The British alternative magazine Fortean Times reports in its June 2007 edition that the British Ministry of Defence is about to open its UFO files, this to "dispel claims they have been hiding knowledge of alien visitors in the UK".

The "UFO Desk" received notoriety in the mid 1990s when Nick Pope was promoted as the "real life Fox Mulder" - the main character of the hit series "The X Files". Pope resigned from the MoD in 2006. The MoD never employed any full-time UFO investigators and say their interest in the subject is confined to their strictly defined responsibility for defence. Reports made to them are received by an office in Whitehall that, until recently, copied them to air defence experts in the RAF and the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS).
In this scenario, the British government's interest falls far behind the French research, which carried out on-site investigations drawing upon the skills of the gendarmerie and police. Beginning in 1977, the French accumulated more than 1600 sightings.

Although the MoD claim no UFO report has ever been judged to be of defence significance, a small number were subjected to detailed investigations by the RAF and DI55. The nature of these investigations, and their findings, have until recently been a closely guarded secret. During the same thirty year period covered by the French UFO project, more than 7,000 UFO reports were collected by DI55 whose precise role and responsibilities the British Government refuse to discuss. Until recently it was feared that all 24 of DI55's UFO files might have been destroyed as they had been exposed during storage to deadly asbestos dust along with 63,000 other 'sensitive' intelligence files from the Cold War. But at the end of a £3 million publicly-funded project all the contaminated papers have been saved and are scanned onto CD-ROMs.

DI55 are a branch of the MoD's Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) whose main duty is to collect information on guided missiles and space weapons by covert methods. They have monitored UFO reports since 1967 and gave scientific and technical advice on sightings to the civil servants who run the UFO desk elsewhere in Whitehall. The MoD claim DI55's interest in UFOs ended in 2000 after the 'Condign project' was completed. This report was a secret analysis of all UFO reports logged into the UK, concluding the phenomenon did not pose a security threat. Its existence came to light in May 2006 when a copy was released to researchers David Clarke and Gary Anthony following a Freedom of Information request.

A decision was taken in early 2007 to make the UFO archive a priority for release via the MoD's website, which already hosts the papers on the Rendlesham Forest incident and the Condign report. The first electronic scans of the UFO files, which begin in the mid 1970s, will be added to the website later this year. The DI55 archive contains numerous reports by service personnel including RAF and Royal Navy pilots and by civilian aircrew. They also include the material used by the author of the Condign report who analysed more than 3,000 UFO reports collected by the MoD during the ten years 1987-97. The publication of the reports will thus allow the public to duplicate the efforts of the unnamed Condign project reviewer, which cost the MoD £50,000.