THE UK UFO DEBATE"By Richard Thomas"I live in South Wales so I was particularly excited by the incident which kicked off an enormous increase in interest in UFOs in Britain, and many more sightings subsequently being reported to the now defunct UFO desk at the MoD.On June 8, 2008, a police helicopter was apparently forced to swerve sharply to avoid being hit by what the experienced crew termed an "unusual aircraft" near RAF St Athan, a military base near Cardiff. A few weeks later, another dramatic sighting was reported, this time by a member of the military. A soldier, along with three other witnesses, saw several "craft" spinning in the skies above his barracks near Market Drayton, Shropshire, just two hours before the South Wales UFO-helicopter incident - begging the question, could this sighting be related?It would be hard to overstate the excitement generated, not just in UFO-circles, but in the general public and press, by these incidents. The UFO phenomenon was the hot topic of the day and even the official statements about Chinese lanterns failed to stem a tide of new sightings reported by the British public to the press and the MoD. This wave lasted throughout 2008, with "The Sun" newspaper its own online UFO page to cope with the correspondence, and it only began to wane during the latter half of 2009.Despite this renewed interest and calls for official inquiries from the likes of Nick Pope, who ran its UFO desk for three years (1991-1994), the MoD has decided to take no more calls from the public - which might confirm in some people's mind that there really is a cover-up going on.So, in order to get a handle of what's going on here, I tracked down the "three lions" of British ufology: the aforementioned former MoD investigator Nick Pope; prolific author and contributor to Paranormal Magazine Nick Redfern; and the master of UFO cover-up research and author of the "UFO Bible Above Top Secret", Timothy Good.Perhaps not surprisingly, Nick Pope was the most outspoken of the three. But he dismissed the idea of a possible conspiracy. He feels sure nothing more sinister than economic factors and the perceived proper use of resources are to blame.He said: "Two factors led to the termination of the MoD's UFO project. The first is cost. The defence budget is under huge pressure and savings targets have been imposed across the department. Cutting posts is one way to meet these targets and the UFO project was an easy target for MoD finance staff. The second factor is the MoD's corporate irritation with the subject.""Sighting reports are at a ten-year high and the vast majority are clearly misidentifications of ordinary objects and phenomena. Additionally, the MoD receives more Freedom of Information requests on UFOs than almost any other subject. Terminating the project, when seen in conjunction with the ongoing process of releasing the UFO files to the National Archives, enables the MoD to disengage from a subject that it has struggled with for many years."Nick Redfern added: "The MoD's statement that it intends to cease its study of UFO reports is not quite so clear-cut as it seems. By the MoD's own admission it will continue to investigate - via radar and the scrambling of aircraft - any penetrations of British airspace by unidentified sources. And, who knows if some of those potential threats might remain unresolved and unidentified? If they do indeed remain unresolved and unidentified, then by definition the MoD is still investigating UFOs.""I suspect, however, the MoD clearly realizes this, and its statement actually means that officialdom doesn't want to be bothered by members of the public sending in letters or phoning the MoD switchboard to report sightings of flying saucers, little grey (or green) men, etc etc anymore, and this is their way of getting out of handling a subject they really don't understand - or have any interest in understanding or appreciating."Timothy Good shares this view. He told me: "Closing the UFO project won't make the slightest difference. Most witnesses don't bother contacting the MoD anyway, and classified investigations by the military will continue as before."Nick Pope agreed that the closure of the UFO project doesn't signal the end of UFO investigations but he feels that it's an ill considered decision nonetheless."Clearly, if a pilot reports a sighting or if something unusual is detected on radar, this will be looked at," he said. "But this will be done on an ad hoc basis, outside of any formally-constituted project. Arguably, therefore, all that's really happened is that the public has been cut out."I think this is a mistake, because it's based on the erroneous assumption that a sighting from a member of the public could never involve anything of defence interest."Perhaps Chinese lanterns are to blame - they seem to account for most of the recent sightings. But was I wrong to feel that the incident with the helicopter was of defense interest? What do the Three Lions think of the rash of sightings over the last two years?"The Welsh case is interesting," confirmed Nick Redfern, "but I think on examination many of the others were simply lanterns. That's not me being a sceptic. Rather, while I believe there is indeed a genuine unsolved UFO presence among us, the fact is most cases can be explained. And I put much of the recent UK wave in the second category."Nick Pope, who you'll remember called for a public inquiry into UFOs in 2008, feels more strongly."My call for a public inquiry was not the result of a single sighting, but a response to the wave of sightings over the UK that summer, coupled with unprecedented media and public interest," he said. "Some sightings have clearly been caused by Chinese lanterns, but the MoD appear to be using this as an excuse not to investigate. It would be simple to ensure that witnesses are interviewed, photos and videos analysed and radar tapes checked, yet these basic things are not happening. This is why we still need an inquiry. Whatever one believes about UFOs, cases such as the police helicopter show that there are air safety issues involved."One might be tempted to think that the former MoD investigator, who has always steadfastly maintained in interviews that he doesn't believe his former employers are involved in any sort of UFO cover-up, is now hinting that the government's real Men in Black might be using lantern sightings as an excuse not to investigate potentially much more serious sightings, such the Cardiff UFO-helicopter incident. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that the Shropshire sightings - which were reported by military witnesses - could have been an attempt to distract the public from, and ultimately discredit, the Cardiff event.Nick Pope immediately poured cold water on that suggestion. He said: "I never got any indication that there was any clandestine UFO group operating in the UK, having access to material that was somehow being withheld from me and my colleagues in the Defence Intelligence Staff."Nick Redfern, on the other hand, discussed the possibility of an ultra covert British UFO group - which he named MJ-UK - in his 1998 book "Cosmic Crashes". In his book Redfern devoted a chapter to the strange rumours of alien technology being stored at Rudloe Manor, a Royal Air Force station located south-east of Bath and which closed in 2000."The whole Rudloe-UFO saga has been a puzzle," he told me. "There's no doubt that the RAF's Provost ">"And "here is a special text interview I did with Paranormal Magazine Editor, Richard Holland. Please visit "the Paranormal Magazine website".
