Charles Irwin Halt (born 1939) is a retired United States Air Force colonel who served as deputy base commander of RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, England, during the Rendlesham Forest incident of December 1980—one of the most extensively documented military‑involved UFO cases in history.

On the night of December 27‑28 1980, then‑Lieutenant Colonel Halt led a patrol to investigate unusual lights reported near the eastern edge of Rendlesham Forest. During the investigation, he and his team observed multiple unexplained aerial phenomena, including a bright flashing light near Orford Ness and “star‑like” objects that hovered for hours. Halt documented the events in an official Air Force memorandum (the “Halt memo”) and made an audio tape recording that captures his real‑time reactions.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1991, Halt became one of the most credible military witnesses to publicly affirm the authenticity of the Rendlesham incident. He has appeared in numerous documentaries and interviews, consistently stating that what he and his personnel saw was “not of this world” and calling for a thorough, transparent investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena.