UFOpedia

arquivo-nacional-ovni-fund-index

4 min read

Arquivo Nacional “Fundo OVNI” (BR DFANBSB ARX) — collection note & curated index

What: a reference note + curated index for the Brazilian National Archives’ UFO collection — the Fundo OVNI (BR DFANBSB ARX – “objeto voador não identificado”), the official archival fund holding declassified Brazilian government UAP records. Captured: 2026-06-06. This note documents the fund (provenance, scale, access) and indexes the high-value documents surfaced by an image-server census, so future workups can target primaries rather than re-enumerate ~900 scanned PDFs. Analysis hub: colares-operation-prato-1977; case background: brazil-national-archives-ufo-files-2025-05.

The fund

  • Provenance: Brazil declassified its military UFO files in tranches (a first CENDOC compilation, 1952–69, transferred to the Arquivo Nacional 31 Oct 2008; further lots from 23 Apr 2009, when the Operação Prato material first appeared; subsequent releases through ~2016). Crucially, Portaria/Ordinance 551/GC3 (2009) established a standing order that all branches of the Brazilian military/aviation transfer UAP reports to the Arquivo Nacional annually — a globally unusual permanent-disclosure mechanism that keeps the fund growing.
  • Scale: several thousand pages; ~758–900 digitized documents (sources vary) spanning 1952–present — reports, witness depositions/questionnaires, photographs, filled forms, press clippings, and some audio/video. The image-server census (2026-06) found 894 enumerable PDFs in the 0/0 branch.
  • Access (two routes):
    • Catalog: the SIAN (Sistema de Informações do Arquivo Nacional) consulta at sian.an.gov.br — a login-gated ASP app; the AN’s own explainer “Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional” (querepublicaeessa.an.gov.br) is the public front door.
    • Direct images (no metadata): the derivative PDFs enumerate at http://imagem.sian.an.gov.br/acervo/derivadas/br_dfanbsb_arx/0/0/NNNN/br_dfanbsb_arx_0_0_NNNN_d0001de0001.pdf for NNNN ≈ 0001–0900. Mirrors of the Prato subset exist at operacaoprato.com, ufo.com.br/documentos-operacao-prato, and Bob Pratt’s “prato.pdf” on The Black Vault.
  • Coverage: press-covered (Correio Braziliense “900 registros de OVNIs,” Poder360, Jornal Opção) — a known, public archive, not a secret cache. Its value to this base is that we previously held it only at wiki-summary level.

Curated high-value index (by image-server id, largest/most-substantive first)

Identified by a size census + first-page OCR; sizes/pages approximate. Bold = captured here.

  • 0184 — Operação Prato observation register, 160 pp, 1977–78. Registros de Observações de OVNI Nº 001 a 130 (I COMAR, 2ª Seção); 130 records, 02 Sep 77 – 28 Nov 78, ~118 lights + a few craft/landings, ~32 team-observed, extensive Minolta photo annexes + opening map. Captured (clean Gemini OCR): operacao-prato-ata-registro-observacoes-1977.
  • 0322 — Informação Nº 075/91 (1º COMAR, 1991): a press-leak report wrapping a facsimile of UFO Documento Nº 2, which reproduced the Operação Prato Relatório de Missão + named witness testimonies (Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, Padre Alfredo de la Ó), incl. the mission report’s candid “no fully satisfactory conclusion.” 37 pp. Captured (Gemini OCR): operacao-prato-relatorio-missao-leak-0322.
  • 0059 — 4ª Zona Aérea boletim, Prato/objeto-luminoso/desenho, 44 pp.
  • 0183 — CINDACTA I “resumo de todos os casos de OVNIs” (RESERVADO; 1º Ten Ademir Freitas, 6 Dez 78): radar/ATC case register (incl. a 902-kt return), notes all video tapes were erased. 35 pp. Captured (Gemini OCR): cindacta-i-ovni-radar-cases-1978-0183.
  • 0224 — 1982 Anápolis radar-interceptor case (CONFIDENCIAL, VI COMAR A/2, 12 Jul 82): multi-night radar + F-103 interceptor episode, two-radar confirmation, an object that “turned off its lights” on intercept. 26 pp. Captured (Gemini OCR): anapolis-radar-interceptor-case-1982-0224.
  • 0201 — II Comando Aéreo Regional (Recife), Dez 80, 43 pp. Report + depositions.
  • 0280 — “Os Documentos Oficiais da Força Aérea Brasileira” — a 58-pp compiled coletânea of FAB UFO boletins/memos (secondary compilation of primaries).
  • 0145 — DEOPS/SP (Serviço de Informações) UFO file, 15 pp — state political-police intelligence angle.
  • Mixed/secondary in-fund items (collected ufology material): 0243 CPDV bulletin (35 pp), 0155 I Simpósio Internacional de Ufologia (42 pp), 0257 press/ufology compilation incl. USP physicist Luiz Carlos Menezes (17 pp), 0244 ufology newsletter (23 pp).
  • The remaining ~880 ids are mostly standardized “OVNI QUESTIONÁRIO” witness forms (the Portaria-551 annual transfers, ~1986–present), 2 pp each — high in count, low in per-item novelty; mine selectively for specific cases.

How to weight the fund

A genuine government primary trove and the strongest foreign mass-record in this base — but “in the national archive” ≠ “verified phenomenon.” The records are authentic military/police paperwork documenting what was reported and logged; they do not, by themselves, establish the nature of the phenomena. The standardized questionnaires especially are raw witness intake, not adjudicated findings. Treat the fund as a high-value primary-source layer (especially the 1977 Prato register and the COMAR/CINDACTA reports) feeding the Colares case page, per the-evidence-question.

Graph View

Backlinks