Frédéric Courtade has been the director of geipan (France’s UAP investigation unit within cnes) since 2024. He brings a materials science background and approximately 20 years of CNES hardware expertise. He represented GEIPAN at Roundtable 2 of the June 29, 2026 French National Assembly parliamentary UAP colloquium.
June 29, 2026 colloquium remarks
Courtade framed GEIPAN’s mission as public information “to curb criticism,” partly via opening its archives, and detailed the office’s four-category classification system (A: fully identified, B: probably identified, C: unidentified for lack of data, D: remains unidentified after investigation) — with category D at just 3.1% of cases versus 38.8% in category B. He stated that neither GEIPAN nor cnes conducts research into unexplained (category D) cases, deferring that role to academic researchers: “there is no ufology at CNES.”
“de la recherche sur ces cas, il n’y a pas d’ufologie au CNES.” [research into these cases — there is no ufology at CNES.] — Frédéric Courtade