Or they're observed over military facilities because that's the only location with a rigorous surveillance system.

Or that it’s the point of greatest interest for some adversary (alien or terrestrial )

Or from foreign entities wondering what’s up with our military facilities.

The calculus would be very strange because adversaries run the risk of losing the mint if it's shot down.

What mint? A drone? A balloon? These are relatively common for surveillance devices and can be quite small and can self destruct. Even the US does this, just isn't as flashy.

Or because they're sensor artifacts on military systems and those systems tend to be flown over military facilities.

> I have seen for myself on radar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)

Radar and infrared aren't infallible. The story of the pilot who saw something with his own peepers has my attention but I don't trust what they've only "seen" on instruments.

Have any NATO countries reported these?

The military budget of the rest of NATO combined is much smaller than that of the US. ... Why would aliens be interested?

They still build some stuff and if aliens have come all this way why not check out the whole planet?

No no. The aliens are only interested in the largest military budget obviously. Because the US can definitely stand against a FTL capable alien civ

My guess is if there was aliens they would be so totally disinterested in us they wouldn’t even distinguish between military and civilian. Just zipping around taking their measurements of the mineral deposits.

You have nothing to back that up and your gut goes against the closest thing we have to evidence...

If I was an alien race sending probes far and wide I would absolutely focus my attention on hotspots of military presence rather than the relatively benign nature and civilian existence.

What does an alien military look like?

Minerals are plentiful. If anything is interesting about Earth at all, it's its lifeforms and cultures.

If they were anywhere close to evenly distributed across the US or the globe, one would expect plenty of eyewitness data from commercial airline passengers.

That this phenomenon appears specific to personnel and locations related to US military bases seems like an important piece of data.

There are some historical reports floating about from when the soviets and US were working together after WW2 or something and shared information on these events.

A much simpler explanation than these are objects operated by the US military is that there is a selection bias with public awareness and media reporting on reports regarding the US military. I can think of at least a dozen plausible explanations as to why such selection bias would exist.

Worth bearing in mind these videos were originally leaked, so maybe all the mystery and intrigue is just damage control on behalf of the DoD?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul#Roswell_incident

I'll take the other side of this argument since Occams Razor may not be the tool for the job of understanding or characterizing these phenomena.

Since there are numerous reports spanning decades and even dating to the 19th century, before manned flight, and these reports come from all over the globe and the descriptions involve similar events and very similar observations between widely spaced events then it follows that these "UAPs" are not all likely to be related to a project operated by the US military.

I keep an open mind about everything that I don't understand until I have the data needed to form an opinion. I am not convinced that decades of reports from educated and uneducated people living in widely separated regions that all describe similar situations can all be related to secret operations carried out by one nation's military. I have a hard time branding all these people as delusional or as liars when I have never met them. I am also not qualified to assign any of this to any category except "unexplained and interesting enough to study".

What UFO reports predate the invention of flight?

Start from the top of the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings

>Since there are numerous reports spanning decades and even dating to the 19th century, before manned flight,

Manned flight dates to 1783, and engine-powered flight to 1851. Did you mean heavier-than-air flight?

Yes. Heavier than air flight. Thanks for that correction. Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person. There are several on record. It's a long interesting history that likely will never be explained to anyone's satisfaction since some of the reports from the late 19th century described airships that were operating low enough that observers could plainly see people through the windows of the airship. It seems to me that large, multi-passenger airships would've been loudly announced and advertised by those who built them since people even then were inclined to line up shouting "take my money" for the opportunity to be one of the first to have a ride.

> Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person.

Remember that the Kitty Hawk flights were done "secretly" with the hired photographer and some locals being the only 3rd parties present. The Wright brothers were back in Ohio flying advanced versions of their plane over farm fields before much publicity came of it, and even then almost nobody believed it. It was only when they took a plane to France and flew it around Le Mans that people truly believed.

EDIT - it was Le Mans, not Paris :)

I didn't know that. I assumed that the flight generated enough publicity that they became instantly famous.

It was reported, but not believed. Even over the course of the few years back in Ohio, the Dayton newspapers wrote stories and reporters witnessed flights, but the rest of the world thought it was all lies.

EDIT - it should probably be pointed out that the Wright brothers didn't think that powered flight, in and of itself, was all the useful without a method to control the aircraft. That's what they really worked on and really their most important contribution. There were a lot of people working on flying machines all over the world, but the Wright brothers had radically different ideas on how to control the aircraft (and ultimately they were correct). So there was a lot of incentive for others in the flying community to discount their success until it was too late to deny it.

Yeah - also, if something can travel light years and have no major signs of atmospheric entry and exit then they have definitely mastered cloaking. The f35B is pretty close already. There's way to many holes in the 'Alien Theory', to many technological absurdities. If these's truly are aliens, then they are the steam punk kind with awkward technological leaps.

The easy explaination is they are advanced military craft. Northrop Grumman built the B-2 in the late 80's and that already looks like a UFO to me. The US doesn't even publish it's full TS budget. The unclassiified spend on the f35 is almost $400B. Imagine what else the US been cooking up with it's unlimited checkbook and army of engineers at the big defense contractors.

> if something can travel light years

And for... decades. Even many times the speed of light requires the ship to travel decades (from the perspective of Earth or their home planet).

I definitely buy the US stealth tech. You dogfood your stealth technology with your own systems and own people. Unlikely to fool the enemy if you can't fool yourself. But I do think there are also likely foreign surveillance systems. These could be drones or even balloons (probably smaller than the one that made the news). Combine these two things (along with glitches, optical illusions, and just random shit falling from the sky) and it isn't surprising you see these events.

> The easy explaination is they are advanced military craft.

That's not easy at all given the alleged capabilities of these objects tracked across multiple sensor systems. An easier explanation is actually some kind of active sensor spoofing.

But that would also infer some kind of parapsychology effects to make the pilots see things. Or maybe a better version of the Havana syndrome gun?

All of these sensor systems operate on the electromagnetic spectrum, including our eyes. A device that creates a broad spectrum EM artifact seems conceivable.

Bingo.

One would imagine if someone in the 90s saw a Blackbird aircraft, would assume it's an unidentified body. Yet it is just not unclassified. Imagine the tech the RAF has now that will be unveiled in 20 years