Why French Officials Remained Silent About UFOs, Despite Incidents Involving Nuclear Assets

Written by Baptiste Friscourt, edited by Christopher Sharp - 2 January 2022

• Incidents go back to at least the 1950s

• One encounter involved a French aircraft carrier in 1974

• Sightings had been reported over one French nuclear weapons base for decades

• Footage of supposed ‘drones’ over French nuclear power plants in 2014/15 remains classified to this day.

Photo by Chris Coudron on Unsplash

La France.

It’s the nation of the GEIPAN, as discussed in my pre-Christmas article about the official French Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) investigation. 

However, we’re still starting from a low baseline here. Yes, France does investigate UAPs, but the stigma remains strong. 

You won’t hear UAP uttered by any government officials of stature. That’s despite the fact France has a long history with the phenomenon, including incidents involving nuclear assets and military forces.

Such incidents raise critical questions:

• Why hasn’t more been said by the French government?

• And why isn’t more being done publicly to investigate and counter incidents involving nuclear and military assets? 

While the GEIPAN deals with the civilian side of things, how do military and government officials react to incidents which undermine French security? 

If encounters between UAPs and U.S. military assets continue to this day, then we can assume that French forces experience similar incidents, especially involving their nuclear assets.

Silence. Despite Decades Of Incidents

French President Emmanuel Macron - source Wikipedia

In 2021, a French UAP organization known as the UFO Phenomenon Contributors’ Group (CIPO) published a public letter to French President Emmanuel Macron. 

The letter requested the following: 

• Declassification and safeguarding of UAP archives

• The launch of a public UAP research program  

• Public UAP debates organized by the media

• A new culture where UAP witnesses (including former military personnel) are respected

• Government support for private UAP research. 

(The letter can be found here and has been translated into English and German. Note - CIPO also acts as an interlocutor to reporters and journalists looking for non-governmental information.)

CIPO longs for a day when prominent public officials speak about UAP in serious discourse. 

Like the USA, France has encountered alarming incidents involving the phenomenon and its most sensitive military assets.

Despite such alarming incidents, the topic has never featured in French politics. 

For years, officials have debated defense issues in faraway continents, but nothing is spoken about exotic craft flying in France’s backyard and above its most critical nuclear assets.

I recently spoke with CIPO’s President and author Frank Maurin, to discuss the historic state of play. 

Mr. Maurin cited the only time a French Minister spoke openly about the topic. 

On February 20th, 1974, Minister of the Armed Forces, Robert Galley, declared to Jean-Claude Bourret, a reporter for France Inter that:

“We are forced to recognize that there is something we do not understand. There is also the multiplication, quite impressive, of visual observations of luminous phenomena, sometimes spherical, sometimes ovoid, and which are translated by extraordinarily fast displacements.”

17 years later, Mr. Galley, (who was a trained engineer and had worked with nuclear technology) explained that his initial comments were based on his scientific experience and that, “it is through the observation of scientifically proven anomalies that human knowledge advances.”  

Since 1974, no serving French Minister or President has commented about UAP. This was confirmed by Thibaut Canuti, one of the few authors writing about the history of UAP in France.

But why did Mr. Galley make such comments in 1974?

Perhaps we could trace it back to events that occurred one month before Mr. Galley spoke publicly.

For context, in the early 1970s, a wave of UAP incidents had occurred over France, which sparked press interest.

The Foch Encounter

The Foch Aircraft Carrier - source PHC JACK C. BAHM

The most notable event (reported by Frank Maurin and other sources) involved the pride of the French navy, the Foch Aircraft Carrier.

On January 7th, 1974, the ship was near Douarnenez’ Bay.

While stationed by the Bay, two military policemen observed an orange sphere hovering above the ship at an altitude of 900 feet.

No gunfire was reported though, as the object began morphing into a cloud.

The sphere then transformed into a disk, and then a circle.

Finally, it rose and disappeared into the clouds. 

An incident like this may have prompted Mr. Galley’s comments. The Foch was one of France’s most powerful assets. Such a security breach occurring over the carrier’s airspace would be especially alarming to France’s top brass.

Île Longue, close to where the incident occurred - source Google Maps

There may be a nuclear connection to the incident too.

The Foch was situated close to France’s nuclear submarine harbor (named Ile-Longue) at the time of the incident. There are numerous reports of UAP being drawn by nuclear materials, so perhaps the submarines at the base sparked the encounter.

Or perhaps the Foch itself had been carrying nuclear materials? Months before the incident, combat aircraft onboard the Foch had tested the AN-52 nuclear bomb - although we have no confirmation that any nuclear weapons were present at the time of the UAP event.

But the Foch was a single incident among many others which did involve nuclear weapons.

UAP Encounters Over French Nuclear Weapons Facilities

News report regarding the decommissioning of nuclear facilities at Albion Plateau

According to French author Thibaut Canuti (in his book, History of the French Ufology), France’s military assets, including nuclear bases, experienced regular UAP encounters.

Incidents involving UAPs took place above French nuclear weapons facilities located on the Albion Plateau (south-east France) between 1965 and 1996, before the base was disbanded.

In 1981, Michel Forest, an Air Commando at the base, recalled potentially having his memory wiped during a patrol where a UAP was observed. Forest stated:

“One morning, I woke up around 6 a.m. and thought I had missed my patrol which was scheduled around 2 a.m., and had gone back to sleep. After inquiring with the non-commissioned officer of the week, this was not the case. The previous patrol had triggered the alert in the night, reporting an unidentified object parked above.”

The Albion Plateau was so well known for such incidents that civilian Ufological associations regularly camped nearby to observe UAP. The base now serves as an intelligence station under France’s Foreign Intelligence Agency (the DGSE) and is occupied by the French Foreign Legion.

Cases involving French nuclear assets draw parallels with alleged incidents over U.S. nuclear bases, such as Minot Air Force Base.

Although it is unclear whether UAPs have ever interfered with French nuclear weapons, Jean-Jacques Velasco, former GEPAN director (a UAP study that preceded the GEIPAN), showed (in his book UFO: The Proof) a correlation over 55 years between UAP sightings (backed up by radar data) and nuclear weapons tests. 

So, that’s at least five decades of incidents encountered over France’s most sensitive military airspaces.

But since 1974, no public comment has been uttered by any French government official about such alarming incidents.

A Close Encounter In The Desert

Early missile tests at Colomb Bechar

Another case covered by Thibaut Canuti involved a military flight in 1965.

Five crewmen were on board a Nord Atlas transport aircraft flying above the Colomb-Béchar’s Missile Launching Site, a French military base in Algeria that developed ballistics missiles for France’s nuclear program. The location was also close to where nuclear weapons tests occurred.

Whilst in flight, the crew observed a saucer-shaped craft flying towards them. The saucer followed the Nord Atlas before bolting at an incredible speed.

In less than five seconds, it had disappeared.

But then it reappeared to repeat its previous maneuvers twice more in the span of two to three minutes, before stopping.

Commander Ouhalde, who was in charge of the Nord Atalas’ squadron and investigated the case, later declared:

“The good faith of the crew cannot be questioned. The confusion with any other device, balloon, rocket, even with a cloud seems to me that it cannot be retained since the observation was made by confirmed flight personnel."

Such incidents may only scratch the surface of cases, including those that may continue to this day. 

Recent ‘Drone’ Sightings Over Nuclear Power Plants

News report about the supposed drones

Between November 2014 and January 2015, 15 of 19 French nuclear power plants that ensure the nation’s energy self-reliance, were flown over by unidentified ‘drones’.

The incidents put the nation on a state of high alert.

According to Franck Maurin, French military police filmed the supposed drones flying over the nuclear plants - but to this day the videos remain classified.

On January 29, 2015, Jean-Yves Le Drian, French Minister of Defense, declared:

“The overflight of military zones by drones is a threat taken seriously. A working group within the General Secretariat of Defense and National Security (SGDN) will have to find an appropriate response to this threat (...) It is a threat that will grow. We are working on new measures, new ideas to protect ourselves.”

However, the drones were never identified and witnesses gave doubt to the narrative that these were conventional craft. An explanation was never provided, and yet again we have another case where data has been classified.

So, why are such alarming incidents not discussed by public officials to this day?

To find the answer, we must travel back to the aftermath of World War Two.

France’s Culture Of UAP Secrecy

German troops in occupied Paris - source Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-751-0067-34 / Kropf / CC-BY-SA, CC BY-SA 3.0 de

It’s the 1950s. 

We’re in a France which has recently been under Nazi occupation and must rely on U.S. funding to rebuild, modernize and industrialize. In exchange, France is expected to counter the influence of the Soviet Union.

France is still recovering from the Second World War. Now it’s the Cold War, and the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear bomb in 1949. 

With all these problems on their plate, French officials are now receiving reports about apparent exotic craft flying over their skies. 

According to a serving military serviceman (who wishes not to be named at this time), in the 1950s, France had its first waves of sightings between 1952 and 1954. 

The French Ministry of Defense was dealing with reports from all military services -  the nature of such reports included lights or shapes maneuvering in the skies, objects skimming the ground, and even craft landing. 

One could imagine some alarm expressed privately by those French officials aware of such incidents. And with good reason, officials chose not to speak of such events.

The French were still reeling from the failure of the 1940s when France fell to Nazi Germany. One failure was its air force, which had been out-matched by the Germans, in terms of technology, coordination, and logistics. 

The French were fearful of a historic repeat and did not want to cause public panic regarding advanced unidentified craft, which may have been adversarial.  

The lack of any definite intelligence on what these objects represented prompted the classification of reports. In the words of an unnamed French military officer at the time, “we don’t know what we are dealing with”.

Therefore, many reports were classified as secret or top secret, simply as a precaution. There was an expectation that the collection of more information would lead to an answer. And it was done under the guise of preventing any hostile reaction from the public. 

These classifications are still active to this day.

According to the military serviceman I spoke to, this remained the procedure up until the French Air Force recently implemented new reporting protocols. 

We May Get Answers

Washington D.C. - Photo by Harold Mendoza on Unsplash

Despite GEIPAN and an abundance of esteemed professionals (including former Astronauts) involved in French UFO research, a lack of transparency remains from other governmental and administrative bodies. 

Despite many alleged alarming encounters with UAP, the topic is ignored in normal discourse, especially by politicians. 

There has been awareness from the top levels of the political establishment though. For example, in his magnum opus “UFOs in France at the end of the 1970s”, Pierre Laird reports a private discussion between journalist Jean Jacques Bourret and French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, on February 17th, 1977.

On the topic of UAP, President d’Estaing reportedly commented: 

“I believe that there are some luminous aerial phenomena, but I know little about this matter. On the other hand, I have been very interested in astronomy. “

Such comments are never made in public discourse. And the fact President Giscard D’Estaing knew little about the matter suggests there existed a gulf in knowledge separating politicians and military or intelligence officials privy to better information.

According to the military serviceman I spoke with, France’s historic silence may be explained by the following factors:

• That they may hide what they know, fearing a hostile reaction from the public

• They simply don’t know what it is

• They are not interested (at some level) in this topic and prefer to let private groups provide information to the public. 

The three factors may be active at the same time, despite the GEIPAN actively researching civilian cases.

As suggested in my previous article, that may all change once the U.S. coordinates with allies (including France) after the Pentagon’s new UAP office was sealed by President Joe Biden in December 2021. 

In France, serious action can only be taken if the President is engaged, hence why CIPO wrote to Emanuel Macron.

Should the President be engaged, a real public discussion and government investigation can then commence. 

Until then, the historic silence and stigma will continue.