Section B · FAA Commodore · director of CIAE
Rubén Lianza
Commodore (ret.) and test pilot of the Argentine Air Force · image analyst (IPACO) · director of CIAE
Biography
Commodore (retired) and test pilot of the Argentine Air Force (Class of 1980), with more than 3,000 flight hours in 20 aircraft types and a career oriented to flight testing and research and development: he was head of the FAA's Flight Test Center, project pilot at Vought Aircraft (Dallas) and Pampa Program liaison at Lockheed Martin Argentina. He holds a degree in aerospace systems and is a certified analyst in the IPACO image-analysis software. Since the mid-2010s he has directed the official aerospace-phenomena commission, which he reorganized as CIAE (Aerospace Identification Center). His team analyzed more than 400 reports without finding a single 'craft': he applies technical analysis of photos and videos to distinguish the extraordinary from an insect, a reflection or a satellite. A critic of traditional ufology, he cites Carl Sagan to warn that some sectors 'do not seek to solve the mystery but to preserve it'.
Primary documents
CIAE 2025 annual report · extract: introduction, index and final conclusions
Extract from the 2025 annual report of the Argentine Air Force's Aerospace Identification Center (CIAE), with introduction, contents and final conclusions. The body was created on 6 May 2011 as CEFAe and reorganized as CIAE on 4 April 2019; from around 2014, under Commodore (ret.) Rubén Lianza, it treats each report as an identification problem and checks photos and videos against astronomy, air traffic and satellites. The 2025 report records 28 accepted cases, 11 rejected and 28 resolved, and two field investigations of Chinese rocket debris. It shows the method and results of an official body; on its own it provides no evidence about any specific sighting.
Fuerza Aérea Argentina, Centro de Investigación Aeroespacial (pp. 1, 2 y 166 de 167) · CC BY 4.0 (argentina.gob.ar) · open original
Why they're here · 2 pieces
- 2015
Conducción de la CEFAe / CIAE
Gave the official commission a scientific-technical identification approach; reorganized CEFAe into CIAE (2019)
- 2020
Análisis técnico de 400+ denuncias
Resolved the vast majority as prosaic phenomena via image analysis (IPACO)
Sources
- Zona Militar — interview with Commodore Rubén Lianza (CIAE)
- Argentine Air Force — Aerospace Identification Center
- Argentine Air Force, CIAE — 2025 annual report — The latest published annual report; the CEFAE/CIAE series from 2015 to 2025 is on argentina.gob.ar under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
Contributes a theoretical framework, with no specific case in the archive.
Biography summarized from public sources, classified by section (A-F).