What happened
For roughly six decades the British Ministry of Defence kept a desk to receive UFO reports, latterly staffed by civil servants in the Directorate of Air Staff and then RAF Air Command. In 2009 the desk was overwhelmed: more than 600 reports arrived, about triple the previous year, many describing orange lights drifting in formation. On 11 November 2009 Carl Mantell of Air Command briefed Defence Minister Bob Ainsworth that in more than fifty years no reported sighting had revealed anything suggesting an extraterrestrial presence or a military threat, and that the work produced no valuable defence output. Ainsworth approved closing it. In December the UFO hotline answering machine and dedicated email address were switched off; in January 2010 police forces and aviation authorities were told to stop forwarding reports. The desk's final files, 25 volumes and 4,400 pages, were released by The National Archives in June 2013 as the last of ten tranches.
The official explanation
The released briefing states the reasoning plainly: decades of reports showed no defence significance, the workload was rising and diverting staff, and investigations even of reports from reliable witnesses were judged to serve no useful purpose. Officials and historian David Clarke attributed much of the 2009 surge to the fashion for releasing Chinese lanterns, along with heightened public awareness driven by the National Archives' own file releases.
The anomalous case
The closure files show the MoD was concerned about how UFO researchers would read its actions. Officials deliberately avoided formal consultations with other governments before closing the desk, because such contacts would surface in future file releases and could be seen by ufologists as evidence of international collaboration, according to The National Archives' guide to the files. The ministry also instructed civil aviation authorities not to encourage members of the public to believe an investigation would take place, and told police to stop forwarding reports, so from 2010 Britain stopped collecting data even from police officers and pilots, whom Clarke calls credible witnesses. Defence intelligence (DI55) had already stopped receiving copies of reports in 2000. Critics argue that ceasing to record sightings makes the 'no threat' conclusion impossible to test going forward.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- UFO Desk: Closed - Last tranche of UFO files released (press release) official, cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk
- UFO files highlights guide, final tranche (2013) official, cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Sources
- UFO Desk: Closed - Last Tranche of UFO Files Released The National Archives (UK)
- UFO files highlights guide (final tranche, 2013) The National Archives (UK)
- UK shut down UFO desk after finding no threat: files (AFP) Fox News
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.