An 18-year-old Reform councillor in Doncaster has proposed the creation of a committee to track unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), better known as UFOs. Kieran Lay put forward the motion at the first post-election meeting of the city council in South Yorkshire, surprising attendees who expected discussions on bins and parking controls. Fellow Reform councillors appeared unfazed by the idea of Doncaster having its own X-Files-style investigation.
The move comes amid a surge in official interest in UFOs. US President Donald Trump has ordered the release of all American secret files on the subject, and Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett, a Republican with access to classified briefings, described the first cache of documents as “a drop in the bucket”, warning that what is coming next will be “holy crap”. Japan has announced it will release its secret UFO data, and Ukraine said it was tracking UFOs.
Former President Barack Obama previously stated that UFOs “are real”, though he later clarified he meant intelligent life exists somewhere in the universe. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed in a documentary that mysterious aircraft “aren’t ours” have been observed near nuclear sites, before qualifying his remarks. A core of around 25 US Congressmen around Burchett claim classified material would shock the world.
Jay Stratton, a retired intelligence officer from the Pentagon’s UAP task force and the most senior government official to go public on UFOs and non-human intelligence, is releasing a book and documentary. Next month sees the launch of Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s first UFO film since 1982, a conspiracy thriller starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth.
John Priestland, an Oxford physics graduate and former civil servant who now runs a consultancy in London’s Berkeley Square, founded the foundation Unhidden three years ago to support UFO “experiencers”. He says he became interested in the correlation between UFO sightings and nuclear installations but found fellow scientists unwilling to discuss it. “If I’d said ‘Is there an outer planet beyond Pluto?’ … That's fine. But, ‘Is there a correlation between UAP sightings and nuclear sites?’, you get this sudden concern for your mental health,” he said.
