Denis Letty

Major General Denis Letty (Ret.) is a retired French Air Force officer with extensive command experience — as former fighter pilot, head of French Air Defence for the southeast zone, head of the French military mission for the Allied Air Force of Central Europe, commander of the Fifth Wing and commander of Strasbourg air base. His engagement with the UFO phenomenon began in 1965 at FATAC headquarters in Metz and culminated in 1996 with the founding of the COMETA committee, which in 1999 submitted a spectacular report to the French Prime Minister.

• Retired Major General of the French Air Force
• Former fighter pilot and head of French Air Defence for the southeast zone
• Head of the French military mission for the Allied Air Force of Central Europe
• Commander of the Fifth Wing and commander of Strasbourg air base
• First contact with UFO cases in 1965 as a captain at FATAC headquarters in Metz; formative cases: Colonel Giraud (Mirage IV, 1977) and Captain Fartek (disc sighting near Dijon, 1979)
• In 1996 founded the COMETA committee within the IHEDN framework; twelve-member study group with General Norlain and former CNES head Lebeau
• Three-year investigation, concluding that the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the most rational explanation; report submitted to the French Prime Minister and the military cabinet of the President

For the UAP timeline, Letty is the central French military actor who institutionalised UAP research at the state level. The 1999 COMETA report is one of the few state-adjacent European final reports with an explicit conclusion in favour of the ET hypothesis — and remains a standard reference for any serious debate about official national UFO assessments in Europe.