In 1978, a wave of Unidentified Flying Object sightings swept Italy. Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti — one of the most powerful political figures in postwar Italian history — formally designated the Aeronautica Militare (Italian Air Force) as the institutional body responsible for collecting, verifying, and monitoring OVNI reports. That mandate has never been revoked. The programme is still running. Annual sighting reports are published for every year from 2009 through 2025.
The Current Structure
The programme is currently administered by the Reparto Generale Sicurezza (General Security Department) of the Air Force General Staff — the Stato Maggiore Aeronautica. This is not a fringe unit. It is the Air Force’s primary security apparatus. OVNI investigation is a named function of this department.
The Reporting Process
Any Italian citizen who wishes to report a UAP sighting follows a formal state process: fill in the official OVNI reporting form (ModuloUFO.pdf, available at aeronautica.difesa.it/ovni/), then submit it to the nearest Carabinieri station. The Carabinieri forward it to the Air Force. The Air Force then conducts a technical investigation to determine whether the event correlates with known human activity or natural phenomena. If no technical or natural explanation can be found, the episode is classified as an OVNI sighting and published on the Air Force website.
17 Years of Annual Reports
Annual OVNI sighting reports are publicly available in PDF format for 2009 through 2025. This is a continuous 17-year public record of Italian military UAP assessments, updated every year. Charts uploaded in January 2026 include a pie chart, histogram, and data table of the 2025 statistics. Italy has maintained this public annual reporting standard without interruption for longer than the US AARO has existed.
The Oracle Assessment
Andreotti’s 1978 designation is not widely discussed in the global UAP conversation. It should be. A sitting NATO head of government formally institutionalised UAP investigation within his country’s Air Force general staff 47 years ago. The programme has published annual reports continuously since at least 2009. Italy has been doing quietly and formally what the US only began doing publicly in 2022. The aeronautica.difesa.it/ovni/ page with its 17 annual PDFs is one of the most underreported government UAP resources in the world.
Source: aeronautica.difesa.it/ovni/. Italian Air Force. Annual reports 2009–2025.