British spies spent 50 years trying to catch UFO, secret dossier reveals

‘Flying saucers’ spotted over Sheffield in 1952

British spies spent at least half a century hunting for
UFOs in the hope of stealing alien technology, newly declassified
files show.

The UK government appears to have been concerned that the Soviet
Union or China had already taken control of an unidentified flying
object and were using its secrets to develop ultra-advanced
warplanes, says the Daily Mail.

According to the secret files, between 1947 to 1997
intelligence services ran two UFO desks – one where the public
could phone in sightings, the other assigning tasks for spies to
investigate.

The UFO desks were finally closed down after
Whitehall expressed concerns that security services
“investigating X files stuff such as alien
abductions” were being distracted from their main
duties.

A review was then undertaken in order to determine whether
any information found over the years would be useful to the
military.

The resulting report makes up a part of three files
running to more than 1,000 pages that were held back from UFO
records earmarked for transfer to The National Archives as part of
the Open Government project from 2008 to 2013, according to The Sun.

Earlier this year, a complete set of redacted copies was sent to
Dr David Clarke, an investigative journalist and lecturer at
Sheffield Hallam University, ahead of their release to the official
archives, which is imminent. 

The documents reveal that the Royal Air Force expressed
significant interest in finding a UFO to come up with an innovative
way of beating enemies during the Cold War.

Spies were trained on what to look for when identifying
foreign objects, and were told to pay particular attention to any
aircraft “behaving like a UFO”.

An unnamed Air Force commander wrote that security
services staff should “look out for high velocities, sharp
manoeuvre, stationary ‘flight’, and few radar
returns”.

Clarke, former curator for The National
Archives UFO project, said: “Even though [the
files] have been partly censored they can’t conceal the fact
the UK military were interested in capturing UFO technology – or
what they coyly refer to as ‘novel weapon technology’.

“And the files reveal they were desperate to capture this
technology, wherever it came from, before the Russians or the
Chinese got hold of it first.”