… incidents have been on the increase recently. There are reports at the moment coming in from all over the country.

… many reports of people seeing quite large unidentified objects in the skies.

I should add that to date the MoD knows of no evidence which substantiates the existence of these alleged phenomena. The MoD examines any reports of unidentified flying objects it receives solely to establish whether what was seen might have some defence significance.

Namely whether there is any evidence that the UK air space might have been compromised by hostile or unauthorized foreign military activity.

Unless there is evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom from an external military source, and to date no UFO report has revealed such evidence, we do not attempt to identify the precise nature of each sighting reported to us.

We believe that rational explanations such as aircraft lights or natural phenomena could be found for them if resources were diverted for this purpose but its not the function of the MoD to provide this kind of aerial identification service.