reporting an unidentified flying object.
Airplane: Incredible, ah! I hadn’t seen it, but it really changed position quickly and I had a chance to see it.

(Translation (c) 2010 S. Corrales IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)