Whether you’ve seen an unidentified flying object or not is usually directly linked to how many planes you’re able to recognise (and also if you’re liable to forget to put your contact lenses in). 

Most folk will live out their entire lives never once gazing upon any inexplicable aerial phenomena. It’s a sad fact of life that the closest many of us will get to a flying saucer will probably come shortly after criticising our other half’s tea-making skills.

Just because UFO sightings are rare, however, that doesn’t mean they don’t go on. In fact, hundreds of incidents are reported to the UK government every year. Many, no doubt, turn out to nothing more than £12.99 RyanAir flights to Fuerteventura. But occasionally there’s something to the reports...

Here are some of the most interesting and maybe even convincing UFO sightings from modern British history:

So called for its shape, not its taste, the ‘Dudley Dorito’ is a triangular craft that’s had multiple sightings reported across the Midlands in the past decade. 

Teacher Darren Edwards is one of many people to have spotted the Dorito in the skies above Shropshire. 'It was moving towards me and made no sound,' he claims. 'I quickly checked on Google, it didn’t match any military aircraft or UAV drones. It was so slow it almost hung in the sky. It also seemed to change its shape slightly as it turned.'

Its unusual form has led some ufologists to suggest that rather than be extraterrestrial in origin, the Dorito could be some form of military hardware being tested out by UK or US air forces. They’re basically saying, ‘aliens - it’s nacho craft.’

The Ministry of Defence have since given their explanation for why several residents of the Welsh village of Llandrillo simultaneously heard a loud noise in the sky and saw a bright light that many considered to be from some form of aircraft. The MoD, rather unsurprisingly, does not claim it to be caused by tourist aliens keen to enjoy the views of the picturesque Berwyn mountain range.

The official explanation for what was rather teasingly referred to as ‘The Roswelsh Incident’ by some tabloid wags was written off as natural phenomena. The odd thing, though? The noise was, apparently, due to a 3.5 magnitude earthquake and the light was due to meteoric activity. At exactly the same time. What are the chances, eh?!

Kim Wilde may have sung about the Kids in America, but in June 2009 - the day after Michael Jackson died - the former pop star was far more interested in the UFOs in Hertfordshire.

'I looked up in the sky and saw this huge bright light behind a cloud,' she’s said in an interview since. 'Brighter than the moon, but similar to the light from the moon. I said to my husband and my friend, 'that's really odd,' so we walked down the grass and looked to see if there was any source.'

'All of a sudden it moved, very quickly, from about 11.00 to 1.00. Then it just did that, back and forth, for several minutes. Whenever it moved, something shifted in the air - but it was silent. Absolutely silent.'

Pretty wild(e).

Robert 'Bob' Taylor said that in late 1979 he saw 'a flying dome made out of a dark metallic material with a rough texture like sandpaper' - approximately 6 metres in diameter - hovering above the forest floor in a clearing in Dechmont Woods, Livingston. Taylor also claims that smaller spheres 'similar to sea mines' then seized him and took him abroad the larger object before he passed out.

Ufologist and writer Malcolm Robinson says it could be ‘one of the few genuine cases of an actual UFO encounter.'

Various sceptics say Robert's supposed memories could, in fact, be hallucinations brought about by temporal lobe epilepsy caused by Taylor's previous meningitis or a stroke.

Nobody knows for sure.

Keep watching the skies! When you’re not watching Blaze, that is.

If we didn’t all know better, we might think that ‘Area 51’ was a cheap ladies’ clothes shop or a tacky provincial nightclub. We do all know better, though. We all know that Area 51 is a top-secret and highly classified US Air Force facility.

What we don’t all know, however, is what goes on inside the place. And why would we? The US Air Force tends to take concepts such as ‘top secret’ and ‘highly classified’ quite seriously.

The Nevada facility is famous for its secrecy and the fact that some folk believe it’s where the American government keeps some of their shady ‘alien stuff’.

What really goes on in there, though? Well, let’s examine some of the possibilities. We’ll start with the big theory...

You might remember a tongue-in-cheek Facebook campaign from 2019 that called for people to ‘storm Area 51 together’ in order to ‘see them aliens’. More than 300,000 social media users signed up to the pledge. Alas, however, there was to be no storming. So we still don’t know if ‘Homey Airport’ (as it’s officially known) is home-y to any little green - or grey - men. Not yet, anyway.

Rumours that the remains of crash-landed aliens are being stored and examined for research purposes at Area 51 have circulated for decades. As has gossip that some kind of ghoulish human/alien hybrids are being created there. No proof of any of that has yet surfaced. Is that because it’s hokum? Or because it’s being covered up...?

A slightly more toned-up version of the alien theory says that while there might not be any actual aliens - dead or alive - at Groom Lake (as it’s also known), the confidentiality that surrounds the place is still ET-related.

Perhaps the most popular theory as to what really goes on behind closed hangar doors at Area 51 is that the US government stores, reverse engineers, tests and flies extraterrestrial spacecraft there.

There has long been talk of world powers trying their utmost to gain control over the weather. The ability to manipulate the weather is useful for boring things like irrigation and the like but it's far more appealing as a weapon.

If National Science Foundation reports are to be believed, the American military's Project Cirrus was a post-war research project designed to find out if it was possible to adapt clouds and use rain — or a lack of it — as a weapon against other nations. 

That's not all. Between 1962 and 1983, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ran Project STORMFURY, where boffins attempted to use something called cloud seeding in order to try and slow hurricane winds.

All this research and testing has to happen somewhere, right?

Quite a few conspiracy theories involving the US government or the militaristic ‘deep state’ pulling the strings mention ‘black helicopters’. When supposed top secret and highly illegal black ops are carried out, a fleet of dark whirlybirds are used. 

Are they, perhaps, parked up in hangars in Area 51?

Not that we don’t love conspiracy theories or creative thinking, but in this case it seems as though Occam’s Razor may well hold the answer to the Area 51 enigma. 

Hey, we’re not saying that they’re definitely isn’t any form of strangeness going on inside the place, but the most likely answer seems to be the official one given by the US government.

Ask the US Air Force and they won't say much. They'll mostly just say something along the lines of "for operational security reasons we do not provide detailed information regarding what type of operations take place in specific areas of the Nevada Test and Training Range." 

The USAF has previously conceded that Area 51 is an open training range that 'supports the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems', however. Which is pretty vague, but then again this is a top-secret and classified place we're talking about here.

Very few of us will ever know what goes on at Area 51. If you ever find yourself there and figure it all out, do let us know, eh?

In Unidentified Blink 182’s Tom DeLonge and Luis 'Lue' Elizondo, former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) expose the secrets of the American government’s secret UFO programme, shedding light on unidentified flying phenomena in the USA and around the world.

Blaze spoke to Tom and Lue about the series and what sort of impact the series has made since it was shown in the US last year.

 How would you sum up the premise of the show?

Luis Elizondo: This is not a chasing UFO show this is a docu-series getting into the heart of what the government US government's interest was and is into this phenomenon. And we're peeling back the curtain and allowing the audience to see what's going on in real life, about this topic.

Tom DeLonge: Some people want to call it, a nonfiction show about UFOs but it's not really about that. It's about my team from To The Stars Academy and their efforts to transform the world.

You're a fly on the wall watching my team deal with their partners in the US government, connecting the dots, following up with pilots and their interactions and their engagement with these craft.

What was the purpose of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)?

Luis Elizondo: ATTIP was a program that was established by some of our brave leaders in the Senate for in particular, Senator Harry Reid and Senator Ted Stevens, and even former astronaut John Glen. They all had believed this was an important topic. In fact Senator Stevens had his own UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) or UFO encounter back in World War Two while flying an aircraft for this country. And they all believe this topic was serious enough that we needed to spend taxpayer money and get the Department of Defense and the intelligence community engaged. 

It's been a year since Unidentified first premiered. What for you has been the biggest impact of the show?

Luis Elizondo: From my perspective, one of the greatest achievements was the fact that we now have conversations with lawmakers and officials in our government who want to know more. When you have private conversations with them you come to realize that they too have had their own their own experiences.

Now those artificial walls that we've put in place for so many years are beginning to come down our national lawmakers and senior leaders are willing to have a conversation that just two years ago, they never would have dreamed of having. You never would have had official briefings provided to Congress and others in the executive branch about these issues.

Tom DeLonge: I think we've made so much headway in the last 24 months we would never have expected to be where we are now. I had a conversation with someone who was involved in AATIP not that long ago and asked him ‘what’s the biggest change for you?’ He goes, ‘you can now talk about this subject in the halls of the Pentagon and it's never been that way before’.

You can see this in the articles that have been written our work in To The Stars Academy in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill, Politico in a way that's factual, evidence-based and burning off any of the stigma that's been around the topic of UFOs. 

You’ve assembled a pretty impressive team for this investigation

Luis Elizondo: None of us are personalities none of us are actors, most of us are either scientists or aerospace engineers or in my case gumshoe investigators. This is not a reality show this is a show about reality. The producers and the directors are all hardened investigative journalists the types of people who spent their time cutting their teeth on the real dark seedy underbelly of mankind looking at things such as human trafficking and black marketing.

Tom DeLonge: It started early on with Jim Semivan who was one of the senior intelligence agents over at the CIA and Dr Hal Puthoff's who has been a longtime physicist working with the NSA and DOD and was one of Lue’s top, top scientists on AATIP. It was really just a group of people are coming together to try to handle something that's transformative through outreach study and innovation.

Watch Unidentified to discover what Tom, Lue and the team of intrepid investigators uncover about the secret world of UFOs and UAP. It's out of this world.