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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.
“RAF”60+ pages
1279 Unidentified [LORDS] Flying Obj,•cts 1280 [Lord Gladwyn.} done no harm of any kind. Apparently they have done no harm for the last two or three thousand years. So there seems to be no great need to set up intra- governmental machinery to investigate the whole phenomena. The mystery may suitably remain a mystery, and so far as I can see nobody wiU be in any way the worse off if it does. 8.50 p.m. Lord KlNGS NORTON: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to those which the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has already received for opening the debate in such an extremely interesting way. I found my imagination boggling a little at some of the things he told us. Never- theless, I feel that it is of immense value that this matter has been brought out into the open by the debatt~ in the House, and I hope that as a result of it there will be some progress in the understanding of what is an extremely serious matter. I feel that we must be careful about our terminclogy in discussing the UFO prob- lem, and·I be1ieve that I shall make clear in the course of my remarks what I mean by that. For ex?.lllple, in the past few days, since it was known to my friends that I was to take part in the debate, I have had over and over again the question: Do you believe i!1 UFOs '! I must say that I think that is rather a silly question, because if I saw something i!l the sky which neither I, nor whoever happened to be with me, could identify-! have not, but let us suppose that I did-then 1 should kve seen an unidentified flying object, a UFO. I do no1 have to believe in it. I should believe merely that I had seen it---something that I could not explain; and I believe that many people are in that position. It has been said more than once this evenir:g that this is no new phenomenon. I think that the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, dated it back to about 1300 BC. Whether my researches have taken me further back, I am not quite sure. However, I am sure that your Lordships will be as familiar as 1 am with the lOth Chapter of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. He certainly saw something very unfamilar in the firmament, and it certainly could be call;!d a UFO. It was very diiferent from the modern ones. Jt appt~ars to have been 1 coal-fired, to have been stabilised by · gyroscopes, and crewcd by cherubim; and it was a model which has not, so far as I know, been developed. There have been a good many sightings probably before Ezekiel, and certainly there have be~n many thousands since, and I fear that there has grown up a belief in many minds that if an object in the skies is unidentifiable. it must be from outer space; and this is quite unwarranted. I think that it is worthwhile once again to consider the possibilities. I know that this has been done once or twice this evening, but it is part of my argument. l should say that there are possibly two kinds of objects to be seen in the skies: those of terrestrial origin, and those of extra-terrestrial origin. Typical of tho first ki~1d are man-made flying machines, satellites and rockets, and the like. Identifiable objects of the second kind are meteorites and phenomena such as the Northern Lights. I am sure that many--and perhaps most-of the sightings recorded ~nd reported are terrestrial in origin: aero- planes with navigation lights glowing at night; satellite launching rockets burning up on re-entry; remotely piloted vehicles, now beginning to be called RPVs; up on trial flights; weather balloons; trick reflections of light. In the extra-terrestrial class I am afraid that I cannot think of anything other than meteorites, Northern Lights and hall Iightninrr, but there are probably other well known physical phenomena within the knowledge of astronomers and meteorologists. I feel, however, that some of the reports we have had-and we can for the time being leave out Ezekiel-are not readily explained in terms of any of the possibilities which I have mentioned. The New Zealand phenomena are worth much more investigation than they have yet had, but so far, in so far as I have been able to understand what has been reported, they do not appear to be explicable in terms of any of the suggestions which I have so far made. That seems to f!O for the quite extraordinary \videspread '"'sightings recently in Italy, where hundreds of people as reasonble as you and l, my Lords, seem to have seen quite inexpljcable things in the sky. It would be worthwhile trying to explain them, and if there are people v.;ho know what they are, they ought to tell us. The high probability in my mind is that 1281 they are ter extra-terrest to be feasibl paths wbich were seen sc are terrestri· able to ident 1 bdieve l!ation, sue· Earl, Lord could not phenomena the earth a system. J material pr system, rna of a dii luminous that in ce visible and certainly sh explanation! the atsronQ from outerl be foolish ~ an expl~m, think that~ exposed thi; indeed. ' If we ar~ inquiry·-a~ must listen 1 might call' be argued,, our bumbl~ space with~ vehicular p~ the Mo:)n. argument ~ in space cr: are probinJ means no using their stations li~ Jines which mentioned must be r possibility would call But if as the no1 exclude th intelligcnc quotation evening, a this Hous "There are Horatio",
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