Reveal UFOs are real, slowly enough that it goes straight from "kook conspiracy theories" to "meh old news" without ever passing through "mass hysteria".

Decommission the internalized cover up ("If you see a UFO you are a kook and will lose your job"). This gets in the way of receiving useful intelligence reports.

(Partially) decommission the external cover up, at least enough that the public sees UFOs as a known but unexplained phenomenon. And as military business.

Paradoxically, cover up the cover up itself, by acting like all this stuff is new to them and hasn't been under observation since the 1940s.

Obtain funding due to the public not liking UFOs poking into their airspace without permission.

Bring technologies out into the mainstream, commercially or militarily. Looots of funding.

So why now? Considering Project Blue Book, and the rise and fall of UFO popularity with the decades, why only now - is this just the slowest dissemination of knowledge possible?

Could just be a matter of faction ascendancy. I've seen a report on how Tom DeLonge pushed the idea of TTSA, that suggested the convincing argument was: would you like to go back to being "respected all-American heroes dealing with a mysterious menace", as opposed to wasting effort sweeping things under the rug and looking like the bad guys off the X-files? Cover-ups are also wasteful of opportunity. Scientists can't collaborate. Intelligence sits un-analysed.

It feels looking in from outside, as if there are "pro continued cover up" and "pro managed disclosure" factions, and they are in a bit of a stand-off. The recent disclosure that the videos were genuine, for example, felt like the one faction had bought the release of that shocking information with the apologetic concession that "but they were never meant to be released to the public" which was included in the same statement.