What happened
During the change-of-command ceremony for the Chilean Air Force commander at El Bosque Air Base in Santiago in November 2010, crowds filmed the acrobatic team and fighter jets flying overhead. Nobody noticed anything odd. Later, an engineer at the nearby aircraft factory, combing through footage for a poster image, spotted a dark spot that seemed to dart through the frame. He alerted CEFAA, Chile's official committee for anomalous aerial phenomena, which gathered additional clips and assembled several views showing what it judged to be the same object. In February 2012, CEFAA director General Ricardo Bermúdez, a retired air force general, presented the case at the International UFO Congress in Arizona, saying the committee had consulted image experts and skeptical astronomers and concluded the object crossed the scene at extraordinary speed, low and fast in front of the aerobatic jets. Journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal publicised it in March 2012.
The official explanation
Skeptics argue the spot is almost certainly an insect or bird close to the camera, which would appear to move impossibly fast if mistaken for something distant. Neurologist and skeptic Steven Novella noted that no one present saw anything, a classic sign of a near-camera artefact, and favoured the insect explanation. Astronomer Phil Plait called it a tiny thing in low-resolution video, and Robert Sheaffer said the data available did not justify calling it unexplained.
The anomalous case
What sets El Bosque apart is that the analysis was run by a government body, not enthusiasts. CEFAA, attached to Chile's civil aviation authority, assembled footage from multiple cameras and vantage points, consulted image-processing specialists and, Bermúdez said, astronomers who did not believe in UFOs, and concluded the object was real and travelling at extraordinary speed. Kean told NBC News what made it exceptional was that a government agency thoroughly managed the investigation, and that the object appears on several videos recorded from different positions, which is harder to reconcile with a single insect near one lens. Bermúdez said the object made a risky manoeuvre in front of the aerobatic team. No conventional identification has been formally issued by CEFAA.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- General (r) reveló presencia de ovni en ceremonia de la Fuerza Aérea en 2010 Cooperativa.cl
- Presentan caso de supuesto ovni en base aérea El Bosque Emol
- Video from Chile stirs up UFO buzz NBC News (Alan Boyle)
- UFO over Chilean Air Base NeuroLogica Blog (Steven Novella)
Witness reports elsewhere
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