UK Ministry of Defence

UK Ministry of Defence

Type	Organization
Also known as	Ministry of Defence
On the Timeline	4 events, 1992–2022

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is the UK government department responsible for defence policy and the headquarters of the British Armed Forces.^[6] For about sixty years, until November 2009, it was also the British government's point of contact for UFO reports. A small civil-service "UFO desk" checked sightings for defence significance, and scientific and technical advice came from the intelligence branch DI55.^[1][2] Between 1997 and 2000 the Defence Intelligence Staff carried out a secret UFO study later known as Project Condign.^[4] From 2008 to 2013 the MoD released almost all its surviving UFO files through The National Archives: 209 files and about 52,000 pages.^[2] In 2009, officials told ministers that no sighting reported to the MoD had ever revealed "anything to suggest an extra-terrestrial presence or military threat to the UK".^[1][2]

The UFO desk

UFO reports were handled by civil servants of the Air Staff Secretariat. They received advice from DI55, a branch of the Defence Intelligence Staff that assessed reports for information of intelligence interest.^[1] In 2000 the Directorate of Air Space took over as the secretariat for UFO reports, and from then on reports were no longer copied to DI55.^[1] Stories about those who ran "Britain's X-Files" were popular with the tabloids. Clarke writes that they were resented by defence officials who saw the work as a waste of scarce resources.^[2]

The best-known desk officer was Nick Pope. From 1991 to 1994 he worked in Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, known as the "UFO desk", investigating sightings for defence significance.^[3] After leaving the MoD in 2006 he became a prominent media commentator on UFOs. His 1996 book Open Skies, Closed Minds described his time on the desk. In it he concluded that an alien race was waging a secret war on humanity, a view he later distanced himself from.^[3]

Notable cases and documents

• Rendlesham Forest, 1980. Lights seen in December 1980 near RAF Woodbridge, then used by the US Air Force, became Britain's most famous UFO case. The MoD said the event posed no threat to national security and so was never investigated as a security matter.^[7] See Rendlesham Forest incident.
• Calvine, 1990. Two men said they photographed a diamond-shaped craft near Calvine in Perthshire on 4 August 1990. Their prints and negatives were passed to the MoD and then disappeared.^[8] In August 2022 the researcher David Clarke found and published an original print.^[8] According to the timeline published with Michael Shellenberger's 2024 congressional testimony, Clarke cited an MoD minute mentioning "ASTRA/AURORA photos" and a press "D" Notice.^[9] See Calvine UFO photograph.
• Triangles, 1992. On 22 December 1992 the British embassy in Washington reported to the assistant chief of the Air Staff on US reactions to triangular UAP sightings. It said there was "considerable irritation" within the US Air Force at renewed speculation about a secret aircraft called "Aurora".^[10] See British embassy report on triangles and black triangle.
• Proposed study, 1993. An MoD memo of 2 December 1993, proposing a UAP study, said intelligence sources indicated that Russia had a small team studying such phenomena, and that "an informal group exists in the US intelligence community".^[11]

Project Condign

Project Condign was a secret study by the Defence Intelligence Staff between 1997 and 2000. Its 400-page report, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region, drew on about 10,000 sightings gathered by DI55.^[4] It was released on 15 May 2006 after a 2005 Freedom of Information request by David Clarke and Gary Anthony. The author's identity was not made public.^[4]

• Findings. The report said the existence of UAP was "indisputable", but found no evidence they were "hostile or under any type of control".^[4] It attributed most sightings to misidentified aircraft, balloons and other objects. The rest it put down to little-understood atmospheric phenomena, which it called "buoyant plasma formations".^[4]
• Plasma and close encounters. It suggested that such plasmas could explain black-triangle reports by refracting light. It also suggested that their electromagnetic fields could cause hallucinations behind some close-encounter reports. It recommended research into "novel military applications".^[4]
• Reaction. Clarke said the report shed no new light on UFOs but showed that the Defence Intelligence Staff had studied the subject far more extensively than it had admitted. Because it was secret, it was apparently not peer-reviewed, and the plasma hypothesis may not have survived independent scrutiny.^[4]

Closure

The UFO desk, its hotline and its dedicated email address were closed in November 2009.^[1] The last batch of files, covering late 2007 to November 2009, revealed the reasons.^[1][2]

• No threat found. Ministers in Gordon Brown's government were told that in nearly 60 years no sighting had revealed an extraterrestrial presence or military threat, even when reported by police or pilots.^[1][2]
• No defence purpose. The files said the desk served no defence purpose and merely "encourages the generation of correspondence" about experiences of "no defence value".^[1][2] With every department under pressure to cut spending, Clarke wrote, closure was inevitable.^[2]
• A surge in reports. Reports trebled from 208 in 2008 to 643 in 2009, the most since 1978, overwhelming the single desk officer.^[1][2] Most described groups of floating orange lights, which officials thought were partly due to the craze for releasing Chinese lanterns at weddings and celebrations.^[1][2] In June 2008 The Sun splashed a soldier's phone footage of an "alien fleet" over his Shropshire barracks. It later emerged that guests at a nearby wedding had released lanterns that night.^[2] A January 2009 claim that a UFO had damaged a wind turbine turned out to be metal fatigue.^[2]

Clarke argued that publicity around the file releases themselves may also have encouraged reports.^[1] He compared the closure to the US Air Force ending its UFO investigations in 1969.^[2] A campaign to keep the desk open was started, and the files include correspondence to senior ministers.^[1] The earlier version of this article cited HuffPost UK for the closure, but that page could not be read here. The details are confirmed by The National Archives and Clarke.^[1][2][5]

Release of the files

The Freedom of Information Act 2005 increased pressure for full disclosure. In 2007 the MoD decided to transfer its UFO archive to The National Archives.^[2] Ten batches were released from 2008 to June 2013, totalling 209 files and about 52,000 pages that would otherwise have stayed closed for 30 years.^[2] Clarke was the project's consultant and spokesman. He estimated that its website drew more than four million visitors from 160 countries, and that news of the files reached 25 million people.^[2] The final tranche of 25 files and 4,400 pages was released in June 2013. It included reports of alleged abductions and sightings near landmarks such as Stonehenge. To mark the end of the programme, an app mapped almost 5,000 sightings from 25 years of files.^[1]

Later claims involving the MoD include the former British intelligence officer Franc Milburn's 2022 statement that a UK paramilitary group had handled UAP crash retrievals. No evidence for the claim appears in the sources read here.^[12] See Franc Milburn's directed-energy claim.

On the UAP Timeline

• British embassy report on triangles (1992) (22 December 1992) — The British embassy reports on the U.S. reaction to triangular UAP sightings.
• Project Condign (2 December 1993) — A UK Ministry of Defence memo discusses a proposed UAP study.
• Calvine UFO photograph (12 August 2022) — Researcher David Clarke publishes the 1990 'Calvine' UFO photo from MoD files.
• Franc Milburn's directed-energy claim (7 October 2022) — A former UK officer claims directed-energy weapons were used against UAP scientists.

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Nick Pope (journalist)”, “Project Condign”, “Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)”, “Rendlesham Forest incident”, “Calvine UFO photograph”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.