Officials have admitted the number of UFO sightings more than doubled last year - including one spotted hovering over Parliament.
A total of 285 unidentified flying objects were reported in 2008, compared to just 135 in 2007, according to a Ministry of Defence document.
The mystery craft spotted hovering opposite Parliament was reported on February 12.
According to the document: ‘There was a craft that had green, red and white lights. It was still and static in the sky. It was seen for about half an hour.’
The rise in the number of sightings - the biggest since 1998 - was described as ‘phenomenal’ by experts.
The MoD only investigates reports of unidentified flying objects that it considers may pose a risk to national security, and most of the incidents seem just to have been logged and ignored.
Many of the sightings appear to be the products of somewhat fevered imaginations. For instance, on May 6 someone reported a ‘fast moving green object’ on the M6 motorway.
On June 28, near Cobham in Somerset, the document notes that someone reported seeing ’something interesting’ in the sky.
A few days earlier, it states: ‘Twenty-five amber lights were seen leaving the Heathrow area. They were seen travelling West at 45 degrees, 200-300 knots’.
In July, on the A6 road near Buxton in Derbyshire: ‘There was a distant bright light, like a star’.
On October 30, above Wakefield, West Yorkshire, the document records: ‘There was an orange object in the sky. It was the size of an aircraft.’
And a UFO the size of a 747 was reported above Leeds, West Yorkshire, in February.
That craft was described as a ‘jumbo jet sized object which was flat and round with a blue ripple underside. It made no sound and then disappeared.’
The dossier was published just one week after it emerged the RAF has tried to shoot down UFOs under instructions from the MoD.
Pilots have took aim at UFOs several times but failed to bring them down, former MoD employee and UFO expert Nick Pope claimed.
Mr Pope, who worked on the MoD’s UFO section for three years, said the ’shoot down’ directive had been in place since the 1980s.
‘We know of cases where the order has been given to shoot down - with little effect to the UFO,’ Mr Pope said.
Firing at UFOs was ‘not automatic but happens when something in our airspace is deemed to be a threat’ he said.
‘In the case of UFOs, whether the object is causing a threat is very much a (pilot’s) judgment call.’
And last month it was claimed that a UFO ripped a 60ft blade off a wind farm turbine.
Hundred of witnesses reported hearing an earsplitting bang at 4am.
One saw orangey-yellow spheres skimming across the sky, while another reported a ‘massive ball of light’ with ‘tentacles going right down to the ground’.
But MoD insiders claimed the craft that wrecked the turbine could have been a secret unmanned stealth bomber on test flights.
The personnel reportedly said that a black delta-wing craft called Taranis was making test runs on the coastal bombing ranges at Donna Nook and North Coates in Lincolnshire, near to the site of the damaged turbine.
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