14 DAY TRIAL // The British government has decided to dump its UFO research department as it has been proving a source of wasted resources.
“The level of resources diverted to this task is increasing in response to a recent upsurge in reported sightings, diverting staff from more valuable defense-related activities,” Carl Mantell of the Royal Air Force has said in 2009.
“No UFO sighting reported to [MoD] has ever revealed anything to suggest an extra-terrestrial presence or military threat to the UK,” he reveals in a letter to former Defense Minister Bob Ainsworth.
The U.K. Ministry of Defence has made the over 4,400 pages of documents public, and they include reports of sightings, abductions and saucers hovering over the Parliament and Stonehenge.
“I didn’t see anything in the sky at the time because I was focusing upon the stones. Upon uploading [the pictures] to my computer, though, I spotted the discoid shapes in the background.
“I’m sure you get this kind of thing every day! However, I’m very fond of my UFOs so needed to share them!” someone spotting the UFOs over Stonehenge claims, according to said documentation.
The Week reports that the released documents also include a drawing of an UFO, featured in a child's letter. UFO historian David Clarke comments that there has been an increased number of sightings in recent years.
The increase in the number of UFO reports is consistent with a rise in popularity of camera phones.
“There are lots of examples in here where people are really, really excited about some orange light that they see in the sky,” Clarke says.
“In the end it was not aliens which overwhelmed the Ministry of Defence's UFO unit but a rather more mundane tormentor - Chinese lanterns,” Jasper Copping of The Telegraph notes in regard to the government's collection of UFO reports.