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This Ministry of Defence file, released through The National Archives and published by The Black Vault, holds the MOD's 2002 handling of Dr David Clarke's requests for UFO documents under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. It includes the MOD's 9 December 2002 reply, which covered reports from 1976, 1980, 1993 and 1996 and charged £260. It also contains internal emails and file requisitions, plus Foreign Office and United Nations papers from 1978 on Grenada's proposal for UFO research.
“Reading”20 pages
c, Meteorological searchlights shine on clouds: you cannot see the beam, only a light apparently dancing in the sky. J, A surprising number of reports relate to aircraft seen in unusual conditions at unusual angles, some very high, some at low level. One recent 'UFO' was confidently reported on local. radio: we cannc.t prove that it was not a 'UFO 1 , bu·t we do know that an RAF Vulcan bomber on ~ low flying mission passed the same spot at the same time and on the same course as the reported UFO. ~- .And satellites: there are some 5000 listed objects in orbit, satellites ar11l space debris. l4ore are added each year, and aboht 600 re-enter the atmosphere every year. Early this year MOD received many reports of a large p~ce of debris I 1-t:_-e.nr&'h-:1 across the South of England: most reports 1 were factual, but one spoke of an 'oval shaped thing wi t~h a L · white cockpit which hovered for a while than shot off at 0 great speed'. We cannot prove it wasn •t a UFO, but it occurred at the' same time and place as some known re-entry of space debris. 7~ And of course there are optical illusions. Any phenomena seen through glass are particularly suspect. 8. There are also genuine hallucinations, sometimes bn people under stress; the excited tales of the gullible; the embellish!2lents of the born story teller. Also, I fear, downright lies. There are also hoaxes: there are some very effective aerlal hoaxes r-rhich have been perpetrated by children - \'Thich I will not describe for fear of preci~itating a new rash of UFO reports.
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 492 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.