I agree that there are probably several distinct things behind the whole UFO phenomenon. I do happen to think that at least part of it may be due to non-earth intelligences, but whether they come from another solar system, another time, or are camped out somewhere in our system I do not venture to guess.
One only has to look at the sheer diversity of unexplained objects in the sky to see that many sources may be behind it all. If you are to look at what has been recorded in Hessdalen in Norway, even just there in one location there is what appears to be vastly different phenomena going on. There are various intriguing light displays happening that look nothing like structured craft, moving at incredible speeds etc but there are also reports and at least one video of what seems to be an actual craft flying over the area. I sometimes wonder if ET might be investigating certain strange lights in the sky phenomena themselves?
If we look at the 'flotilla' phenomena that seems to be made up of bright small spheres and compare that with say, the Belgian triangle craft or indeed the huge boomerang craft from the Phoenix lights episode, to me these are so distinct and different that it almost makes more sense for there to be different intelligences behind these different UFO types.
I've often wondered at the sheer number of different craft and lights seen, could we be talking of just different 'models' of UFO piloted or controlled by one species? On earth we have quite an array of different cars and airplanes, so why could an ET race not have different types of craft?
I tend to think that if we are indeed being visited by an ET race then it is just as likely we are being visited by several. For a number of reasons I have never been too taken by the whole abduction thing but at the same time, the sheer number of reports leads me to think 'no smoke without fire' -it's just that along with UFO sightings I am sure there are many people who are making stuff up for whatever reason and it is hard to seperate the genuine from the outright fraud.
One thing I do take issue with is the thinking that because an ET race might be so far in advance of us that they would view us as mere ants - at most something that might get squashed under your shoe and nothing more. I do not subscribe to this at all. My reason is that if we look at humans and ants, what do we have in common? We eat, live on the earth, breath, reproduce etc but further than that, nothing really. We have no reason to think ants have a culture or technology or rational (or any) thought.
Even if some ET race was way ahead of us in technology and socially too, it could not escape their attention that we also have science and technology, even if it is primitive by their standards. To get where they may be now, they would still have had to research their surroundings, have theories, experiments, failures and successes. They absolutely would have to have mastered the EM spectrum quite early on. Because of this, they could not fail to notice that we also use electro-magnetic waves and that we have some understanding of the principles the universe is made of.
So I would have a hard time thinking that they would ignore this part of us and only view us as we view ants - no way, despite our differences we would still have an awful lot in common at least in science, even if it is something in common with their past. If we survive another few millenia and go out into wider space and we come across an intelligent species who has got as far as using electricity and radio waves, we would not consider them insignificant, just nowhere near as advanced. That is very different than how we consider insects etc surely?