The UK has been urged to follow the US and take UFO reports more seriously.
There has been a significant fall in the number of sightings reported to police in Northern Ireland in the last year.
Nick Pope, who used to investigate reports of UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), described the figures as “staggeringly low” and suggested there may be an underreporting due to mistrust of the authorities.
The MoD closed its UFO desk in 2009, while in the US there is a government taskforce on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).
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Mr Pope told the PA news agency that the US is treating the phenomenon as a “potential defence, national security and flight safety concern”, adding “it’s time the UK did the same thing”.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) received eight alleged sightings in the region during 2021, an increase from six in 2020 and four in 2019.
This dropped to just one in 2022.
The only sighting reported to police was on October 20th, 2022 when a caller in the Stewartstown area of Dungannon reported seeing a UFO flying from the Belfast direction to Dungannon every evening.
A police spokesman said: “No further police action was required on this occasion”.
Police said there were no reported UFO sightings from January 1st to November 1st, 2023.
There were two reported sightings of aliens and one reported sighting of “strange lights”.
According to information released by the PSNI under the Freedom of Information Act, at 11pm on June 15th a caller in Belfast reported being in a spaceship with aliens, and on February 1st a caller in Crossgar reported having been abducted by aliens.
On February 21st, a caller in Draperstown reported seeing two strange lights in the sky.
Mr Pope said that while some suggest the higher number of UFO sightings being reported during the coronavirus pandemic was due to lockdown boredom, he thought the drop was due to mistrust of the authorities.
“A more likely scenario is that we’re seeing chronic underreporting that reflects witnesses’ distrust of the authorities, and the associated suspicion that making an official report won’t achieve anything,” he said.
“Many people believe there’s a government conspiracy to cover up the truth about UFOs, and probably believe there’s little point reporting what they’ve seen or experienced to the police, who they may think are complicit in a cover-up.
“Another factor is that, following the closure of the MoD’s UFO desk in 2009, there’s no focal point for the public to make reports.
“Thus we get the false impression that there are very few reports, because they’re spread thinly: some witnesses still report to the MoD, others to the police, some to the media, others to civilian UFO groups.
“And as always, most witnesses don’t report their sightings at all, sometimes because they’re worried about not being believed, or being ridiculed, but often because they don’t know who to contact.
“The subdued state of affairs in Northern Ireland and in the UK more generally is in stark contrast to the current situation in the United States, where pilots who’ve seen UFOs have testified under oath to Congress, and where multiple UFO-related provisions are included in the 2024 Defence Bill.
“The US is treating the phenomenon as a potential defence, national security and flight safety concern, and it’s time the UK did the same thing.” – PA