# UFO files released
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ufo-files-released/470220
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [October 30, 2008, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ufo-files-released/470220 "2008-10-30T06:30:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@AllWalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AllWalker)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ufo-files-released/470220/1 "2008-10-30T06:30:06Z")
Yay! The British government [releases MoD files relating to UFO activity](http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/)!
About as mundane and pointless as it gets. Seriously, does anything ever come of these? More to the point does anyone even _read_ them? There looks like a lot to go through - 19 pdfs, most around 30 megabytes, and one of which was 214 megabytes. That’s a lot of data.
Maybe I’ll check out the highlights document. But only if I’m bored.
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### Author:  [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ufo-files-released/470220/2 "2008-10-30T08:52:47Z")
These actually came out some time ago now, and yes, a few people have read them. Mostly serious UFO researchers, I suspect (as you’ve spotted, they’re hardly light reading), but also a few journalists looking to glean titbits for a silly-season story – “Britain’s X-Files Revealed!” etc.
As to whether anything ever comes of the investigations: very occasionally, yes, but possibly not what you’d expect. DI55 only investigates cases that seem like they might have some national defence implication: they’re not particularly in the business of explaining UFOs (or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena as they call them these days) per se, they just want to make sure it isn’t some new Russian secret weapon or similar. Once they decide there’s no threat, they close the file.
Occasionally, though, they have learned things of significance from UFO reports – I believe there was one case where a number of people reported lights in the sky which turned out to be a Soviet rocket booster burning up on reentering the atmosphere, helping to confirm the launch of a spy satellite.
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ufo-files-released/470220/3 "2008-10-30T10:32:47Z")
> [@WotNot](#):
>
> …Occasionally, though, they have learned things of significance from UFO reports – I believe there was one case where a number of people reported lights in the sky which turned out to be a Soviet rocket booster burning up on reentering the atmosphere, helping to confirm the launch of a spy satellite.
Sure, that’s what they want you to believe. 🙂
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### Author:  [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ufo-files-released/470220/4 "2008-10-30T10:39:37Z")
Has ‘The Rendlesham Forest Incident’ been ripped to pieces by The Dope yet? (Here’s all I get when I try searching. **Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 71 bytes) in /home/straightdope/boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php on line 1008**) Anyone aware of any links?
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### Author:  [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ufo-files-released/470220/5 "2008-10-30T12:18:14Z")
My favourite was the report of red and green lights seen in the sky near Gatwick airport,reported from someone in a PUB.
Before that I thought aliens and U.F.O.s weren’t real but now I realise that I was wrong.