Ken:

It is said that there was a secret report made in 2000 by the Ministry of Defence, that stated that solid ufos, that could cause a collision hazard, don't exist and that the BBC found out about it, when David Clarke got a copy under the freedom of information act. Do you know anything about this and using the word solid seems very strange, it almost seems that they are saying there are ufos that are not solid, what do you think?

Nick Pope:

Well this has nothing to do with David Clarke who is a ufo buff, here in the U. K. This had to do with the British Ministry of Defence, releasing a highly classified report that in fact had taken several years in the early nineties. A number of ufo researchers had made requests for this information and it was released awhile ago. You can read it on the Ministry of Defence's website. It is called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena In The United Kingdom Air Defense Region. I was involved with the work that led to the commissioning of this study. It was carried out by a private contractor for the defense intelligence staff. In a sense, it was a missed opportunity. It started speculating and this is where I think that your question was coming from about solid objects and non solid objects. It started speculating that some ufos might be attributable to exotic atmospheric plasmas. The mistake that was made in this report was that there is no scientific consensus about atmospheric plasmas in the first place. This was just speculation. Yes it was an interesting and highly classified report, but no it didn't take us any closer to resolution of the ufo mystery.

Ken:

Did you hear about the Romanian fighter Plane that hit a ufo and if so, what is your opinion about it?

Nick Pope:

Yes I have heard about that incident and indeed I have seen some news coverage of it on YouTube. It does seem that something struck a military aircraft and that there was some damage to the canopy. Whether this was anything exotic or not, I don't know. Of course in one of my previous jobs at the Ministry of Defence, I had some responsibility for military aircraft accidents and I know that one gets things as innocuous as things like bird strikes that can cause damage to an aircraft and in extreme cases, cause a crash. Yes I have heard about it, but I don't know the results of the Romanian investigation.

Ken:

Did you know that when the space shuttle goes up, there are reports of it being followed by ufos? Have you ever looked into this?

Nick Pope:

I haven't looked into this and of course that is even a wider question than even the space shuttle I guess, because you can go back to all the Apollo missions and many, many reports, some of which are true and some of which are exaggerated, about astronauts that have seen something. This is where it gets confusing because people use phrases like ufo or unidentified flying object. That is a very loaded phrase with the public. In dictionary definition terms all it means is something that the astronaut is seeing that he or she can't identify. Whether it is something exotic or just ice crystals or space debris with sunlight reflecting off it, these are issues that I think have not been clarified.

Ken:

Since you bring the subject up of a broader spectrum, why do you think that an astronaut might say that a bogey has been spotted rather than a ufo? Do you think that this indicates that there may be some sort of a space craft, other than the craft that they are in, following them?

Nick Pope:

I don't know. I am not sure. I am not an expert in what language the astronauts use and what terminology they use. I can't really answer that I am afraid.

Ken:

Do you feel that there is a certain time of the year when ufo sightings increase?

Nick Pope:

Again I don't know, I haven't got the statistics in front of me. Ufo researchers, I think the people at the National UFO Reporting Center have done some work on this. I think MUFON has done some work on this. I don't have that data in front of me I am afraid.

Ken:

In your investigations, has the Ministry of Defence ever recovered any exotic materials ?

Nick Pope:

They have not, if they have they didn't tell me about it. To the best of my knowledge and as far as I know, I had access to all the files, and I had the clearance and the need to know, I have never seen the slightest hint that we have recovered any exotic technology.

Ken:

It is one thing to see a ufo and report it, but it is something entirely different to see fleets of them at one time. In 2005 a sighting of at least fifty ufos was reported and photographed, flying over the M25. What do you think sightings of as many as fifty ufos, could possibly be?

Nick Pope:

Well again, I think that sometimes these things can be our old friend the sky lantern or helium balloons. Very often, here in the U. K., we have school events, fetes, where there is a competition, where you get a whole bunch of helium balloons. The children write their names and address on these things and they all get launched at once, as they all drift on the wind and the point is that if anyone finds one of these things, they are often hundreds of miles away from the launch site, sometimes even in different countries. They are asked to send back and the person who's balloon went the furthest wins. These things are sometimes done for fun, sometime for charitable fund raising events. Very often when you get these reports of fleets of ufos, I think that you are just dealing with sky lanterns or helium balloons. If they are all launched at the same time and the wind conditions are the same, they will for a time drift together.

Ken:

In this country, a lot of people believe that Phobos 2, the Soviet probe that was sent to study the Martian Moon Phobos in 1988, was shot down by a ufo and they cite as evidence a picture, a final picture that was taken by the probe, supposedly of the ufo that shot it down. Have you ever seen this picture?

Nick Pope:

I don't think that I have, but there are so many rumors like this doing the rounds on the internet. It is so easy these days with Photoshop and various other programs to fake videos and photos, that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction, but that is not something that I know about.

Ken:

Have you heard about a company called Snowmakers, they have created a machine that can make clouds in any shape they desire and they have announced that soon they will be able to do this in color? I imagine this is really going to create havoc among people that see ufos?

Nick Pope:

No I haven't heard of this, it sounds like sort of an offshoot of Wilhelm Reich's work and cloud busting. Of course there is a whole bunch of material out there about weather control. I guess this ties in....

Ken:

No, this is not weather control. What this is for example, you can go to this company and they will send up a cloud that looks like the face of your relative or something.

Nick Pope:

Well okay, I haven't heard of that. Well I guess you can say it is roughly the shape of a face, but unless you can literally control the wind you are not going to be able to hold the shape very long. No I haven't heard of this I am afraid.

Ken:

In summary, would you tell us what you think is going on with all these sightings?

Nick Pope:

I think that it is a mixed bag. I don't think that there is one neat solution to this mystery. I think that a lot of what we are seeing is misidentification of things like sky lanterns, helium balloons. When you've got police officers and military personnel seeing these things and these are people who tend not to misidentify things like ordinary aircraft, not least because those in the military see them every day, when you've got these things tracked on radar, there is something going on over and above sky lanterns, helium balloons. Whether any of them are extraterrestrial or not, the answer is that I don't know. To give a politician's answer, I certainly can't rule it out. I think that I take it back to the point that I made right at the top of the interview, speaking about the flight involving the police helicopter, when you've got these things in controlled air space, whatever you think that they are, whether you are a believer, or a skeptic, I think one has to accept that there are defense, national air security and safety issues and for that reason and that reason alone, I think that this is an important issue that should be studied by governments, by the military, by the intelligence community and by the scientific community.

Ken:

Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Nick Pope:

No, I think that's it. I think that obviously this is a very interesting time here in the U. K. We have a wave of fascinating sightings in the U.S. There is still a lot of interest in Stevensville. One can say that in a few weeks time the new X-Files movie is coming out. That again is going to focus public interest on issues of ufos, aliens, cover ups, conspiracies. I think that both through the fact of these sightings and through the fiction of movies like the X-Files, there has never been a time when more people have been interested in this subject. This really is turning into, what I have dubbed, summer of the saucers.

Ken:

Well I want to thank you very much for a very interesting and informative interview.