Original subtitles

[narrator] Ever since humankind first looked to the heavens,

we have asked the question,

"Are we alone?"

Tales of otherworldly beings,

ancient prophecies and predictions,

and sightings here on Earth...

have heightened our sense of anticipation.

But in recent years, these claims have become

more frequent...

Do you believe our government has made contact with

intelligent extraterrestrials?

Something I can't discuss in a public setting.

[narrator] ...more insistent...

Biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah.

[narrator] ...and ever more dramatic.

From November 1989, over the course of two years,

Belgium was overwhelmed by thousands of UFO sightings,

witnessed by hundreds of credible observers.

Public investigations were launched, explanations given,

but the truth remained elusive.

And whatever it was, it appears to have returned

several times since.

Do you believe UAPs pose a potential threat to

our national security? -Yes.

-Yes. -Yes.

[narrator] What are we not being told?

Our team of experts reopened the files.

They'll analyze the intelligence,

investigate the science,

and reveal the truth.

[camera shutter snaps]

[narrator] As the 1980s drew to a close, an unassuming European country

became the global focus for an unprecedented wave of

UFO activity.

In just two years, thousands of Belgians claimed to have seen

swarms of UFOs flying at low altitude.

And the similarity in their descriptions

was startling.

This was the infamous Belgian UFO wave.

The remarkable events of 29th November, 1989,

began just outside the city of Eupen in the east

of the country.

It's early winter, just after sunset, and it's dark.

Two local gendarmes are doing their routine patrols when

they noticed a field that's lit up like daytime.

They look up and see a triangular craft hovering

above them.

In each corner, there's a massive white

spotlight beaming down, and in the middle,

a red flashing light.

[narrator] As the craft begins to move, the officers Heinrich Nicoll

and Hubert Von Montigny return to their car and follow it.

They said it moved slowly and almost silently.

They followed it to the German border where it turned around

and headed back towards Eupen.

[narrator] The gendarmes call in the sighting to

Albert Creutz, their dispatcher.

[Bader] He asked them if it was Santa Claus

looking for a place to land.

He obviously wasn't taking it seriously.

[narrator] But the two officers continue tracking the object as it

eventually comes to a halt over Lake Gilleppe.

They parked up on a hill that overlooked the lake,

and watched it hover.

It sent out two red beams, each with a red ball at

the end, with an orange ball flickering between the two.

[narrator] The gendarmes watch as the craft circles

the city of Eupen.

Back at dispatch, Creutz was contacting the local airports.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock Mbe] Nothing.

They hadn't seen or heard anything unusual, not visually

or on their radars.

Suddenly from behind the trees, another object appeared.

[narrator] At this point, they are around 90 minutes

into their encounter.

According to witnesses, this object tilted over to show

the upper side.

And at that point, witnesses saw a dome

and windows all illuminated.

[narrator] They would only see this craft for a few moments before it

flew away.

The incident seems unbelievable, but it was

only the beginning.

[Bader] Back at base, the dispatcher is looking out the window,

and he sees the craft floating a hundred meters away.

It only stayed for a few seconds, but that's all it took

to convert him from a skeptic to a believer.

[narrator] And the evening was far from over.

About nine kilometers away, near the village of

Henri Chapelle, two other policemen, Dieter Plummans

and Peter Nicholl, witnessed the craft and described it

in exactly the same way as Nicholl and Von Montigny.

Same triangular shape, same spotlights, same red ball

in the middle, same behaviors.

But suddenly, the red balls start hissing, and heads

straight down.

[narrator] They weren't the only ones to see it.

According to the Belgian Air Force, that night, more than

143 UFO sightings were reported with at least 250 witnesses.

13 of those were police officers from eight

different locations.

A family of four saw the ship pass slowly overhead as

they drove on the highway,

but it was rectangular, not triangular.

[narrator] Authorities investigated 70 of the sightings.

Some details differed, though none could be

fully explained.

Something undeniably strange was happening, and there was

more to come.

On December 1st, 1989, Francesco Valenazo,

a weather forecaster, reported seeing a UFO as

he walked through a town square in Ans, around 30 miles

from Eupen.

He described it exactly as the police had, and said that it

moved slowly and silently over the square before moving on.

[narrator] It was one of four reports which all described the same

thing, a triangular object with three white lights,

and a single red light.

Then on December 11th, 21 more witnesses came forward to say

they too had seen the mysterious craft.

A 12-year-old boy even drew what he had seen.

[McDonald] His three drawings explain the discrepancies in

the reports of the craft's shape,

triangular or rectangular.

The shape you see depends on where you're looking from.

[narrator] Within minutes of these sightings, a witness from

the town of Ernage, about 96 kilometers west of

Henri Chapelle, identified the same object flying above her as

she walked home.

On the same night of December 11, 1989, at 6:45 p.m.,

Belgian Army Colonel André Amond was taking a drive in

the country with his wife when they both spotted the same

three white lights with the red ball in the center.

He said that he stopped the car and got out, and the craft

turned towards them.

It hovered silently, pointing a massive spotlight at

them from about 100 meters away.

[narrator] It then made a sharp left turn away from them before

speeding off.

That exposed the underside of the craft and it was exactly

the same as everyone else had been describing it.

[narrator] Colonel Amond filed a detailed report of his encounter.

He stated that in his opinion,

this was no known aerial vehicle.

[narrator] After two weeks of these extraordinary reports,

the press were asking questions and the man to answer them was

Major General De Brouwer, Chief of Operations of

the Belgian Air Staff.

He stated that none of the events had shown up on

radar, but since the sightings were nationwide, his office was

taking this seriously.

Based on the reports that he'd been giving, the reports from

November 29th weren't any conventional aircraft,

and he was certain that they were not also any kind of

stealth aircraft.

The Air Force would authorize the scrambling of jets,

provided that two criteria were met.

One, it would have to be a police report, and two,

it would have to be seen on radar.

[narrator] He set a high burden of proof.

The vast majority of UFO sightings are never reported

to the police.

And so far, all reports claimed these craft moved very slowly,

which doesn't ping on radar.

It all combined to make the scrambling of jets

extremely unlikely, which perhaps was the point.

Major General De Brouwer made one other

significant announcement.

[Bader] The Air Force would be assisting SOBEPS,

the scientific research group that were leading

the official investigations.

This also allowed them some diplomatic distance if

the craft was identified as a US or Soviet spy plane.

[narrator] But after the initial burst of sightings, months passed with

no significant reports of any others.

[Bader] But more reports would come.

And when they came, it would be even more remarkable

than before.

[narrator] After a series of sightings of unexplained aircraft in late

November and December of 1989, Belgium was gripped by

UFO fever.

The government set criteria for what would constitute

an official corroborated sighting, which included

a police report and a radar reading.

And for a while, everything went quiet...

until the evening of March 30th, 1990.

On that Friday evening, an off-duty policeman saw three

unusual lights moving in the direction of

Thorembais-Gembloux.

He called it in, telling them that they were definitely not

stars and were clearly attached to the underside of

a triangular object.

He said they were changing color -- red, green,

yellow, and that a second set of lights had arrived.

At the same time, the reporting center registered

unknown objects on their radar screens.

[narrator] By 11:30, a patrol unit had arrived at

the policeman's property. They confirmed the sighting.

An eyewitness report independently confirmed by

police officials and supported by radar contact met

the criteria to scramble fighter jets.

Belgian Air Force F-16s were launched and sped towards

the presumed location of the UFO.

[McDonald] Within seven minutes, the pilots achieved radar lock

on nine separate occasions, and every time the targets took

off at incredible speed.

[narrator] The radar showed the object descended from 2,100 meters to

3,000 meters in just a few seconds.

From there, it dropped to 152 meters in about five seconds.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock Mbe] The human body cannot withstand the g-forces

involved in that descent.

It would almost certainly kill a pilot.

[narrator] And then it accelerated even further.

We can see it on the radar, going from 150 to 1,000 knots

in the click of your fingers.

That's 2,000 kilometers per hour, or Mach 1.5, with no

sonic boom reported.

[narrator] The figures were unprecedented.

For the next hour, the F-16 pilots played a game

of cat and mouse with it.

[Haseltine] They'd get close enough to get a radar lock.

Then the small lights would simply disappear, and the big

ones would shoot up at breakneck speed.

[narrator] By 1:30 AM on March 31st, after a two-hour chase,

radar contact ceased, and the F-16s were running low

on fuel. They headed back to base.

Months later, Major General De Brouwer reconstructed

the events of that evening from radar data.

He still had no explanation.

[McDonald] All he knew was that whatever they were pursuing operated

outside the envelope of any known craft.

[narrator] He made the startling admission that whatever was happening in

Belgium's airspace, it was beyond the control of

the Air Force to stop it.

What they didn't know at the time was that the sightings

and media scrutiny were about to step up to a whole new

level, and an iconic piece of UFO mythology

was soon to arrive.

[narrator] After the high-speed F-16 pursuit of late March,

sightings of the triangle-shaped UFOs over

Belgium began again, and on April 4th, 1990,

the craft were finally caught on film.

At 10:00 PM,

in the tiny town of Petit-Rechain,

just 24 kilometers from

Eupen in eastern Belgium, a woman walking her dog saw

a craft with three spotlights hovering above her home.

She shouted for her partner, who rushed out with his new

camera and snapped the last two pictures on his roll.

[Haseltine] His first picture had a manual exposure of over two seconds,

which would allow a lot of light to be captured,

but would also cause very blurry images.

On the first picture, the craft was banking

to the left.

On the next picture, there was nothing.

[narrator] But that blurry first photo appeared to have captured what

everybody had been talking about.

The next thing you know, it's being published in

a French magazine.

It didn't look exactly like the previously reported craft,

but when Professor Marc Acheroy overexposed it, you could see

the triangular shape that you couldn't see before.

[narrator] The final image supported the eyewitness statements

dating back to the very first encounter in November.

The negative was scrutinized by several eminent scientists.

François Louange, specialist in satellite imagery for

the French National Space Research Center, CNES.

Richard Haines, a former senior NASA scientist,

and Professor André Marion, a doctor in nuclear physics

and professor at South Paris University.

Apparently, they found no obvious signs of any tampering

with the image.

[narrator] And they deduced much more.

[Haseltine] They concluded that the rotation of the spotlights

was not around a single central point.

They also concluded that the middle light was very

different from the outer three and that all of the lights were

spaced symmetrically.

[narrator] Around a decade later, in 2002, Professor Marion retested

the photograph using improved of technology and techniques

and announced some astonishing findings.

He said he discovered a halo around the craft.

When you processed it, the light made a similar

pattern to that made by iron filings around the pole

of a magnet.

[narrator] That led to a theory about the fast-moving ship.

Professor Meessen, from the Department of Physics

at the University of Louvain, was proposing magnetic plasma

dynamic propulsion, as this neatly ties in with

the characteristics of the witness statement.

On the face of it, things were really beginning to

fit together.

The picture was very similar to what people had seen

and experienced before, and it became known

around the world.

[narrator] Meanwhile, in Belgium, the sightings were continuing.

On April 22nd, 1990, there were no less than seven reports of

flying triangles, but two factory workers in

Basecles near Brussels made an even more remarkable claim.

[McDonald] They were out in the courtyard just before midnight,

and they said that a massive trapezoid that looked like

an upside-down aircraft carrier slowly moved overhead.

Again, it was silent.

Again, it was moving very slowly.

And again, it was shining giant spotlights down from above.

[narrator] It seemed this wave of sightings would never end.

If anything, the reports were coming in in greater number

and with greater detail than ever before.

On July 26, 1990, a couple known only as

Mr. and Mrs. H claimed to have interacted with one

of the craft.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock Mbe] This was in Grace-Hollogne,

about 55 kilometers from Eupen.

It was 10:30 at night. They actually gave dimensions.

It was about 12 meters deep with a white light belt going

along two of its sides.

[narrator] They claimed to have seen the usual three spotlights,

but more clearly.

They were separated from the craft, but connected to

each other by some unknown bracket.

[narrator] As they continued to drive towards nearby Seraing,

Mr. H decided to flash his headlights at it.

He gave two flashes, and then the craft rotated

and flashed back three times.

[narrator] If verified, that would make this unassuming couple in rural

Belgium, some of the first people ever to communicate with

intelligent extraterrestrial life.

The craft moved towards the car and got to about a hundred

meters away on the right-hand side and just followed them on

the hilly roads.

[narrator] By now, the couple were becoming fearful and were

relieved that when they crossed the bridge into Seraing,

the UFO left them.

More UFO sightings were reported in the months

and years ahead.

But this incident is considered to be among the last of

the wave of UFO sightings that had begun in November, 1989.

Over two years, there were more than 2,000 reports filed

and 650 cases investigated.

More than 200 of the sightings lasted for longer than five

minutes and more than 300 involved witnesses seeing

the craft at very close range and even from

directly underneath.

None of the witnesses have ever changed their story.

Though some skeptics have claimed that this was

a textbook case of mass hysteria,

Major General de Brouwer insists

that whatever it was was very real.

[narrator] The wave of UFO sightings over Belgium in the early 1990s was

unprecedented and unresolved.

Witnesses shared remarkably similar accounts, and one even

managed to capture a craft on film.

But then in 2011, a man named Patrick Marechal invited

reporters to his home to show them something that would blow

the case wide open.

He showed them how he faked the only photograph from

the entire wave.

He showed how he had pulled off the ruse with some of his work

friends, using incredibly simple methods.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock Mbe] They got a big piece of polystyrene

and cut it to shape.

Then they painted it and added flashlights to each

of the corners.

They suspended it on a piece of string

and took the photographs.

[narrator] To prove he faked it, he presented dozens of photos

they had taken to get one that was just right.

Considering the rudimentary methods they used, a hoax is

all the more embarrassing for the scientists who declared

the photo authentic.

And it turns out that the F-16's radar locks from

the mad pursuit of UFOs across Belgian airspace in March 1990

also weren't what they appeared to be.

Two scientists from the Belgian Royal Military Academy

and the Electronic Warfare Center, Officer Cadet Gilmard

and Major Salmon reviewed the radar tapes

and concluded that at least

some of the lock-ons were what were known as angels.

Angels are officially known as clear air scattering, which is

a phenomena called Bragg scattering, which can cause

a radar reflection to see solid objects where there are none.

[narrator] The evidence supporting the angels theory is

pretty compelling.

[Haseltine] With four of the lock-ons, the objects descended rapidly

with negative altitude in some cases, which meant

they actually went below the ground as seen

on the radar.

But that was most likely a mirror-like reflection of

the radar imagery from the ground.

[narrator] But the angels theory doesn't explain everything.

[McDonald] Meessen insists that there is one radar trace that can't be

explained away.

And while there may have been unusual atmospheric conditions,

it doesn't necessarily mean that the radar wasn't able to

function properly.

[narrator] And none of this explains the sightings from the ground

by multiple Belgian police officers or by senior Belgian

Air Force officer, Major General de Brouwer,

who never changed his story and remains convinced that this

wasn't a radar error, but one of the most reported

and corroborated UFO sightings of all time.

As with all our alien files, context is key.

The late '80s and early '90s

were a time of great social change.

The Cold War was ending, the Berlin Wall,

and the Iron Curtain both came down.

[narrator] With half of Europe in revolution,

the unexpected became expected.

What people claimed to have seen may have been influenced

by another famous sighting.

[Bader] During the early 1980s, there had been a series of

sightings by hundreds of people of triangular and V-shaped dark

objects flying over the Hudson Valley in New York.

The coverage of this event cemented the idea in

the public's mind of UFOs being black triangles.

[narrator] So how do seemingly credible witnesses all see the same

black triangular objects and the same configuration of

lights simultaneously in different parts of the country

without there being any official explanation?

It is possible to do optical projections which could create

these kind of reports.

For example, you can project lasers off of aerosol particles

in the air, you can cause particles to glow,

you can create other kinds of projections that can be made to

move at what appear to be impossibly fast speeds,

because light has no inertia or mass and can be moved at any

speed you want.

[narrator] And light projections don't show up on radar.

[Haseltine] The radar reports are inconsistent, sometimes showing

the objects, sometimes not.

Were they angels, anomalous propagation?

We don't know.

Maybe they were even some kind of sensor nodes.

But the one thing we do know is that these objects did not

strongly reflect radar energy.

[narrator] Contrary to initial findings, further study of the SOBEPS

UFO investigation group's reports of nine radar locks

determined that three were jet-on-jet locks, and the other

six were due to an anomaly known as Bragg scattering.

[Haseltine] Bragg scattering occurs when the structures, such as areas

of warm and cool air close together, are the same size as

the wavelength of the radar.

This is fairly common, particularly in older radars.

[narrator] Meessen still insisted that there was one

radar trace that couldn't be explained away by either angels

or Bragg scattering, because there

were eyewitnesses.

We have visual sightings on the ground, and the object is

now being tracked on the Belgian Air

Defense Network.

The pilots acquire this object on their airborne radars,

but the UFO breaks the lock.

So they reacquire it, and they break the lock again.

And this happens multiple times.

[narrator] So it is possible that the radar data does indeed show

the incredible maneuverability and mind-blowing speed

of a UFO.

[narrator] Logic dictates that the most extreme and unlikely explanation,

extraterrestrial intelligence,

should be at the bottom of the list.

In fact, however, there's an equally logical

reason why it rose to the top.

The halo could have come from many different sources, such as

light scattering of particles in the air.

More interestingly, it could have been generated by

the magnetoplasma dynamic propulsion system.

[narrator] These engines, almost exclusively used to

power terrestrial spacecraft, have been in development since

the early '60s.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock Mbe] An ionized gas is expelled

by a very high-powered magnetic field,

creating forward thrust.

A shaft of fluorescent light is emitted, and the color of that

light is dependent on the gas being used.

These accelerate much faster than traditional engines.

[narrator] SOBEPS' mission statement was to promote serious research

into UFO phenomena while striving to maintain

a scientific attitude in all aspects of investigation.

The SOBEPS group who were placed in charge of

the investigation were certainly not neutral

in their reporting.

They were a UFO group and came with that bias.

[McDonald] SOBEPS employed a combination of investigative methods,

including interviews with witnesses, radar analyses,

and monitoring of electromagnetic fields.

And they did find consistency in the reports.

All described a black, triangular-shaped object with

bright lights.

[narrator] But what was omitted from those reports is just as important as

what was included.

[Bader] When reporting a sighting by police officers,

SOBEPS reported that the object had been silent, when in fact

the officers reported hearing a low engine noise and thought

they may have seen a helicopter.

The scientific method should follow facts and not attempt to

promote a particular agenda.

Anecdotes are not data,

no matter how many of them you collect.

[Dr. Aderin-Pocock Mbe] As a scientist, we develop theories and methods

to try and understand the universe around us.

We try and avoid bias, but of course,

we're only human.

The key to good science is to remain neutral, to observe what

really happens rather than what we wish would happen.

[narrator] In its flawed pursuit of evidence to support its theory

of UFO incursion, did SOBEPS undermine the impartiality

and credibility of their own investigation?

[Bader] Of course.

In a UFO wave, an organization with a strong

agenda can change the entire perception of the incident in

the public eye.

[McDonald] While the report has been criticized for its biases,

it did help raise awareness and try to promote a scientific

approach to the investigation of unexplained

aerial phenomena.

[narrator] On the one hand, the investigation showed that

the authorities were taking the idea of UFOs a little

more seriously.

On the other hand, it demonstrated how

a presumably scientific investigation can be tainted

by preconceptions.

Most people who believed the photograph was genuine

wanted to believe that it was.

Critical thinking is important when verifying the authenticity

of any visual information. Images trigger emotions.

[narrator] Those emotions can run so deep that some people refused to

believe that the triangle of lights in the sky was a hoax,

even after the perpetrators admitted it.

To many close to the investigations of these

kinds of incidents, this admission some 20 years

later, smells like a cover-up.

I think the claim that the photo is faked should be

treated in the same way as somebody who says,

"I've seen a UFO."

In other words, well, let's see the evidence.

Now there's another school of thought that says if you want

to diffuse the story somehow, one way to do that might be to

try and discredit it.

[Bader] It's difficult to prove that a UFO photograph is

real or fake.

Today there are lots of ways to determine if a digital image is

faked, but with old school photography you have to look

for things like inconsistencies in lighting or more obvious

things like strings.

A blurry image is not itself proof of a fake.

If you're taking a photo of a genuine UFO you're going to

be hurried and probably filled with adrenaline, so you're

likely to be shaky.

But a blurry image certainly helps you create a fake.

[narrator] The counter-argument says that the qualities of the UFO itself

could prevent photographing it clearly.

[McDonald] Some ufologists and researchers have proposed that UFOs emit

electromagnetic fields, ionizing radiation or other

types of energy that can disrupt or distort electronic

devices, including cameras.

They argue that this could explain why some photos show

strange patterns or why some cameras malfunctioned during

a UFO encounter.

[narrator] On the face of it, the thousands of people

who described the same UFO over Belgium within a period of two

years seems like compelling evidence.

But is it?

Once a community becomes invested in UFO reports,

there are going to be more reports.

People become more likely to misidentify things because

they're excited by what they're hearing.

If an object was seen on a telescope or radar,

tracked by police, and was clearly photographed by

multiple witnesses from multiple different angles,

and its position can be triangulated, there would be

very close to being actual proof that would certainly

convince a lot more people.

[narrator] With more than two-thirds of the world carrying a camera,

we still don't have that truly compelling image of

extraterrestrial life.

The fact is that humans are not reliable witnesses, even to

things we've experienced personally.

Former Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent,

Richard Doty, has interviewed hundreds of UFO witnesses

during his career.

If the witness is interviewed shortly after the incident,

they're going to have the best recollection and the most

detailed knowledge and information.

But if you wait a week, a month, or a year,

they're gonna exaggerate based on what other information

they've heard.

You can throw it out the window if it's more than a week old.

[narrator] Most Belgian eyewitness accounts were recorded more

than a week after the events.

With the photographic evidence now being questionable,

and doubt cast on eyewitness accounts, is there any element

of this file that holds up to scrutiny?

The fact that a lot of the witnesses were military

or police, to me, is a positive for this story.

[Doty] Military witnesses are more reliable than non-military

witnesses, primarily because of their training,

their professionalism,

and how they are trained to observe certain things,

especially in combat.

Major General Wilfred De Brouwer was the senior Belgian

Air Force officer tasked with investigating these sightings

for the Belgian government.

He interviewed the pilots, the radar operators,

he amassed all the documents.

At the end of all of this, the conclusion was the object

was unexplained. He is an unimpeachable witness.

[narrator] But Chris Bader doesn't believe any witness is ever

truly unimpeachable.

Police officers, pilots, and military personnel

can also be mistaken.

They may, in fact, be more certain than anyone else that

they've seen something, even if the evidence is ambiguous.

[narrator] But while the cause of the incidents may be debated,

one thing can't be denied, that there was something in

the skies above Belgium from November 1989.

If it wasn't an extraterrestrial craft,

what was it?

When we look at the totality of the reporting here,

what we seem to consistently get is a beam of light running

from the craft to the ground.

These might be searchlights or warning beacons,

but they could also be beams from iron propulsion systems.

[narrator] That technology exists right here on Earth.

Some of the triangular UFO sightings could be explained

easily by the Boeing VC-25 or the B-2 Spirit

stealth bomber.

But the more interesting theory is the rumored

TR-3 Black Manta.

If the stories about its existence are true,

then it's a subsonic stealth spy plane from the one and only

Lockheed Skunk Works.

[narrator] This new tech could certainly seem otherworldly, and would be

something the US military at least would have a vested

interest in covering up.

[McDonald] The claim is that it uses highly pressured mercury

accelerated by nuclear energy that would allow it to fly at

high speeds and to perform rapid and agile maneuvers along

all three axes.

[narrator] And what about the radar signals?

[McDonald] The plasma generated reduces the radar signature, making it

almost invisible on radar and undetectable by air traffic

control and other air defense systems.

[narrator] The existence of this experimental craft would cover

all bases in the Belgian wave.

Personally, I think there's a significant chance that these

could be drones.

Certainly, the extreme accelerations, which are so

hard on the human body, suggest that at a very minimum,

they were unmanned.

It's also possible that it's some kind of experimental

craft which would never be acknowledged.

[Pope] It's important to bear in mind that things are gonna be

tested experimentally long before they will become

public knowledge.

So there'll be things flying around now that you won't see

for 20 years.

[Doty] If the flight operation was highly classified,

the Air Force wouldn't admit it.

The Air Force would deny they had anything flying

in the area.

[Haseltine] The Air Force and the Navy hide stuff

all the time, even from their allies.

But the question is, why would they test these over highly

populated areas instead of the remote ranges where

they almost always test these kinds of technologies?

[narrator] There might be a very good reason why.

[Pope] You want to test how good your aircraft is.

Is it stealthy?

Can we fly it in without even another member of NATO picking

it up on the radar?

And so you do a sort of blind test.

You don't alert anyone that something's coming.

[Haseltine] It could also have been Russia.

We have to remember that Belgium is the headquarters of

NATO, which is Russia's main enemy.

[narrator] Whether it's Russia or the US, it's a theory that the Belgians

actively investigated at the time.

[Pope] The Belgians told us at the Ministry of Defense that of

course they had considered the possibility that this was

stealth aircraft or some

prototype drone or other device, and they pressed

the United States very hard on this, but got complete denials.

Somebody might have had a quiet word with the Belgians

and said, "Look, we can't tell you any specifics,

but don't worry about this one."

That conversation never happened, and that, of course,

makes one wonder.

[narrator] We can now be certain that

the Belgians suspected at least

the possibility of US involvement

in the series of sightings of unidentified

aircraft in Belgian airspace in late 1989 to early 1990.

One particular phrase from the official report into

the unexplained incidents struck a chord with Nick Pope.

[Pope] They said,

"Whatever this was, thank goodness it was friendly.

"Because if it hadn't been,

there was nothing we could have done."

And that was kind of just left hanging there, and it was

slightly chilling.

Because that phrase, you know, "Thank goodness

they were friendly," almost implied that

corporately, the Belgian Air Force was embracing

the possibility that this was extraterrestrial.

[narrator] If this were a military test, then it wasn't the first,

and it wouldn't be the last.

The Belgian wave fits a pattern of several very similar

large-scale UFO sightings.

In the early 1980s, there were hundreds of sightings of black

triangle-shaped objects, similar to what was reported in

both Hudson Valley and Belgium.

And in March 1997, thousands of people from Nevada to Arizona

saw large V-shaped objects in the sky traveling slowly in

a southeasterly direction in what came to be known as

the Phoenix Lights.

[narrator] There was another, less widely reported event in the UK a year

or so later, eerily similar to the sightings in Belgium.

The 1993 triangle sightings over the UK were centered on

two military bases, Cosford and Shawbury.

At Cosford, a large triangular craft was seen by a patrol of

Air Force police officers.

And then at Shawbury, again, a huge triangular-shaped

object was seen by the meteorological officer.

He said it was midway in size between a C-130 transport

aircraft and a Boeing 747.

And he said a narrow beam of light at one point fired down

from this craft and was tracking backwards and forwards

as if it was looking for something.

[narrator] There's a consistent pattern to the reports of these sightings,

which is impossible to ignore.

And Richard Doty believes there's even more evidence

pointing to the US Air Force.

[Doty] During the Hudson Valley case of 1982, during that time

period, there were a number of US Air Force bases

in New York state.

Griffiss Air Force Base, Plattsburgh Air Force Base,

they're both strategic air command bases, housing nuclear

weapons and nuclear alert bombers.

They also were a good hiding place for experimental crafts

that were being flown by the Air Force.

These TR-3Bs or A's that people saw during the Hudson Valley

case were probably coming from these bases in New York State.

[narrator] Doty believes that that could help to explain the infamous

1997 Phoenix Lights event.

The first part of that sighting occurring over Phoenix,

or actually Southwest Phoenix,

involved an A-10 US Air Force aircraft.

It was dropping flares, airborne flares,

during an exercise.

The second part of the sighting that was occurring over North

Phoenix and also all through Arizona was probably a TR-3B

experimental craft flying out of either Creech Air Force Base

in Nevada or Area 51.

And I say that because that craft had lights,

had a lighting system that could be configured as

an FAA-required lighting system.

The lighting on the craft observed over Belgium,

Hudson Valley, and Phoenix

are consistent with that of a conventional aircraft.

Alien aircrafts do not conform to FAA standards.

[narrator] As our investigation into the wave of unexplained UFO

sightings over Belgium in the early 1990s draws to

a close, much of the evidence points towards military craft.

As sworn testimony before Congress reveals that incidents

like these are more common than previously reported,

have we solved what occurred in the skies over Belgium in 1990?

Even if some aspects of the Belgian wave have

conventional explanations, I can't entirely rule out

an extraterrestrial possibility here.

[Doty] I don't believe that the craft that was observed

over Belgium...was a UFO.

I believe it was a US Air Force experimental craft because of

the lighting system and some other information that

we obtained from classified sources.

[Bader] We can't be certain what really happened in Belgium, but we can

be sure that non-extraterrestrial factors

certainly played an important part in the Belgium wave.

All of the non-extraterrestrial explanations are technically

plausible, but they're not very likely because presumably this

kind of advanced aircraft would be some kind of government,

and they just don't test things like that out in the open.

They do them on secret ranges.

And then another factor is, this was so long ago, is it

really credible that we wouldn't have heard or seen

anything like this in all that time?

I really don't think so.

[narrator] Even today, we are hearing similar claims being made

by US Navy pilots

about the Gimbal video and the Tic Tac craft

sighted off the coast of Southern California.

Whatever was witnessed over Belgium may not be new

and doesn't seem to be going away.

This was thoroughly investigated and while mistakes

were made, they did a good job and they still couldn't

find an answer.

It's what we don't know and perhaps will never know

that holds the answers.

In my opinion, the Belgium UFO case is another case of psyops.

I believe that this is a psychological operation

to gauge how the humans and police officers would react

to an unidentified flying object.

I believe that what people saw are more than explainable.

[narrator] We now know that the US military alone have hundreds of

unexplained UAP encounters on their books.

The fact that these reports are finally being made available is

key to Eric Haseltine, who believes that this

investigation shines an important light on one

particular element of human scientific thought.

As credible sightings like this accumulate, we're forced to

admit the limitations of our knowledge

and our understanding.

Is that something extraterrestrials?

Is it atmospheric science?

Is it some other kind of natural phenomena

we don't understand?

Is there an adversary that has advanced technology?

We have to be smart enough to acknowledge how little we know,

because I know a thing or two, and I have no idea

what happened here.

[narrator] The Belgian UFO wave is one of the most confounding

and compelling events in recent UFO history.

But until further details emerge, it is another alien

file that must, for now at least, remain open.