Unidentified Flying Objects research guide

5. MoD investigations 1964-present
From 1958 a civilian Air Staff secretariat branch known as S6 (Air) took over
responsibility for dealing with public relations on the topic of UFOs. During that year an
S6 desk officer decided their policy would be 'politely unhelpful' in response to any public
or press inquiry on the subject (DEFE 31/118). From this point onwards two separate
branches of the Air Ministry were involved in dealing with the UFO problem. DDI (Tech),
was responsible for investigating reports and assessing their defence significance, whilst
S6 (Air) fielded questions from members of the public, the press and MPs.
In 1964 the Air Ministry became part of the new Ministry of Defence and the three
separate service intelligence sections of the Army, Navy and RAF were merged under a
new unified structure. S6's UFO remit passed to a new MoD secretariat, S4 (Air) and in
1967 responsibility for inquiries into UFO incidents deemed to have possible defence
significance were inherited by a Defence Intelligence branch, DI55.
Although more than 11,000 UFO reports have been logged by DI55, S4 (Air) and a
number of other MoD branches between 1959 and 2007, no detailed studies have been
carried out on the accumulated data until relatively recently. Following a new wave of
sightings in 1967 the Government faced a series of Parliamentary questions on their
UFO investigations and policy. In response, the head of S4 (Air), James Carruthers,
produced a detailed briefing for the Secretary of State for Air, Merlyn Rees MP. In his
report dated November 1967 Carruthers said the MoD had kept a statistical analysis of
UFO reports received since 1959 'and has found no evidence to suggest [UFOs] have
other than mundane explanations.' He added that MoD 'does not consider that a
separate study by [UK] Government departments or by a university or other independent
organisation would produce results to justify the expenditure, time and money involved'
(DEFE 31/119).
Following the conclusions reached by the Flying Saucer Working Party the MoD
continued to reply upon studies carried out by USAF for their policy lead on UFOs. There
was never any British equivalent of the publicly funded study by the University of
Colorado on behalf of the USAF that was completed in 1969. The 'Condon report' -
named after the project head, the physicist Dr Edward Condon - was based on an
analysis of 12,618 reports collected by the USAF Project Blue Book between 1947 and
1969 (Blue Book followed Projects Sign and Grudge in 1952). Of this total 701
remained unexplained. The main findings of the US study were:
• About 90% of all UFO reports prove to be plausibly related to ordinary
phenomena.
• Little, if anything, had come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that
added to scientific knowledge.
• Further extensive study of UFO sightings was not justified in the expectation that
science will be advanced thereby.
• No evidence came to light in the study to indicate that UFO sightings may
represent a defence hazard.
• The Department of Defence should continue to handle UFO reports in its normal
surveillance operations without the need for special units such as Project Blue
Book (S4 briefing to MoD, 24 March 1970, copy in BJ 5/311).
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