Top secret files dubbed “the British X-Files,” which UFO hunters believe could prove extraterrestrials have visited the UK, are to be released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

UFO researchers and a House of Lords peer have campaigned for the release of 18 files about sightings that took place in the UK more than 30 years ago.

The government originally planned to declassify the files at the end of 2013, but their release was stalled due to “additional processing requirements,” prompting speculation about a possible cover-up.

After Lord Black of Brentwood pressed the matter in parliament, the MoD says the files will be released to the National Archives by March 2016.

Some UFO investigators claim the classified government files will shed light on reported sightings of unexplained lights in Rendlesham Forest on two separate occasions in December 1980.

US Army Personnel stationed in Suffolk witnessed seeing a “strange glowing” triangular metallic object, approximately two to three meters across the base and two meters high.

RT"@ETsAndUFOs: Department of the Air Force document detailing the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident. #Disclosurepic.twitter.com/5o7HNCpuNy" — Adam Jackson (@adamjacksonp) April 22, 2015

Lieutenant Colonel Halt described the strange events in a memo to the MoD: “It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs.”

“As the patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. At this time the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy. The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later near the back gate.”

The unexplained sighting in Rendlesham Forest is one of the most well-known cases of UFO claims in the UK and is often compared to the 1947 Roswell UFO incident in the United States.

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Lord Black asked the government for an update on the release of the UFO files.

In a parliamentary question in March this year, he wrote: “In relation to the 18 Ministry of Defence files on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) that have yet to be released to the public, what is the originating division of the file reference M9/18; what is the remit of that division in relation to UAP; and what is their latest estimate of when the 18 files will be passed to the National Archives, and then released to the public?”

Minister of State for Defence Earl Howe replied: “The originating branch of file reference MO9/18 relates to ministers’ private offices. The latest estimate of when the 18 files will be delivered to the National Archives is before March 2016.”

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UFO investigator Nick Pope doubts the top secret files will be a “Roswell-style UFO in a hangar cover-up.”

A former civil servant in the MoD, Pope was assigned to a section of the ministry investigating reports of UFO sightings in 1991 for a three-year period.

He told the Daily Express: “The suspicion will be that there’s a bombshell in these files and that the ministry does not know how to handle it.”

“Having worked on the MoD’s UFO project, I’m sorry to say that we don’t have any crashed spaceships hidden away in some RAF hangar, as some believe, but we do have some fascinating and unexplained cases in our files,” he added.