PERUVIAN.

La Joya is a sensitive military site adjacent to the Vitor Valley training range. Peruvian Air Force Lt. Oscar Santa María Huertas was scrambled in a Russian-built Sukhoi Su-22 fighter to intercept the object.

Closing on the object, Santa María fired a burst of approximately 64 rounds from his GSh-23 30mm cannon directly at the target. He observed the rounds either striking and being absorbed without effect or apparently passing through the object. The object then accelerated, climbed, and pulled the Su-22 into a high-speed pursuit at altitudes up to roughly 63,000 feet. Santa María closed several times to fire additional cannon bursts; on each closure, the object accelerated away vertically or laterally.

Santa María broke off pursuit when he ran low on fuel. He returned to La Joya and reported the encounter through the Peruvian Air Force chain of command. The base commander supported the report, and the encounter was eventually entered into Peruvian Air Force official records. Decades later, the Peruvian Air Force formally established a UFO research office, the Departamento de Investigación de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (DIFAA), in 2001.

In November 2007, Santa María testified about the encounter at the National Press Club in Washington DC, organised by journalist Leslie Kean as part of a delegation of military pilots and government officials from multiple countries. He stated that the object appeared to be an intelligently controlled, technologically advanced craft of unknown origin. The case is among the most-cited military UFO encounters in Latin American history and is one of the rare cases in which a fighter pilot fired on a UFO and lived to publicly describe the encounter under his own name.