The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) has promised to release to the public its top secret files on UFO sightings before March 2016, sources have revealed.

According to Metro, the move came following a protracted campaign by UFO investigators and Lord Black of Brentwood, a House of Lords peer, for the UK government to release its 18 files on UFO sightings that reportedly took place in Britain more than 30 years ago. The investigators believe these files prove the existence of extraterrestrial beings.

The report added that the UK government was supposed to release the files in 2013 but decided to postpone this because of "additional processing requirements," raising suspicions of a possible coverup.

According to the rt.com/uk, the date of the release of the files was revealed during a parliamentary question last March, when Lord Black asked: "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?"

Earl Howe, Minister of State for Defence, who was present at the parliamentary question, reportedly answered: "The originating branch of file reference MO9/18 relates to minister's private offices. The latest estimate of when the 18 files will be delivered to the National Archives is before March 2016."

The files reportedly include the 1983 Rendelsham Forest Incident, where U.S. Air Force personnel stationed near the forest in Suffolk County, England saw a "strange glowing" triangular metallic object "dripping molten metal" and a light that resembled a "huge red eye." The object reportedly measured two to three meters across the base and two meters high.

In a memo to the MoD dated January 13, 1981 and posted on the rt.com/uk website, Lt. Col. Charles Halt of the U.S. Air Force said the object "illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs."

Halt added that when patrolling personnel tried to approach the object, it "maneuvered through the trees and disappeared," and "animals in a nearby farm went into a frenzy. The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later near the back gate."

Nigel Watson, author of the "UFO Investigations Manual," was quoted by metro.co.uk as saying that in 2005, the UK government admitted that it conducted a thorough and top secret scientific study of UFOs and concluded that UAPs did exist.

According to Watson, an unidentified contractor conducted the study, codenamed Project Condign, for the Defence Intelligence Staff, section DI55, based in Whitehall, London, from December 1996 to March 2000.

Only 11 copies of the four-volume 460-page report entitled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the U.K. Air Defence Region" were produced, and circulation was limited to a select group of high-ranking Royal Air Force and MoD officials. "Not even the MoD's UFO Department or the government ministers in charge of the defence ministry were made aware of it," Watson was quoted as saying.

In an interview with the Daily Express as quoted by rt.com/uk, Nick Pope, a UFO investigator and a former employee of the MoD section that investigated UFO sightings, expressed doubts that the files contained any kind of information that UFO conspiracy theorists were looking for, and that the government had tried to cover it up.

"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," Pope said.