Veteran paratrooper claims British special forces recovered downed UFO in northern England in late 1980s

British special forces recovered a downed ‘non-human’ craft in northern England in the late 1980s, a former UK paratrooper and military intelligence officer claims.

Josh Boswell and Chris Sharp
Daily Mail
Tue, 19 Mar 2024 

© @AndrewP71392714 Artist’s rendition of the craft

Franc Milburn, a veteran of the British Army’s elite Parachute Regiment, tells DailyMail.com he has spoken with a member of the MI6-run unit that conducted the alleged operation.

Milburn said he also spoke to UK Royal Air Force crew who chased and fired on a pair of ‘disc-shaped’ UFOs that traveled at hypersonic speeds outstripping their fighter jets.

Milburn refused to reveal the identity of his former elite comrade, citing security and his desire to remain anonymous. DailyMail.com will refer to him using the alias ‘John.’

But in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Milburn divulged eye-popping details of the story told to him by his ex-Special Forces friend after both had left the Army – saying that he wanted to support recent US whistleblowers’ claims of a secret UFO crash retrieval program.

British veteran paratrooper Franc Milburn (pictured left in Iraq in 1997) claims a former member of the British special forces came clean to him about a top secret operation involving a downed ‘non-human’ craft in the late 1980s

Milburn said that in the 1980s John worked for a reported secret unit now known as the ‘E Squadron’, which specialized in covert, clandestine, and paramilitary operations.

E Squadron, previously called ‘The Increment’, recruited the most experienced and reliable operators from the UK’s Special Forces units: the Special Air Service (SAS), Special Boat Service (SBS) and Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR).

The US equivalent to E Squadron is the CIA’s Special Operations Group and Joint Special Operations Command, staffed from ‘Tier-1’ units including Delta Force and SEAL Team 6.

Milburn said John served in the 1982 Falklands War and on numerous high-risk missions around the world, but one of the most disturbing was in his home country in the late 1980s.

‘He told me they were deployed in a troop-sized unit, maybe 20-30 Special Forces operators,’ Milburn said.

‘They’d been told by the RAF [Royal Air Force] that a craft which wasn’t Russian, British, or American had been downed.

‘He said they were tasked to secure and retrieve the craft in the north of England. They were flown in by helicopter. They established a cordon, a perimeter, and they approached the craft.

‘He didn’t describe the craft, he just said it was obvious it was non-human, and it was obvious that there were occupants who had fled the scene on foot – or whatever you call it.

‘He said then it became a task of tracking down these beings to try to bring them into custody.

‘Part of the unit was left protecting the craft. They would have left maybe six to eight blokes to cordon the craft, and the others would have been on foot, quad bikes, or 4x4s trying to track down these entities that escaped from it, with helicopters supporting.

‘He said after that it was totally passed over. He said, “scientists and technicians came in and it was completely out of our hands. We were flown away by helicopter, and we knew nothing more after that.”‘

Milburn said John declined to give him further details, and did not provide any proof for his wild tale. But the ex-paratrooper said he trusted the word of his elite ex-comrade, after vetting him with other SAS veterans.

‘I believe him 100%. I worked with the bloke in Civvy Street [post-military work]. This is a true-blue paratrooper. I spoke to former SAS and paratrooper mates of his.

‘We’re talking about a guy who fought bravely in the Falklands in some of the most brutal engagements,’ he added. ‘This is not the kind of guy who f***s around or talks s**t.’

Milburn worked in British military intelligence until the late 1990s, then as a contractor in Iraq alongside US Army Special Forces and the US State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

He is now an analyst for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an Israeli university think tank with close ties to Israeli military intelligence, where he has written public research papers on the US government’s approach to UFOs.

He said he has been close friends with John for years, and that the Special Forces veteran shared the extraordinary tale with him several years ago to get it off his chest.

‘John became like a brother to me. He told me one night because he was sick of keeping this big story bottled up, but knew he couldn’t tell anyone who wasn’t ex-Special Forces,’ Milburn said.

Milburn told DailyMail.com that he is choosing to come forward now to support other whistleblowers who have testified to Congress about alleged UFO crash retrieval programs, and is concerned that the ‘excessive secrecy’ around the topic is preventing scientific progress.

‘The various UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] programs need to be organized under one roof so that advances can be made before the Russians and Chinese get there,’ he said.

However, Milburn’s former commanders are staunchly opposed to any suggestion of recovered non-human craft.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) told DailyMail.com they are ‘not aware of any salvage operations with materials of unexplained origin.’

And in 2021, then-defense minister Baroness Annabel Goldie told Parliament that the MoD ‘holds no reports on unidentified aerial phenomena’ but ‘constantly monitors UK airspace to identify and respond to any credible threat to its integrity.

‘In over 50 years no such reporting had indicated the existence of any military threat to the United Kingdom,’ the Baroness said during a June 30, 2021 session in the UK’s House of Lords.

However, a 2000 UK Defence Intelligence Staff report said the existence of ‘Unexplained Aerial Phenomena’ (UAP) is ‘indisputable’.

‘Credited with the ability to hover, land, take-off, accelerate to exceptional velocities and vanish, they can reportedly alter their direction of flight suddenly and clearly can exhibit aerodynamic characteristics well beyond those of any known aircraft or missile – either manned or unmanned,’ the report said.

‘Attempts by other nations to intercept the unexplained objects, which can clearly change position faster than an aircraft, have reportedly already caused fatalities,’ the report warned, adding that ‘no attempt should be made to out-maneuver a UAP during interception.’

The December 2000 report, titled Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region, was originally classified secret but released to the UK National Archives in 2006.

It denied any ‘incursions’ by UFOs into UK airspace and said that ‘no artefacts of unknown or unexplained origin have been reported or handed to the UK authorities.’

‘There is no evidence of the penetration of the UKADR by unauthorized air platforms… there are no reports of RAF aircraft intercepting UAPs,’ it said.

But Milburn says he knows different.

He told DailyMail.com his credulity towards John was bolstered by his experience debriefing other veterans with shocking UFO encounters.

The former paratrooper said British military pilots told him about ‘kinetic’ encounters with UFOs, while he was working as an intelligence officer in the 1990s.

He said two pilots and two navigators of two Tornado jets told him they were ordered to intercept ‘disc-shaped objects’ – but when told to shoot them down, they were outmaneuvered.

‘They closed to within 20 nautical miles (nm). They were ordered to shoot them down. I wasn’t told why, that was above my level,’ Milburn said.

‘They had radar homing missiles. The missiles left the aircraft having achieved lock on but then failed to impact the craft.

‘They closed to within 10nm and released more missiles which were infrared homing. Those failed to impact the craft.

‘They then flew to within one nm and closer. They were trying to shoot down these craft with the aircraft’s 27mm cannon, and they failed to shoot them down.

‘They said that they fired at the objects and the rounds hit, but had no effect on the craft whatsoever.’

Milburn said that although the pilots saw the craft with their own eyes, their radar had struggled to pick up the ‘discs’ when they were beyond visual range.

‘They said to me that they were initially vectored onto the craft by the air intercept controller, because they couldn’t see it on their own radar,’ he said.

‘Later they had the craft on their own radar, but then the ground controller lost it on his radar, which is obviously much more powerful.’

Then, according to the military aviators, the flying saucers ‘disappeared.’

‘The craft just basically just skipped off at hypersonic velocity far beyond what the jets had. They just disappeared,’ Milburn said.

‘I asked them, “what do you think those crafts were?” And they said, “well, it’s nothing we have, it’s nothing the Russians have, and nothing that the Yanks have.”

‘All four of them served in the first Gulf War. Before that they’d done years enforcing the no-fly zone over Iraq. They’d logged hundreds of hours of missions and intercepts. So these guys were no strangers to intercepting aircraft.’

Milburn also pointed to two former US Air Force pilots, Major Milton Torres and Major George Filer III, stationed in the UK, who claimed to have taken part in intercepts with UFOs in British airspace in 1957 and 1962.

Torres said he was scrambled in an F-86D jet from Royal Air Force Base Manston, England, one foggy night in 1957.

He said he got a radar lock on an object the size of an aircraft carrier, which flew away at Mach 10 before he could fire on it.

Filer said he flew to intercept a UFO ‘hovering’ at 1,000 ft over the British countryside in 1962, but when he was a mile out his radar recorded it ‘shooting off up into space’.

Milburn’s claims follow allegations from three sources revealed by DailyMail.com in November, that the CIA has been conducting UFO crash retrieval operations, coordinated by a secretive directorate called the Office of Global Access, since 2003.

The three sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, have all been briefed by individuals involved in those alleged UFO retrieval missions.

Though the shocking claims sound like they come from a science fiction novel, they are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting the US government could indeed be hiding advanced vehicles that were not made by humans…

Martin comments:

They were ordered to intercept and shoot. Thus igniting an interplanetary war with aliens possessing superior technology. Yeah, sure.

Or more likely this story is garbage. He did say he was with the “Increment” unit but I think he meant the “excrement” unit, as the usual “I was told all this by sources I trust” narrative is trotted out. The eagle-eyed will also note that the whistleblower, as usual, is an “ex” UK paratrooper and military intelligence officer which should make us highly skeptical of anything that spills out of the flappy orifice on his face.

Back in the fifties, sixties and seventies, we got some solid, credible UFO cases like Socorro, with reliable witnesses, landing traces, recordable and measurable data. Where have cases like this gone? Ever since self-confessed intelligence operatives William Moore and Richard Doty injected themselves into the Ufological community it has been nothing but the same Aztec/Roswell narrative rehashed with different locations and times. Now we have the next generation of disinformation conduits like Dave Grusch, Jeremy Corbell and Luis Elizondo muddying the Ufological waters.

If there are any real ETs watching us, then they are probably, and wisely, staying well clear of this nuthouse planet 😉