The Brazilian Air Force (Força Aérea Brasileira, or FAB) is the air branch of Brazil's armed forces, created on January 20, 1941. Its Aeronautics Command reports to the Ministry of Defense, which absorbed the old Ministry of Aeronautics, and its Aerospace Control Department runs both air defense and civil and military air traffic control. That dual role means reports of unidentified objects from pilots and controllers flow into FAB channels. The service had about 80,900 personnel in 2018 and some 578 aircraft in 2025.

The FAB's best-known field investigation came in 1977, after residents of Colares and nearby communities in Pará reported lights they associated with injuries. The regional air command in Belém opened Operação Prato, or Operation Saucer, which collected witness statements, photographs and observation logs, with Captain Uyrangê Hollanda in operational command from November 1977. The operation ended after about four months, and Brazil's National Intelligence Service carried out further missions in 1978. Hollanda's 1997 interviews, describing encounters he considered extraordinary, made the case internationally known, and a 2017 federal government publication, Arquivos Abertos: OVNIs nos céus do Brasil, documents the operation and its files.

On the night of May 19, 1986, CINDACTA radar tracked about 20 unidentified contacts over São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Goiás and Paraná. The FAB scrambled two F-5E fighters from Santa Cruz and three Mirage IIIs from Anápolis; the pilots reported that the targets kept their distance or accelerated away, and none obtained a clear visual sighting or onboard radar lock. On May 23, Air Minister Octávio Moreira Lima appeared with the pilots at a press conference and said that, technically, "we have no explanation," which is why the episode is known in Brazil as the "Noite Oficial dos Óvnis." An Air Force report released in 2009 concluded that the phenomena were solid and in a certain way reflected intelligence.

Since 2008 the Aeronautics Command has sent the UFO material it decides to make public to the National Archive in Brasília, and Ordinance 551/GC3 of August 2010 limited its UFO activity to registering occurrences and forwarding them: the air defense command catalogs reports from air traffic users, and the Air Force documentation center sends the originals to the archive. The archive released 16 audio files from the 1986 night in 2015. An archive technician told SBT in March 2026 that the collection holds more than 800 documents and grows by about 60 dossiers a year; the Air Force did not answer whether any UFO studies are under way.

Other claims about the FAB come from outside its files. At the 1996 Varginha incident, the official inquiry was the Brazilian Army's, which concluded that witnesses had mistaken a local man for a creature. Filmmaker James Fox has said a Brazilian Air Force brigadier told him off camera that "it happened," and former defense minister Aldo Rebelo said in 2026 that the armed forces hold files on Varginha and Colares before telling the Brazilian press he had revealed no state secrets. The FAB's lasting contribution is the archive it has fed since 2008, which now holds the primary records of Operation Prato and the 1986 night.