"UFO" has become synonymous with "alien spacecraft" in many people's minds, but it merely means "unidentified flying object."On Friday, Sci Fi Channel dispatches newsman Bryant Gumbel to Suffolk, England, to investigate a UFO Invasion at Rendlesham. American airmen at British bases in Rendlesham Forest have been haunted for two decades by the mystery of what they saw in 1980."It's very easy to be dismissive of people who believe," Gumbel says, "but it's probably easier to believe in a UFO than it is to believe that we're the only intelligent life in the universe."It's easy to laugh at such people and think they're people who pick up the National Enquirer and believe the toaster produces aliens. But some of the people you meet who claim to have seen some things are reasonable people. They're people who, at some point in their lives, saw something they can't quite explain." This is the third in a series of specials -- under the "Sci Fi Declassified" banner -- that look at specific UFO incidents, with Gumbel as host, narrator and correspondent. The first examined probably the most famous, the 1947 incident near the Army Air Force base at Roswell, N.M.; the second looked at a less widely known event, in Kecksburg, Pa., in 1965.

The events in Rendlesham Forest took place during two nights in late December, near a pair of Royal Air Force bases, Bentwaters and Woodbridge, being operated by the U.S. Air Force as part of NATO's front-line defenses. U.S. servicemen reported strange, moving lights in the forest and took photos of a possible landing site.The deputy base commander, Lt. Col. Charles Halt, even sent a memo to Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) about the sightings. Rumors of a cover-up by U.S. and U.K. officials have persisted ever since.

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