'X-files' of UFO sightings over United Kingdom to be released for the first time

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Reported UFO sightings by the British public will be published online for the first time.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) ran a UFO unit for 50 years but shut it down in 2009 after coming to the conclusion that none of the reports offered evidence of a real threat, according to The Sun.

Although reports were previously provided to the country's National Archives, the British publication reports that they'll be placed online following a Freedom of Information Act request by the PA news agency.

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A spokesman for the RAF said that "it had been assessed that it would be better to publish these records, rather than continue sending documents to the National Archives, and so they are looking to put them on to a dedicated gov.uk web page."

Members of the public will now have a chance to view information about such incidents and make their own judgments.

There is now a clearance process taking place, and it's expected that they'll be published online sometime in the next two months.

In response to the FOI request, the RAF reportedly labeled the files as "comprising entirely of correspondence with members of the public."

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"Given the massive public interest in this subject, I'm pleased that these files will be released and made available online," Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the country's Ministry of Defense, told the PA news agency. "When I worked on the Ministry of Defense's 'UFO desk' we didn't find definitive proof of extraterrestrial visitation, but there were so many bizarre and unexplained sightings that we didn't entirely rule it out."

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