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UFO team closed down

The Ministry of Defence has been slammed after announcing it would no longer be investigating UFO sightings.

The MoD department has dealt with more than 12,000 reports, including 135 last year, and is closing after 60 years.

MoD chiefs made the decision to close the £50,000 a year department after deciding there was no benefit investigating sightings which were “an inappropriate use of defence resources”.

But Nick Pope, who ran the Ministry of Defence UFO project from 1991 to 1994, said it was “outrageous”.

“We’re leaving ourselves wide open to terrorist attacks,” he told The Sun.

After an application under the Freedom of Information Act, the MoD said that in more than 50 years “no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom”.

“The MOD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life,” the spokesman said. “The MOD has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .