Aliens may think humans are boring as UFOs have been snooping on Belgium
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Aliens may think humans are boring – because UFOs have been snooping on Belgium.
Vast numbers of sightings of strange craft have been logged in the tiny European country since 1989 when F-16 fighter jets chased one that had been picked up on radar.
Within a fortnight 143 eyewitnesses reported close encounters in the country the capital of which – Brussels – was voted by TripAdvisor reviewers as Europe's most boring city.
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But the series of sightings was so unusual government officials 5,000 miles away in the US started studying them.
Though UFOs have been spotted in 133 countries worldwide the Belgian wave remains the biggest tranche outside America.
And more close encounters continue to take place there than countries several times its size.
National Geographic documentary series UFOs: Investigating The Unknown will on Tuesday night tell how Belgian military chiefs sent out F-16 fighter jets in a bid to intercept alien craft.
US investigative journalist Leslie Kean said: "The Belgian authorities would scramble jets in order to try and get a better look at the objects.
"They wanted to identify what it was that was invading protected airspace over their country.
"It felt that this was their responsibility.''
Multiple eyewitnesses reported seeing "large black triangles" projecting "beams of light" that were "hovering" in silence at low altitude over their homes.
The descriptions of the UFOs mirrored those spotted by hundreds of folk living in the Hudson Valley in New York state in the early 80s.
Robert Powell, co-founder of the Scientific Coalition for UAP studies which probes sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, said: "The F-16s that the Belgian military had tracked these objects on radar.
"So they actually have radar imagery of the unknown moving through Belgian air space.''
The documentary said unlike in the US – where air force chiefs had shut down UFO investigations – the Belgians set up a team of military personnel and scientists to study the sightings.
The Americans were asked if the mystery craft was new hi-tech aircraft equipment it was testing.
Kean said the US said "no", but added they "would like to know whose it was".
According to Belgium's X-Files the series of sightings spanning months culminated in a military aircraft alert at 11pm on March 30, 1990, following reports of three unusual lights in the skies near Brussels.
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Ten minutes later a second set of lights was seen moving towards the first triangle.
A mystery object then appeared on radar prompting the scrambling of two F-16 fighters from Beauvechain air base.
Over the next hour the jets attempted nine separate interceptions of the targets.
On three occasions they managed to obtain a radar lock for a few seconds which they then lost.
Data later revealed the two jets radars had locked on each other.
All radar contact with the craft was lost at 12.40am and the jets returned to base.
At the time police suggested they may have been rogue helicopters.
But what prompted the sightings has never been identified.
Since then Belgium has regularly reported a proportionately large number of UFO sightings every year.
There were 255 in 2018 including one by a local mayor.
Patrick Ferryn, president of Cobeps which studies space phenomena, said: "You must know that most of these sightings will have the most banal explanation but there is a residue which we simply can’t explain.''
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