UFOs - Leslie Kean [89]
Because of the similarity between these reports and those repeatedly filed in Belgium in 1989 and 1990, I asked the Defence Intelligence Staff to make some discreet enquiries to the Belgian authorities through the British embassy in Brussels. As I recall, our air attaché was able to speak to General De Brouwer and the two F-16 pilots. It was clear that De Brouwer had done an excellent investigation under very difficult circumstances.
Like De Brouwer, I launched a detailed investigation into the Cosford sightings, the main difference being that the Cosford incident was not a “wave” but a one-time event, as are most UFO cases. I worked closely with the RAF, colleagues in the Defence Intelligence Staff, and personnel at the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales. One of the first things that I did was order that radar tapes be impounded and sent to me at MoD Main Building in Whitehall. The radar data was downloaded onto standard VHS video cassettes and arrived shortly thereafter. I watched it with the relevant RAF specialists, who told me that there were a few odd radar returns, but that they were inconclusive. Radar is not an exact science, and in certain circumstances, false returns can be generated. Later, a more formal assessment of the radar data was made. Unfortunately, one of the radar heads was not working on primary radar during the reporting period, so only aircraft working secondary surveillance radar could be seen. But with this and with other checks, we were able to build up a picture of all aircraft and helicopter activity over the UK, so that we could factor them into the investigation and eliminate them from our enquiries if appropriate.
The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales, with its powerful space-tracking radars, was an important part of my UFO investigation. The authorities there quickly alerted me to the fact that there had been a reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere of a Russian rocket carrying a communications satellite, Cosmos 2238. We postulated that this was a possible explanation for a cluster of UFO sightings that occurred at around 1:10 a.m. on March 31.
A theory often put forward to explain some of the most spectacular UFO sightings is that they might be prototype aircraft, drones, or other unmanned aerial vehicles. Of course, at any time we will be test-flying various things that you won’t see at the big air shows for several years, but the bottom line is that these tests occur in specific areas, so at least within government we can differentiate between black projects—a classified project that is not publicly acknowledged, such as the F-117 stealth fighter program, prior to 1988—and UFOs.
Even so, there had been controversy brewing about the American Aurora, an alleged hypersonic replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird that some journalists and aviation enthusiasts alleged was being flown in British airspace without the knowledge of the UK authorities. So we raised the issue of the March 1993 UFO sightings with the U.S. authorities, through the British embassy in Washington. Was it possible that something had gone wrong with the normal processes for overflight of another country and could our UFO sightings be attributable to some U.S. prototype? The answer I got back—via our air attaché at the UK embassy in Washington—was extraordinary: The Americans had been having their own sightings of these large, triangular-shaped UFOs and wanted to know if the RAF might have such a craft, perhaps as part of a “black” program, capable of moving from a virtual hover to