Chile.Collahuasi (CEFAA)

In mid-April 2013, workers at the Doña Inés de Collahuasi copper mine, in the Tarapacá region (over 4,300 meters above sea level, under some of the clearest and driest skies on the planet), observed an object that slowly approached the area. The number of witnesses varies by source: CEFAA's director spoke of a group of 35 workers and professionals, while the journalist Leslie Kean, who discussed the case with the committee, describes four technicians in electricity, electronics and fluid control. The object remained nearby for more than an hour according to Kean, or about two hours according to CEFAA, making short rising, descending and horizontal movements some 600 meters over the surface, before moving off to the east. They described it as a flattened disc, of brilliant color, between 5 and 10 meters across, which at times took the shape of a shining balloon, although its most evident shape was that of a silvery, fixed, static disc. According to Kean, the photos were taken by one of the technicians with a Samsung Kenox S860 camera. The witnesses decided not to tell anyone; months later, the photographer showed the images to the group leader, who sent them to CEFAA on 22 February 2014 and also asked for anonymity.

The images show an object of discoidal appearance with a dome or upper section. The two photographs that reached CEFAA, the Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena, part of the Directorate General of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC) and under the jurisdiction of the Chilean Air Force, were analysed by the committee. A meteorologist ruled out lenticular cloud formation; according to José Lay, the committee's director of international relations, no drones were operating near the mine, and according to Kean the DGAC also ruled out experimental aircraft, planes and weather balloons, although the details of those exclusions were not published. Bermúdez spoke of 'a year of analysis' with scientists 'who are generally very skeptical', even though the photos arrived on 22 February 2014 and the report was released in early July of that year. The image analysis was done by an analyst at the DGAC Meteorological Office, and it used no thermal sensor: it applied filters to photos from a consumer camera and read the area that appeared completely dark in the filtered images as a sign of very high temperature; the same report notes that in the luminous half-sphere the camera's sensor saturates. The analyst concluded that the object 'emitted its own energy, which does not coincide with the natural sunlight that is also reflected off it': at noon, the brightness underneath could not be due to the sun, which was reflecting off the top. His verdict was that it was 'an object or phenomenon of great interest, which can be qualified as a UFO', and a drone was explicitly ruled out.

CEFAA was, as in its other cases, transparent about the limits of the file. The witnesses did not want to cooperate with the investigation: 'We tried to contact them and got no reply', noted José Lay, the committee's director of international relations, which prevented a precise reconstruction of camera conditions, exact time and geometry. And CEFAA's director, General (ret.) Ricardo Bermúdez, stressed that the 'UFO' conclusion came from a single analyst among several: 'We recognize that this is the determination of only one CEFAA analyst among several, so we still must be cautious'. Lay explained that, without witnesses, the material was filed for future reference or comparison: 'That's all we can do in this case'. The material and the report were made public in July 2014, adding to the Chilean body's record of open disclosure and giving it international press exposure. In 2015 it was reported that CEFAA had ruled the object was not man-made; Lay denied it to HuffPost: the committee confirmed that the origin remained unexplained, but it had never said that.

Collahuasi is another CEFAA file (the official committee of Chile's DGAC) that reached formal technical image analysis and open publication. But General Bermúdez himself asked for caution: the 'UFO' conclusion came from a single analyst and the witnesses did not cooperate. The DGAC's exclusions of clouds, drones, planes and balloons were announced without publishing their data, and no source proposes a conventional candidate: CEFAA names none, and the photo analyst Bruce Maccabee mentions a hoax only to dismiss it (the object was 'either the real thing - UFO - or a hoax, and it doesn't appear to be a hoax'), although he warned that the inability to question the witnesses 'does reduce the credibility'.

The contrast with other CEFAA files is instructive. When the committee had a chain of custody, a time and a geometry, as in the 2014 naval-helicopter infrared video (the 'Chile Navy' case), it could sustain a far more demanding technical analysis. Collahuasi lacks precisely that: photographs from personal cameras with no reconstructable metadata and witnesses who withdrew from the investigation. The analyst's strongest argument (that the object emitted its own energy incompatible with solar reflection at noon) is interesting but depends entirely on inferences about photos whose orientation, exact time and exposure could not be fixed, made with filters on an image whose sensor, by the report's own account, was saturated in the decisive area.