There has been close to 1,000 reported UFO sightings across the UK in the past two years.
Data collected by extra-terrestrial experts at UFO Identified have shown that there has been a total of 957 UFOs spotted between January 2021 and May this year. This includes 410 in 2021, 494 in 2022, and 53 as of May this year.
Manchester, London, Liverpool, and Glasgow have all been hotspots for potential otherworldly encounters since 2021 – with dozens of reported sightings.
There was a total of 54 documented sightings in Greater Manchester, followed by 52 in London and 37 in Cheshire.
In one sighting last year in Southwold, Suffolk, a witness reported seeing an object with “five oblong lights positioned along one side” which “moved erratically, making sudden movements and traveling at an extremely fast speed,” according to UFO Identified’s website.
However, the investigation by the UFO experts concluded that this sighting had a “high probability of drone activity.”
In another incident in May last year, UFO Identified investigated another sighting in Bolton, where one witness described seeing a “brilliant, very bright turquoise ball of light coming down at a 45-degree angle from the sky.”
Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence official who investigated unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), urged the government to treat the sightings more seriously.
Speaking to The Independent, the UFO expert said:
“While most UFO sightings turn out to be misidentifications of ordinary objects and phenomena, the Chinese spy balloon saga earlier this year teaches a valuable lesson about the consequences of applying a lazy, bureaucratic "it can't be so it isn't" mindset to UAPs.
“What else are we missing by not looking?”
He also called for better communication between the UK and USA concerning UFO policies.
“In the US, the federal government is fully engaged on the issue, with the government, the military and the intelligence community working together.
“This reflects the fact that the US is studying recent data, whereas the UK’s ‘do nothing’ policy relies on a historical assessment.
“The UK needs to accept this US assessment as a start-point, and engage properly on this issue,” he added.
The Ministry of Defence does not currently investigate UFO sightings and extra-terrestrial beings and has not since 2009.
The extraterrestrial reports in the UK come following a NASA probe last month into hundreds of UFO sightings in the USA.
The report found “there is no reason to conclude” that extra-terrestrial sources are behind the hundreds of UFO sightings investigated by the space agency.
“However, if we acknowledge that as one possibility, then those objects must have travelled through our solar system to get here,” the report added.
Though the report did not conclude extra-terrestrial life exists, NASA refused to deny the possibility of “potential unknown alien technology operating in Earth’s atmosphere”.
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Defence said:
“The MOD has no opinion on the existence of extra-terrestrial life and no longer investigates reports of sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or Unidentified Flying Objects. This is because, in over 50 years no such reporting to the Department indicated the existence of any military threat to the UK, and it was deemed more valuable to prioritise MOD staff resources towards other Defence-related activities.”
