COMETA Report: NASA File Copy – PURSUE Files

A NASA-held copy of the 1999 French COMETA report “UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?” with a letter from Carol Rosin

⚠ Note on validity: The COMETA report was written by a private association of retired French officials and experts, not by the French government. Its conclusion that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is the “most likely” explanation for unexplained cases was its authors’ opinion.

COMETA report (NASA copy)
Agency holding the file	NASA (National Archives Record Group 255)
Report authors	COMETA (French association of former IHEDN auditors)
Original publication	July 1999, in VSD magazine (France)
Released	Release 01 (May 8, 2026)
Files	1 (PDF)
Previously public?	Yes — the COMETA report itself has been public since 1999; NASA’s file copy and the Rosin letter appear newly public
Official releaseDisputed

This NASA file (National Archives Record Group 255) contains a copy of UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?, the 1999 report by COMETA, a French association whose members were mostly former auditors of the Institute for Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN), including retired generals and an ex-head of the French space agency CNES. The file also holds a letter from Carol Rosin, who says she was spokesperson for rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun in his final years.^[1]

The records

255_413270_UFO’s_and_Defense_What_Should_we_Prepare_For

Open 255_413270_UFO’s_and_Defense_What_Should_we_Prepare_For (PDF) on war.gov →

This file contains an independent report on UFOs written by the French association COMETA (previously published in the French magazine VDS in 1999), which details the results of a study by the Institute of Higher Studies for National Defence. The file also includes a letter from Carol Rosin in which she notes that she was spokesperson for von Braun during the last years of his life.
— Official PURSUE description

Analysis

What COMETA said. The report reviewed well-documented French and international cases, drawing heavily on GEIPAN (then SEPRA) files, and concluded that about 5% of cases remained unexplained after investigation, that the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” was the most likely explanation for them, and that France should prepare politically and militarily. It was published in the magazine VSD and presented to President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.^[2]

Criticism. Skeptics noted that the French government never endorsed the report, that its case selection favored dramatic examples, and that “unexplained” does not imply “extraterrestrial.” Carol Rosin is best known for her claim that von Braun warned that a staged alien threat would be used to justify weapons in space; there is no independent record of him saying this.

New or previously released? The COMETA report has been publicly available since 1999 and translated into English. That NASA kept a copy, along with the Rosin letter, appears to be newly public.

Released files

PURSUE ID	Title	Type
255_413270_UFO’s_and_Defense_What_Should_we_Prepare_For	255_413270_UFO’s_and_Defense_What_Should_we_Prepare_For	PDF

References

^ U.S. Department of War (2026). PURSUE Release 01 (May 8, 2026): 255_413270_UFO’s_and_Defense_What_Should_we_Prepare_For, with official descriptions. war.gov/ufo.
^ COMETA (1999). Les OVNI et la défense: À quoi doit-on se préparer? Published in VSD hors-série, July 1999.

Source: U.S. Department of War, PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters), war.gov/ufo. Official records are U.S. government works in the public domain; summaries and analysis on this page are by UFO UAP Wiki.