British Ministry of Defense will no longer investigate UFO reports.

Recent article from the Telegraph explains how the British MOD has ordered the end of all official investigations of Unidentified Flying Objects after they ruled they 'do not pose a threat to the nation’s security' -also mentioned is last year's closure of the telephone hotline for submitting reports and the 'UFO desk' which used to be manned by Nick Pope.

Britain visited by one UFO a month but MoD rules they pose no threat

The Ministry of Defence will no longer investigate UFO sightings after ruling there is “no evidence” they pose a threat to the UK despite a senior aviation official admitting the country is visited by one unidentified flying object a month.

It is official at last: Britain is not at risk from unidentified flying objects.

Those who have long feared an invasion from Mars or further afield can relax – at least, that is, if they believe the Ministry of Defence.

An end has been ordered to all official investigations of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, after the ministry ruled they do not pose a threat to the nation’s security

The move to end all investigation was disclosed after a dedicated hotline for UFO sightings was discontinued for cost grounds, and the “UFO desk”, which cost £44,000 a year was also removed.

Now officials say that any UFO investigation would divert valuable resources and instead a sophisticated network of radar infrastructure and anti-ballistic missile systems to monitor British airspace will spot any genuine threat.
An MoD spokesman said: “In over fifty years no UFO report revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.

“The MoD had no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings and there would be no benefit in such an investigation. Furthermore, responding to reported UFO sightings diverted MOD resources from tasks that were more relevant to defence.”

lin k

Anyone have any opinions on this - there's an incident described in this thread where the British MOD document was said to be so so sensitive that "an extra three years was added to its 25 year release date" and another case here where the MOD broke with all official protocol when reporting and investigating the incident.

Couldn't it be seen as a little irresponsible for the MOD to end all 'official investigations' into the UFO subject, especially when there are quite a few unexplained reports?

Cheers.

Link to source? I think I heard something about this a while back, but I may not have.

Maybe they have just reclassified them as IFO's....

Identified Flying Objects....and yes, they will still investigate them.

The Russians use to "bait" the British in the cold war, by flying close to UK airspace...naturally they were UFOs until identified, and fighters scrambled....

Dont believe for 1 minute that Britain (UK) will stop investigating them, I believe the Russians are doing similar things again....Not to mention all the "triangle" drones and stealths that we all know are out there.

And if they ARE non Earth Human tech...then they are right, What the hell can they do about it?..........nothing!.

As yet, we dont appear to have encountered any violently hostile entities toward our planet....other than Humans themselves.

Pose no threat: I.e They are there and pose no threat?

or

Pose no threat: I.e. There is no such thing and therefore they pose no threat?

"They" suggests they exist?

Originally posted by karl 12
MoD rules they pose no threat

edit on 19-8-2012 by karl 12 because: (no reason given)

Somebody hack your account? Cuz that's not a karl12 OP.

EDIT: Oh, there it is. Technical difficulties I suppose.


Couldn't agree more. Particularly when there are cases like those on the books. I need to get into those UK files. Never heard of either of those cases. Thanks!

This is absolutely insane to me!

A Defense Ministry that will not investigate UNIDENTIFED FLYING OBJECTS in their airspace anymore while admitting that there are some?!?!?

Put aliens aside....that sounds like a completely irresponsible national security nightmare! What if those UFOs are foreign aircraft?

Im almost speechless.....

(this sounds like a great topic for ATS Live!)

reply to post by greeneyedleo


Almost like admitting they are "in bed" with them. 'we know they are harmless, but they are there"????

Is the source (The Telegraph) a legimate source? I know Karl you are super good at posting good quality stuff....but this sounds ridiculous to me....as if its a hoax?! (I know its not...but but....)

From Nick Pope...

Nick Pope, who ran the MoD’s UFO desk from 1991 to 1994 and now researches UFO sightings privately, said: “One of the problems was that an increasing number of the reports the MoD was getting were low quality.

“When someone has a photograph though, that should be considered to be a different situation. The MoD has the personnel and equipment to very quickly analyse an image to tell whether it has been altered and identify what an object might be.

Ah yes, a few technical difficulties there

When it comes to the MOD I always found this quote from one of their senior officials to be quite a revealing one:

"Here we had a number of object seen coming in across the North Sea on coastal radar. It looked like a Russian mistake. Jet aircraft were scrambled. The objects were travelling at quite impossible speeds like 4-5000 mph and then came to an abrupt halt near to one of these stations not very high up. Jet aircraft picked them up on aircraft radar. The objects then simply made rings round them."

"Inevitably this led to the sort of enquiry which you would put in hand if you had any military responsibilities. Had something gone wrong with ground radar or with aircraft radar? We experienced pilots going out of their minds? Were people having fantasies? We *had* to investigate cases of that kind. Over the years - although there were not an enormous number of such cases - there were a sufficient number to persuade me, and a number of air staff friends with whom I had to work, that something was going on, sporadically, in British airspace which we could not explain."

"But we did not particularly want to make public statements about that. Not for something that we had no explanation."

Ralph Noyes,Senior Official with British Air Ministry - retired as Under Secretary of State in 1977

link

Originally posted by gort51

Dont believe for 1 minute that Britain (UK) will stop investigating them..

Hey Gort, I don't.

Mind you, this could be the answer?

"Ignore us or we will flatten you. You have seen Mars right?"

MoD...........yep, nothing to see here, move on

Originally posted by Ecidemon
Link to source? I think I heard something about this a while back, but I may not have.

Yes it was announced some time ago.

I read a pretty convincing account somewhere (I'll try and find it) that the U.S. especially the Air Force just didn't want the responsibility and the cost associated with something that outsmarted them every-time.

Folk kept trying to toss the "hot 'tater" around until they finally managed to drop it.

I truly don't think any of the governments have any more of a clue than we do. Maybe that's it.

It would make some sense: If they are intelligent enough to traverse either light-years or dimensions, they are probably intelligent enough to keep their secrets from even our smartest think tanks & scientists.

Besides: Both our gubmints have their hands full waging war and stupid destruction all over the globe. That costs money ya' know.

Sure, that statement is the polite but wordy British way of saying "We're not alone".

IMO we (the UK) are basically being told by the USA not to openly reveal it, but under pressure from other countries to be more honest to our peoples about it

It affects everyone, including the MOD's own servicemen. Safer for them to admit openly and easily the potential to their own airmen of coming face to face with a UFO than to suffer exposure from one of their own, or have some kind of fatal accident/incident where all the evidence points to UFO involvement.

It's kind of cute, they're saying "They're here, but it's okay - they aren't here to cause us harm in the air."

Whatever "they" are. Just aerial phenomena in this statement, I think.

Originally posted by greeneyedleo

Is the source (The Telegraph) a legimate source?

Hola Gel, couldn't agree more about your 'completely irresponsible national security nightmare' comment but the Telegraph is one of Britain's biggest selling broadsheet newspapers so I guess it's true.

Wiki

I'm sure MOD officials are aware of radar/visual cases like the one described in the interview below (and there are also unexplained incidents like this one within the flight corridors of one of the world's busiest airports) so I really do wonder why the MOD are claiming not to be concerned about the UFO subject.

See 13:55

Cheers.

It's all rather simple, the MOD will never admit to investigating such reports because that would give people the impression they know a hell of a lot more about what some of the UFOs are.

Of course they know more, but it's a lot easier without having to put up with questions from silly people like us

EDIT: I wonder how much longer this pretence can last for, another 50 years?

The very nature of UFOs means the bean counters are sitting there saying. "You spent how much on what?". There's no return, fiscally, in their eyes, so stop doing it, to that extent GUT has it spot on.

There never really was a "hotline" either, there was an extension in the MOD where the switchboard put calls through to if there was a UFO being reported to them. There was, for a while a special room, stuck on top of a building where there was a small band who investigated UFOs however, that had long gone by the time Nick Pope arrived. It was under the aegis of a quite high ranking RAF officer however, he never said a word about his work to anyone including his family.

One thing to bare in mind about Britain and UFOs is this, at least one member of the Royal family who had a deep interest in the subject, was implicated in a late 1970s plot to back a military coup in Britain. Post 1979, I suspect his deep involvement led to a wholesale rethink of how and who should be "in the know" as it were. Before you all cry... "What coup?". It was brought to the public's attention by ex Government ministers when they wrote their memoires so it's not just some "lone nutter" writing a blog. I suspect that the executive wanted to distance themselves from these people and that the very subject of UFOs was , to a degree, further tainted by those who were prominent in its' investigation from the 50s to the late 70s early 80s.

In effect what the MOD is really saying is this. "We have no interest in investigating reports that don't come from "in house" and from now on, you can forget about ever hearing about it if we do choose to investigate anything."

reply to post by karl 12


You said:

"Couldn't it be seen as a little irresponsible for the MOD to end all 'official investigations' into the UFO subject, especially when there are quite a few unexplained reports?"

I must surmise with that statement that you are not very familiar with the topic and believe that they still don't know what those damned things moving around in the sky actually represent and have simply given up in desperation?

Originally posted by karl 12
Couldn't it be seen as a little irresponsible for the MOD to end all 'official investigations' into the UFO subject, especially when there are quite a few unexplained reports?

I read about this quite a while ago.

When did the USA stop official investigations? Official US investigations ended with the end of project bluebook in 1969, and a lot of people criticized the official reports as a whitewashing anyway.

I'm sure the USA continued to perform "unofficial" investigations which I suspect the MOD will also do. If there are no official investigations, it makes it easier for them to ignore a bunch of nosy inquiries, by pretending they don't have any records of investigations when people ask for them. So I don't know how much of a cost savings it will really be, but it could be a move toward more secrecy.

Regarding the threat to security, the number of cases over the last 65 years where the UFOs have attacked is pretty small, right? (Unless you count the farmers who think UFOs are attacking their livestock).