Back in 1990, two British men were out for a hike in a remote area near Calvine, Scottland, when they stumbled into what would go on to be described as one of the most remarkable and well-documented UFO encounters on record. They observed a large, diamond-shaped flying saucer (for lack of a better term) hovering above them, just hanging there soundlessly in the sky. It remained there for approximately ten minutes and military fighter jets arrived and appeared to be circling the area before the craft suddenly shot up into the sky and out of sight. What made this encounter so truly remarkable was that the hikers didn’t just have “a story” to tell. One of them had a camera with him and he managed to take six, high-definition color pictures, capturing not only the unknown craft but the fighter jets as well.

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) launched an investigation after the photos and the shocking story wound up on the front page of a Scottish newspaper. They eventually concluded that the original film had not been tampered with and the photos were real. But the results of their investigation were somehow sealed up, along with the pictures. They placed a 30-year hold on the files before they could be made available to the public. That period was set to expire on January 1st of 2021. But this week, the MoD extended the ban… for another fifty years. A lot of people want to know why.

UFO experts hit out when it emerged a dossier into Britain’s most significant sighting is to be kept secret for another 50 years.

The file is said to contain astonishing colour photographs of a 100ft craft hovering over the village of Calvine in the Scottish Highlands in 1990.

A 30-year rule meant it was due to be declassified on January 1 — but the Ministry of Defence has now blocked release until 2072 without explanation.

Photographs were taken by two Perthshire hikers who watched the “diamond-shaped metallic craft” for ten minutes before it shot up vertically out of sight.

This news obviously isn’t sitting well with people in the ufology community or anyone else with even a passing interest in the truth. The original photos are lost except to the MoD, but a blurry, poorer quality version of one of them has been enhanced and colorized with the help of Nick Pope. He ran the MoD’s UFO investigative group for a while in the 90s and he’s seen the photos himself and read the secret reports. (We interviewed Nick Pope here earlier this year.)

Calvine UFO 1990
Please note: the colour picture is a recreation of the event. The black and white is a photo copy of one of the photographs. pic.twitter.com/NWBPL9or8d

— UFO CHRONICLES PODCAST🎙️ (@UFOchronpodcast) October 10, 2020

One investigative journalist reacted with the correct question upon hearing the news. “By the time the world gets to see the file, the two witnesses will be dead. It is crazy. What are the authorities trying to hide?”

That’s the pertinent question now, isn’t it? What is the British government trying to hide and why? Nick Pope knows the answers. He’s held the photos in his hands and he knows what conclusions the MoD reached when the investigation was closed. But as he explained in an article he published this morning for The Sun, the British Official Secrets Act applies to him for life and he can’t reveal the information without the government first declassifying it, though he is positive there has been a deliberate coverup going on. So we are left to speculate.

Nick indicates that there was an internal dispute taking place as to the true origins of the craft in the pictures. One side was sure that it was a top-secret American vehicle. (Our government denied this vehemently.) The other side, including Nick’s military intelligence briefer, said there was only one other source for it. Without saying the words, he simply pointed up into the sky.

This decision to bury the file still doesn’t make sense, however. If it was American, Russian, Chinese or even British tech, then sure. There would be valid national security reasons to keep it secret. But that tech would have to be at least thirty years old at this point. More likely much older since you don’t go from the drawing board to a workable prototype in a single day. And like the Tic Tacs and other craft that have been sighted, this one had no wings, rotors, flight surfaces, exhaust ports or anything else that should have allowed it to remain aloft. And if it’s from “up there,” then what security considerations would apply?

And what about the fighter jets that were seen and photographed around it? Nick hints that the government claims the origin of the planes could not be determined. Seriously? There were military fighters in the air in British airspace and nobody can figure out whose they were and what they were doing there? Excuse me, but I’m not buying it. They’re covering something up. Those jets didn’t just happen to be flying over the Scottish Highlands in the middle of the day at an altitude of only a few hundred feet and somehow fail to notice the 100-foot diameter flying saucer hovering in close proximity to them. They were either there to investigate it or they knew it would be there and they had some business associated with it.

We have a system in the United States that similarly locks away some records for many decades. But I’m not the first to speculate that it’s rarely if ever done for real reasons of national security. It’s generally done to make sure that all of the guilty parties have time to die so they won’t be held accountable for whatever it was that they were up to. Until somebody decides to provide some transparency and release those files, that’s the answer I’m going with.