Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is set to join the meeting of Nato defence ministers (Ben Birchall/PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)There are "no signs of ET" in British skies, the Defence Secretary said on Wednesday after unidentified flying objects were shot down in the US.
Ben Wallace joked that he had not been passed any evidence aliens had been discovered following reports that the Chinese launched spy ballons over America,
US authorities shot down three mystery objects over Alaska on Friday, Canada’s Yukon on Saturday and Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday.
The Pentagon released some details about a suspected Chinese spy balloon after it was destoyed off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month.
But officials have struggled to explain what the series of aerial objects spotted over American skies are, sparking multiple conspiracy theories.
Mr Wallace said he was “certainly confident” that the UK could deal with simililar UFOs.
“I do not want to alarm your listeners, he told Times Radio, adding “currently, our skies have quite a lot of balloons in them at quite a lot of times of the year.”
He said that the majorority were weather balloons.
“I think we'll just need to get the details [about the objects shot down in the US] and I'll share what I can publicly, but I don't see any signs of ET.”
Asked if he had been handed a dossier on UFOs after becoming Defence Secretary, he replied: “No one has given me a file saying actually in 1964, we discovered aliens and it's a state secret.”
Mr Wallace said Britain would be able to deal with similiar balloons if they were spotted over British skies and “posed a threat to the population or our national security”.
"I think the key here is to analyse the data share, you know, with the United States and Canada, what they have discovered and obviously they recovered, and they're still recovering parts of that debris,” he said.
US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on Monday tried to reassure the public about the mystery targets the US had shot down .
“I don’t think the American people need to worry about aliens,” Mr Kirby said.
General Glen VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command, which ran the operations, said he had “not ruled anything out” in determining the nature and origin of the objects.
