From UAVs to UAPs: Bridging the Gap Between Perception and Reality in UK Airspace

January 2023

Are the UK failing to effectively manage a clear and obvious collision risk to aviation and could some of the airborne objects reported within UK Airprox Board (UKAB) data actually be the same Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) recognised by the United States as a potential threat to national security and a potential risk to aviation?

‘Superfast balloon’, ‘white craft’, ‘shaped like a top hat’, ‘very large football’ – These are just some of the terms professional aviators have used over the past few years to officially describe airborne objects compromising flight safety within UK airspace.

The UK Airprox Board (UKAB) are the organisation aviators submit near miss reports to via what is known as an airprox report.   The UKAB’s sole objective is to assess reported airprox in the interests of enhancing air safety.  Following receipt of an airprox report, the UKAB meet to discuss the incident and grade the collision risk between A, defined as the highest risk where a serious risk of collision has existed and E, where reporting criteria was met but subsequently assessed the safety standards and parameters pertained.

During 2021 the UKAB received 81 reports of near misses between aircraft and objects categorised as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or ‘Other’ and 21 of these were in the highest risk category.  When looking at the yearly statistics it seems to defy odds none of these reports have so far resulted in catastrophic collision. 

In the United States, they are also having a problem involving another category of airborne object, one that the Department of Defence (DoD) and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have declared not only a ‘potential risk to aviation’ but also a ‘potential National Security threat to the United States’.  This was declared within an unclassified version of a 2021 report issued to US congress, titled, ‘Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’.

If the term Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) is new to you, then you might be more familiar with the old term – UFO.  The US DoD define UAP as ‘sources of anomalous spaceborne, airborne, seaborne, or transmedium observations that are not yet attributable to known actors or causes’. 

In more understandable terms, UAP are unidentified anomalous objects (physical or non-physical) appearing capable of moving within water, air or space – sometimes all three, with no current data on who if anyone is controlling them.  With adequate research and analysis, many objects initially classified as UAP can later be explained and categorised as something prosaic, e.g. airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena etc.

The US Department of Defence (DoD) All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) headed by director Seán Kirkpatrick, Ph.D, is the department currently tasked to resolve genuine UAP reports and they have up until now reported to the ODNI.

In 2021 the ODNI released a preliminary UAP report, briefing the US public and congress on 144 UAP reports covering a 17 year period, with only one of those reports being successfully moved to an explainable category, leaving the other 143 still classified as UAP.  In the delayed 2022 UAP report released by the ODNI in January 2023, it was not stated whether any of the initial 143 had been resolved by AARO, although they did announce a further 171 as yet unexplained UAP reports, predominantly from U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force aviators, bringing the total to 314.

The specific circumstances for each individual UAP report under AARO review has not been disclosed to the public, however it is widely thought they will include the leaked footage involving the USS Nimitz 2004 ‘Tic-Tac’ UAPand the USS Roosevelt 2014/15 ‘Go-fast’ and ‘Gimbal’ UAP, all of which has since been confirmed genuine by the U.S. DoD.

UKAB data hints that the potential threat and risk recognised by the U.S. in relation to UAP, may well exist here in the UK and regardless of this point, the data does highlight a significant aviation safety problem within our airspace, one with the potential to cause a significant loss of life and economic damage to the UK.

On July 5^th 2022 the pilots of an Airbus A320 reported, climbing through 16’000ft when they almost hit an unknown object initially described as black, spherical in shape and large enough to make out details of a framed structure at the base.   The aircrew initially thought the object had hit the airframe, owing to a ‘thud’ being heard as it passed underneath them within an estimated 10ft.

The UKAB assessed the unknown object ‘could be a drone’ and concluded ‘providence had played a major part in the incident and/or a definite risk of collision had existed’ (Category A risk).

On July 10^th 2022 the pilot of an Airbus A320 reported observing of a ‘drone’ whilst climbing through 14’800 feet and travelling at 250kts (288mph) in the vicinity of Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, just a few miles away from the similar report five days earlier.  The aircrew witnessed the ‘drone’ pass within 100ft of the left wing and the reported ‘no propellers were seen’.  The object was described as a ‘spinning polished silver football approximately 2ft in diameter’ similar to ‘one of the rotating silver cylinders seen on the top of a chimney pot to extract air up a chimney’.

A concerning aspect of this report within the context of UK national security was underlined when the aircrew reported a perception that the object was ‘flown at them, with the intention to just avoid’.  A national security threat carrying a potential high impact consequence such as this would be expected to result in a significantly resourced investigation by Police and Security Services, however there was no indication from the UKAB report anything like this had taken place.  The only reference to any follow up investigation was a note confirming post incident radar analysis by the National Air Traffic Control Services (NATS), highlighting ‘no associated primary or secondary contacts visible on radar at the approximate time of the event’.

Although reported as a drone by the aircrew, the UKAB concluded ‘the reported altitude and/or description of the object were such that they were unable to determine the nature of the unknown object’ before the grading the report as falling within the highest risk category.

When you go back through the UKAB data, these unusual sounding objects, sometimes operating at altitudes you wouldn’t expect do often crop up, the most recent example being an Atlas A400 flying on November 16th 2022 at 7500ft, reporting observation of a ‘drone’ passing below the aircrew described as ‘circular’ with a ‘hollow centre (doughnut shaped)’ ‘dark in colour’ and ‘approximately 2-3ft in diameter’.

UK Airprox – ‘UAP Potentials’ 2010 to 2021

Date	Location	Altitude	Aircraft Type	Pilot Description	Risk Cat
25/12/2021 1229	London TMA	6000ft	B787	Flying object, fairly big, rectangular shape, was grey in colour with amber lights, and was beneath their aircraft. Assumed to be a drone, although it did not look like the typical white drone.	C
27/09/2021	London FIR over the sea	9000ft	Hawk	The object appeared to be Silver/Grey was stationary and was discounted as a piece falling off nearby aircraft as it was ‘far too big’ assumed drone.	C
02/12/2019	London TMA	10’000ft	A321	Suspected drone, black with silver elements shaped like a top hat with a prominent central ‘bump’.	B
28/08/2019	Croydon	4400ft	DHC-8	White oval shape, object did not have any lights nor were any propellers noticeable A marking was just noticeable on each end of the oval object, believed to be black in colour.	C
30/03/2019	Highgate London TMA	6000ft	B787	Red coloured object, impossible to identify the object, although it was large enough to cause concern.	A
28/02/2019	Potters Bar London TMA	6000ft	B777	White, square-shaped object passed underneath the left wing. Insufficient time to take avoiding action.	A
27/10/2018	10nm south of London HRW	9000ft	B787	A ‘drone’ Dark in colour, at least 2ft in diameter and appeared to be crucifix shaped in planform.	A
17/07/2018	London HRW approach	5100ft	B747	A ‘drone’ It was dark red/magenta in colour and the size of a dustbin lid.	A
03/06/2018	10nm SW of Doncaster	15’500ft	A321	Drone (no description) passed within 100ft of aircraft.	B
17/09/2017	Near Banbury	18’000ft	A321	White or light grey object, suspected to be a drone.	D
23/12/2016	North Sea Southend CTA	6100ft	Embraer E190	Appeared to be like a very large football; roundish in shape and perhaps with a white stripe.	D
18/12/2016	London TMA SE of Croydon	10’000ft	A319	Silver/purple object, possibly a helium balloon. The object passed by just over the top of the flight deck. Coincidentally at the same time an unusual noise was heard above the flight deck.  Given the wind conditions and position of local meteorological balloon launch sites, it was felt unlikely that the reported object was a meteorological balloon. The altitude was such that a toy balloon could be ruled out.	A
07/12/2016	London HRW	5300ft	A320	appeared to be square in shape, about 1ft x 1ft, w	C
16/06/2016	Luton Departure	6000ft	CL605	Balloon about 1 metre and colour appeared to be grey/brown.  Given the wind conditions and position of local meteorological balloon launch sites, it was felt unlikely that the reported object was a meteorological balloon. The altitude was such that a toy balloon could be ruled out.	A
09/06/2016	London TMA nr Sevenoaks	12’000ft	A320	‘White craft’ passed rapidly under the nose in a reciprocal direction estimated about 500ft below.  Reported the object as a balloon but could have been drone.	D
23/01/2016	East Midlands CTA	7500ft	B737	Large shiny metallic object, coloured grey/black – unable to say whether it was a drone or a balloon.	A
08/11/2015	London	6000ft	B777	Light passed quickly, and very close to the aircraft, down the left side and illuminated by the B777 landing lights. The size of body behind the lit area suggested an outside dimension of the order of 6ft.	A
21/02/2010	Bristol	6000ft	A319	Looked like “a fast moving aircraft”. “Not a hundred percent sure because as I say it was moving so quickly”. Colour schemed red white and blue. NB tracing action ruled out breakaway balloons, notified balloon releases and no ac identification possible Board concludes no explanation as to the identity of the reported object.	D

Of course some, or even all of these descriptions could relate to either drones, other manmade objects or natural phenomena, however the lack of certain data and contextual information within UKAB reporting makes any meaningful analysis difficult.  The data collected by the UKAB is what is necessary for them to achieve their purpose and is not what would be required to examine UAP in the same way the U.S. DoD are, by collecting other information like evidence of co-ordinated movement, indications of advanced flight capabilities, propulsion type, physical makeup (e.g. solid, liquid, gas, plasma), manoeuvrability, velocity, direction of travel, detection on aircraft sensors and so on.

Of the UKAB data, Wirral based professional drone operator, Nick Durbin provided me with some insight as to current civilian and commercial drone capability.  Durbin shared his view that while it was theoretically possible to fly some commercially available drones up to around 26’000ft by unlocking all software restrictions, it would not realistically be achievable to maintain a signal this distance.  Durbin responded in somewhat humorous fashion that 3ft donut drones were not something he had ever heard of before.

Could these objects be something the MoD are testing, some kind of military grade drone?  If this were the case then it seems unlikely they would recklessly endanger civil aviation.  There MoD once had a dedicated department with a similar mission to the US DoD’s AARO, however this department, known as ‘the UFO desk’ was approved for closure by the government in 2009.   This leaves the UK in a position where no-one is collecting the key data, necessary to help support the US understanding of UAP, so when ministers say there have been no UAP reports in the UK since 2009, it is comparable to a police force stopping crime recording and declaring their area crime free.

Concerned by both the UKAB data and ODNI UAP reports, I wrote to government asking why they weren’t taking this issue more seriously and the response was a standard template letter the government use for UAP enquiries, advising;  ‘In 50 years, no report to the department on these issues has indicated the existence of military threat to the UK. 

The MoD are saying that in 50 years of UAP reporting, up until 2009, none of the reporting circumstances indicate hostile intent, in a military sense at least.  The statement doesn’t cover non-military risk, i.e. accidental collision with civilian aircraft and it fails to recognise the fact intent can change over time, something they appear to have no data on.  Could, for example, passive observation of key military sites, like the ones reported by the U.S. be a form of pre attack hostile reconnaissance?  We just don’t know and never will until it can be established what they are, whether they are intelligently controlled and if they are then by who.

While understanding of UAP operator intent is either unknown or withheld from the public, there does appear to be some understanding between the UK and US of capability.  In the recent declassified ODNI UAP report, UAP were described to have ‘demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance’. 

I obtained a presentation slide reportedly used by Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., director of AARO during a presentation On January 11, 2023 to the Transportation Research Board (TRB).  The presentation offered a few more clues on UAP capability describing some of them as demonstrating ‘material, behavioural, or capability attributes perceived to be beyond known performance envelopes’, also making reference to ‘elusive and enigmatic signatures through advanced technologies’.

To help put these technical terms into some context I spoke with Ryan Graves, the first active duty pilot to come forward publicly regarding regular sightings of UAP.

Graves is a former Lt. U.S. Navy and F/A-18F pilot, currently serving as the first Chair of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Integration and Outreach Committee (UAPIOC), representing more than 30,000 members of the aerospace industry concerned with improving aviation safety.

Graves has publically disclosed how he and his former squadron would frequently encounter UAP during flight training exercises off the US East Coast.   Graves did not witness a physical UAP from the cockpit, however he did routinely observe radar traces, with corresponding infrared images of UAP operating within their training area and these anomalous radar traces started occurring following a radar upgrade to the F/A-18F.   Graves recalls one occasion where a currently unnamed pilot from within his squadron reported having observed a physical object fly past them at approximately 12’000ft, with minimal separation and this visual sighting was corroborated on the aircraft sensors.  The pilot described the object to Graves as being a 5-15ft in diameter dark grey cube contained within a clear sphere.  

I have always held some scepticism about whether the frequent anomalous sensor data was related to this single observation because it could have been a one off illusion or perhaps a practical joke by the pilot concerned.  That scepticism evaporated when Graves confirmed he personally knew of “10 to 12 pilots” having seen the same thing and “approximately 90%” of those reports included corroborating technical data from the aircraft systems.  Many of these pilots are still actively serving in the military and just like Graves many have directly testified to US Congress about their experiences, likely forming part of the outstanding 314 UAP reports under current AARO review.  

Graves provided a chilling response, one that provides some insight into what the US government mean by ‘unusual flight characteristics or performance’ and ‘capability attributes perceived to be beyond known performance envelops’. WhenI jokingly asked Graves whether he fancied his chances in a dogfight between his F/A-18 Super Hornet and the UAP he had witnessed on aircraft sensors, the slightly unsettling response was “no we take a mile or so to complete a turn at high speed, these objects can literally turn on the spot”. 

When you take into account the entirety of Graves experiences, the inference to be drawn is that the type of UAP observed by his squadron were capable of being unobservable to the human eye and could not be seen on older radar systems.  This sounds very much like what the DoD term as ‘enigmatic signatures through advanced technologies’.

In conclusion, if UAP are a physical object under intelligent control, then they are demonstrating technologically advanced capabilities, beyond what the observing military personnel believe to be technologically possible in today’s world. According to a former employee of the MoD UFO Desk up until 2006, the MoD data at this time suggested ‘a high value for Capability’. 

In terms of threat assessment, when you’re dealing with a potentially highly capable threat, the level of threat could range from no threat to severe threat, so to work out which end of the spectrum it is, you need some reliable data for the intent, but as appears to still be the case today, Pope told me that the MoD had ‘no good data on Intent’, primarily because ‘we didn’t know who was behind the wheel’.   

Of the calculation used to determine a level of threat, Pope told me the MoD had only ‘touched on the equation Threat = Capability x Intent’ and ‘hadn’t satisfactorily resolved the issue of a potential threat’ by the time he left in 2006. 

Having examined the documents released by the MoD to the National Archives when the UFO desk was closed in 2009 there is nothing to suggest any further advancement in understanding UAP threat and from the outside looking in it appears that they stopped trying to understand a potential UAP threat on the basis nothing adverse had occurred over a 50 year time period.

The UK position regarding UAP creates a situation where we could have the same problem identified by the U.S. but will never know because we aren’t looking nor are we collecting the required data.  The US recognise this as a problem that may lead to ‘adversarial misattribution of UAP to the United States’.  There is an opportunity for U.S. allies and even their strategic competitors to resource data collection with subsequent research and analysis.  This is something their close allies, including the UK do not appear to have much appetite for.

It is a struggle to understand why the MoD are not taking this issue more seriously and even if there were no connection between UAP and some of the reports seen in the UKAB data, there still remains an unmitigated high impact risk that could cost lives and significantly affect the UK economy.  The MoD letter I received in November 2022 from the Minister of State for the Armed Forces provided reassurances in an attempt to provide a rationale for the MoD’s current stance on UAP, however when you look at the data these reassurances appear superficial.

For example, the letter advises “The UK air defence community monitors all flying air systems 24 hours a day” and ‘our national security is supported by Typhoon aircraft’.  On the surface this sounds reassuring, but when you look at the available UKAB data it is noted a significant amount of ‘UAV/other’ reports are not traced on any ground radar systems and I even found one report in 2019 being made by the aircrew of those same Typhoon aircraft, protecting UK airspace.  In this particular report, the aircrew reported observation of a ‘small metal object’ reflecting sunlight and appearing of ‘linear form’ all the way up at 17’000ftand it was not visible to ground radar.

In another more recent military airprox report, the aircrew of foreign 5^th Gen F-35 reported ‘2 drones’ flying at 18000ftwithin UK airspace, both being visible on their advanced aircraft radars but not visible to ground radar. Curious when you consider Graves account of UAP becoming visible to radar only when his 4^th Gen F/A-18 fighter had a more modern radar installed.  

Both examples, leave a lot of questions because here you have two unidentified objects observed by aircraft that form part of our air defence network, both of which were unobservable to ground radar.   These airborne objects continued their journey and without being visible on ground radar it would be clearly be very difficult for commercial and civilian aircraft to avoid collision at this altitude where aircraft are travelling at higher speeds, reducing the time to react.  It is hard to see how there is adequate risk mitigation applied here to avoid a future collision with civilian or military aircraft.

If the UK did see merit in changing their strategy regarding UAP and combined this with an effective aviation safety strategy to deal with confirmed reports of UAV endangering aircraft, then adopting an approach similar to the US would make sense.  It is still early days with AARO implementing their strategy to try and understand UAP, however they are reporting some positive early signs of progress, particularly when it comes to destigmatizing this topic, thus enhancing professional reporting, which then subsequently improves the quality and quantity of data available for research and analysis.   

While a lot of focus is applied to the potential threat and risk of UAP, one should also consider the opportunity presented understanding this phenomenon as it could open door to technological advancement, perhaps leading to new technologies which could mitigate some of the many global problems we face today.  If you look at it from this perspective, then there is an incentive not to wait for government to provide the answers and this work could be carried out as a private commercial interest.   There are questions to be answered regarding UAP and it looks to me like a win-win situation, even if the answers provide some dull prosaic explanation, we will at the very least have improved air safety.