The UK has been urged to follow the US and take UFO reports more seriously. There has been a significant fall in the number of sightings reported to police in Northern Ireland in the last year.
Nick Pope, who used to investigate reports of UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), described the figures as “staggeringly low” and suggested there may be an under-reporting due to mistrust of the authorities.
The US is treating the phenomenon as a potential defence, national security and flight safety concern, and it’s time the UK did the same thing
The MoD closed its UFO desk in 2009, while in the US there is a government taskforce on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).
Mr Pope told the PA news agency that the US is treating the phenomenon as a “potential defence, national security and flight safety concern”, adding “it’s time the UK did the same thing”.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) received eight alleged sightings in the region during 2021, an increase from six in 2020 and four in 2019.
This dropped to just one in 2022.
The only sighting reported to police was on October 20, 2022 when a caller in the Stewartstown area of Dungannon reported seeing a UFO flying from the Belfast direction to Dungannon every evening.
A police spokesman said: “No further police action was required on this occasion.”
Read more at MSN
