What motivation is there for her to falsely say she's shocked?

Not wanting to admit that she knows perfectly well what it is she is doing, seems to be the obvious explanation. Like, what else could it be; how could one not understand that this must be it?

Couldn't she have just not told dleslie the details? dleslie said the friend gave dleslie many more details. If the friend was ashamed of what she was doing, I think it would have been much simpler for her to only say very briefly what she worked on, like flight control software, but not go into any details and say it's confidential.

Intentionally giving a ton of details that will lead to dleslie figuring it out seems counter to her goal of not admitting what she's doing. Also her giving out this information sounds like it might actually be breaking confidentiality agreements.

If you're not familiar with different types of bombs and weapons then you might not have even heard of a glide bomb before. And someone else suggested engine-out situations on drones or de-orbiting satellites.