If you had to write a list of roles you might expect to find to find under the Ministry of Defence’s remit you might consider things such as planning military strategy, buying suitable military equipment or spying.
What might not be high on your list is keeping an eye out for little green or grey men, but recently released MoD documents show that the department have been very busy keeping an eye peeled for unusual objects in the sky above the UK and furthermore, they discussed these matters with the Prime Minister of the time.
Tony Blair and UFO’s
Documents revel that Tony Blair had a chat with ‘the men from the ministry’ on this very subject in 1998. They must have had a lot to talk about because 6,700 pages have been released by the National Archives concerning UFO sightings.
Some of these sightings were explicable as being caused by hoaxers or natural phenomena but some, and those which interested the UFO desk’s staff most, were harder to explain and came from witnesses who would be difficult to fool; such as an RAF air commodore who sent a memo to Defence Intelligence Staff describing a UFO he had seen flying above him at 40,000 feet or the UFO that shadowed the naval task force which was sent to liberate the Falklands in1982.
An email sent by a member of the organisation in 2008 states that;
“From time to time, we may receive a report from aircrew, air traffic control or the police that, in our judgement, may deserve a closer look since they are either trained observers or are sufficiently well-versed in aviation matters for their reports to carry more weight and detail than usual,”
In such cases the MoD would liaise with experts and attempt to provide a rational explanation.
The newly released documents give us an idea of what it was like working in this rather arcane section of the MoD. An email from one of the organisation’s staff makes it clear that they were not interested in the existence or otherwise of aliens but simply to decide if any UFO reports suggested there was a risk to national security, however, the mail shows they were worried about their public image and the email sates that the publicity surrounding the unit;
“tends to suggest to the public that there are Top Secret teams of specialist scientists scurrying around the country in a real life version of the X-Files… [but] this is total fiction.”
The UFO desk investigated more than 10,000 UFO sightings between 1950 and 2009, that works out at a rate of one investigation being started every two days, which might suggest UFOs were more likely to be a hazard to air traffic than a risk to the defence of the realm! Yet, before you hand in your notice and apply to the MoD for a career in UFO spotting – STOP, the unit which cost £50,000 a year to run has been scraped as part of defence cuts. If you fancy pursuing your own MoD type investigation the files they are available free on the net for one month. Now if you would like to know if there are is set to be someone special entering your world today, please join me for your Daily Love Horoscope.