UFO's and Defense What Should we Prepare For

I information on their work. Since its creation in 1964, the British Ministry of Defence
I (MOD) has had a UFO study unit, whose [designator] abbreviation Sec(AS)2a stands for
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Department 2a ofthe Secretariat (Air Staff) division. Its activity was recently described
by Nick Pope, who was its head from 1991 to 1994, in a book written in a very lively style ,
Open Skies, Closed Minds.
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This department receives telephone calls or letters from witnesses, but more generally
reports prepared from the depositions of these witnesses taken at police stations, airports
or RAF bases. It conducts classic investigations if it deems them useful. They then
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question radar stations or weather stations, the RAF space object surveillance base at
Flyingdales, other RAF bases, the Greenwich Observatory, etc. Its unique mission-is to
determine whether the reports are ofinterest for defense purposes ("area ofdefence
significance").
I Nick Pope, who is currently a MOD career employee, has broken new ground in
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comparison with his predecessors. He has given interviews to the press and participated in
television programs.
He has cooperated with the ufological associations, giving their address and phone number
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to witnesses who have written to him. In his letters of response he admitted that a small
proportion of UFO sightings defied explanation and that the MOD was keeping its mind
open regarding these. His predecessors wrote: "Ifwe had sufficient data, all ofthe cases
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could undoubtedly be explained " In his book, Nick Pope evokes various hypotheses to
explain certain unidentified cases that were the subject of credible and detailed reports.
He strongly favors the extraterrestrial hypothesis and expresses the desire that his ministry
take seriously the potential threat that UFOs represent in his eyes.
Is there a department that is further developed than his (where he is alone) in the
I Ministry of Defence that would conduct secret studies on the UFO phenomenon? His
statements on the subject are contradictory (pp. 129 and 181 ). Ralph Noyes, who was
one of Nick Pope's predecessors from 1969 to 1972 and ended his career at MOD in 1977
I as Undersecretary of State for Defence, considers the existence ofsuch a department
likely. Lord Hill-Norton, Admiral of the Fleet, who was Chief of Defence Stafffrom 1971
to 1973, shares this opinion. This information is found in a book the foreword to which
I was written by Lord Hill-Norton himself (Above Top Secret, by Timothy Good). Admiral
Hill-Norton was among some thirty iords active in a House of Lords group studying UFOs
in the 1980s. If this secret study department does exist, it can be presumed that it works
I in collaboration with the United States (Above Top Secret, pp. 48-49).
9.3 Organization of the Research in Russia
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I The Academy of Sciences of the USSR has conducted studies on UFOs since 1979 at
least. During that time, Vladimir Migouline, a member of this academy, expressed his
opinion in La Recherche regarding the sightings made in the Soviet Union ofluminous
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phenomena and unusual objects: "The vast majority ofthese sightings correspond to real
phenomena just about the same as those sighted in other countries. But there is no
indisputable proofthat some ofthem involve technological manifestations ofa highly
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developed civilization. It is also necessary to try to connect them with atmospheric
phenomena," he said.
This is the goal that his assistant Platov aimed for in a work published in 1992, UFOs
andModem Science. At that time, Migouline and Platov, heads of the expert's group on
abnormal phenomena in the Academy of Sciences, proposed a scientific and technical
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