It is always the question: What is the government/whatever group actually doing regarding UFO's?
It may be just silently watching, logging reports, keeping tabs on public sightings etc. If there really is any alien tech in such hands they have to be trying hard to grasp the fundamentals - I don't think we are anywhere near figuring out anti-grav or tapping the zero point energy field but just for the energy question it must be being looked into.
Is the 'group' lets call them, actively seeking out UFO data, or just passively? Chris' SLV project could be the type of thing they are doing but with ground radar and satellites. But to what end? I imagine the group has enough images and radar measurements etc that they probably do not need any more - there would have to be some really new novel data to bring any understanding forward.
It is my opinion that governments do take UFO's seriously. To not do so would be a severe dereliction of their duty. I think the data gathered from Rendlesham went straight into the hands of the group, a one-way process if ever there was one. Unless there has been actual contact, such as the stories of the president with the meeting and dentist cover story, they are no doubt quite in the dark like the rest of us.
When governments state 'of no defence significance' - that is obviously untrue but in a way, the fact there has not been a war of the worlds scenario to date leads me to believe they may have at least a fair idea we are not in imminent danger of attack. It could just be a case of watching and waiting. Of course, if they have the notion that ET may be rolling out a long term plan, there might be some furious research into giving us (humans) at least a chance of resisting dark intentions of ET.
It is of course frustrating, this endless speculation over what the government group's role is. It will really depend on any solid information they do or do not have.
I know this though, it is hard to track objects out in space. I once met a JPL radio astronomer named Steve Ostro - he did some scientific work with Carl Sagan - and Steve was one of about 5 people in the world then (1993) who's paid work was to look for possibly dangerous near earth asteroids (NEO's). I was at a BBQ at the home of the son of the man who patented 'window envelopes' for displaying addresses through the envelope - we all use them and it must have been a tidy income. Anyway myself and Steve got talking about his work, and having just met him, he asked if I understood logarithmic graphs - I was 2nd year of Applied Physics degree so I answered in the affirmative. He then proceeded to pull a little well-worn piece of paper with a graph on it detailing numbers of NEO's of various sizes and probabilities of coming close to earth.
Science geeks eh? Keeping a little graph in his wallet for such occasions as we were having, interested informed people coming his way often enough for him to want to carry that graph!
He explained that you do not need to go to far out in space from the Earth for it to be very hard to detect NEO's of under a certain size and it was these objects he was trying to find as they are the ones who's trajectory can be easily altered by getting close to eachother etc.
Anyway, I would imagine that the NRO have the capability to look OUT into space and surely sometimes UFO's leave Earth orbit and go elsewhere, even if to the moon or mars or moon of mars (mouthful). My point is, are there any directions that such craft often go in, leading them to possibly understand destination/point of origin? If such craft exist, I doubt they permanantly stick around in Earth orbit, so where else might they go? Can their destinations be worked out? Are these destinations being worked out? Are there ideas as to where in the galaxy they might come from?
Of course all this depends on the ETH, but for me the ETH is the most likely answer to UFO's - or flying saucers if we take Stan Friedman's line on the difference between UFO's and flying saucers/alien craft - so in my opinion this must be going on to a degree. This super secrecy associated with the NRO may indeed be because of such work. Everyone who matters knows about spy satellites etc but to me it seems the NRO is even more secretive than spy satellites warrant.
Back to Steve Ostro's work then: It is important work to keep an eye on NEO's but as I mentioned, it is not an easy task, though I don't know how that has improved in 20 years. An object in the solar system is just that, be it planet, asteroid, meteor or moon or UFO.
I imagine there probably are 'motherships' - possibly these very large cigar-shaped UFO's and very possibly even bigger, something that never enters the atmosphere.
So these very large ships, if they exist, are probably large enough to be tracked by radar for a fair distance away from earth, certainly far enough away to plot a course if they do indeed follow such courses.
Is it possible that even Steve Ostro's team had picked up motherships? They probably would look just like an asteroid to a radio astronomer? I've no doubt JPL would never publicly even entertain the idea and they may not have the resolution to detect any real shape etc.
Something about Steve too - I'll never forget how he was so methodical, even in conversation, and his wife was a real hippy type. My first and only conversation with her consisted of her asking me rhetorically, 'don't you think if aliens came here, they would think us animals?'
It seemed really strange for her to seriously be talking like that, a few meters away from her JPL employee husband, who I got the impression from that while not dismissing the possibility of alien life, he did not think they were anywhere near here right now. But I do wonder if it is conversations that Steve and his wife had had.
Has anyone else seen photos taken of constructed-looking large objects, out in the solar system a bit? They seem to show very large structures, if real, they certainly do not look like some natural meteor or rock conglomerate.
The tag-lines with these photos have them down as alien mothership type craft but obviously there is no evidence to go quite there. The pics appear to be genuine pics of something, but I am no photo analyst, and certainly not of objects out in space.
Might be interesting finding out the resolution available now to radio astronomy -would we be able to 'see' craft of the order of kilometers in size?
Sadly I read online that Steve had died a few years back, quite young, leaving behind 2 daughters and the wife, all of whom I met that day. If he had still been alive I most certainly would have used my meeting from back then as a pretext to contacting him with some hypothetical questions along these lines - I am happy in the knowledge that he was the type of guy who would send you data in a heartbeat, just out of scientific sharing and enjoyment from my appreciating his work.
A real shame, his loss. He had won scientific awards, had an NEO named after him, and his team had logged a good number of possibly dangerous NEO's that we keep an eye on to this day.