Starting in the 1950s, as UFO sightings began proliferating across the U.S., both the Air Force and the CIA tried to conceal their interest in the matter. They did so in part because they feared that the Soviets were trying to sow hysteria and wanted to calm the public, but they also knew that many of the sightings were of top-secret U.S. spy planes. In the end, such deceptions were counterproductive. Nobody believed the denials, the government lost credibility, and the hysteria only grew. An internal CIA review in 1997 found that the agency’s duplicity only added “to a growing sense of public distrust.”

That skepticism is one reason why, in the decades since, garden-variety military incidents and mishaps have repeatedly been transformed into galactic conspiracies believed by a shockingly high percentage of Americans. With trust in the U.S. government once again at a low ebb, misleading the public with regard to UAPs would be a serious mistake.

Eoin Treacy's view

Media interest in unidentified flying objects is ramping up ahead of the anticipated release of a US government report in June. That report is almost certainly going to reveal a lot more examples of pilots observing phenomena they do not have a ready explanation for. The question is why is the US government so eager to talk about it now?

The SR-71 (Blackbird) was first flown sixty years ago and its low radar signature was years ahead of its time. It has taken a long time but there are now significant rumblings of commercial hypersonic flight. It’s not new but the commercialization of secret military applications can take a long time.

The introduction of stealth fighters during the Gulf War of the early 1990s was unnecessary but it clearly signaled to the world how technologically advanced the US military was immediately after the end of the Cold War.

It stands to reason the release of videos of US pilot encounters with unidentified aircraft is saber rattling. China’s military build up and Russia’s jostling for position are real-time military concerns and talking about strange new tech technologies, apparently beyond the scope for current understanding, serves a counter intelligence purpose.

Thucydides Trap has been contained because nuclear weapons introduced the calculus of mutually assured destruction. The country that comes up with a way to obviate the risk from an adversary’s nuclear weapons will attain an insurmountable advantage which would set off an arms race on an epic scale. Hypersonic missiles, undetectable nuclear submarines, orbital applications or apparently impossibly quick and maneuverable aircraft are all candidates.