People generally don't "believe" in UFOs until they actually see one. I think that is entirely appropriate.
I have seen them twice. The first time was when I was a around 16 in San Jose when I was in the back seat when we went to watch "Goldfinger" at the San Jose drive in movie theater. It was a bit dusky with the sunset, and I couldn't see the movie very well in the back seat, so I stuck my head out the window and watched airplanes, which were common because of the nearby airport.
I looked up to see a craft flying generally toward the sunset, and I was astounded to see it do a perfect square wave maneuver in the sky. It looked "normal" until it took an abrupt and rapid perfect right angle turn across a section of sky toward the left, then just as abruptly another perfect and rapid right angle turn to proceed along it's regular trajectory at the regular speed, but in the area of the sky transected by the immediate right hand turns. It did this twice more, going back to it's original trajectory, then away again before proceeding toward the dusk and out of sight.
I was gobsmacked, and it really created a brain worm. I didn't think at the time that it was anything other than a military aircraft, and I searched the paper for weeks for news about it. I also couldn't find anything in the library (no internet in those days). It was very frustrating. I would on occassion try to find out info about craft doing such things, but never found any satisfactory answer.
It wasn't until 13 years later that I was perusing paperbacks, and saw one on UFOs and read through it to find the "rapid right angle" behavior described as typical of UFOs, and not vaguely within the capabilities of any human aircraft. I bought the book and read it and have been interested in the topic ever since.
The second time was in 1990 in the Napa Valley. I was round the geysers area around Calistoga, and saw a smooth grey lozenge flying without any noise and at a jet like speed north along the valley. Any aircraft in these areas put up quite a racket because of all the reflections. The lozenge looked to be about the size of a small cub airplane. Apparently, there have been times when these lozenges have been sighted in Napa Valley by quite a few people.
Haven't seen any since, though I always look at the skies with a sense of anticipation that I will see another one, they are pretty freaky to see, and at least in me they created a deep sense of dread. I have seen comets, meteorites, satellites, flaming space wreckage, but nothing else unexplained.
I have no problem with skeptics or non-believers, because that is a rational state of mind for anybody who has not seen these things to disbelieve them.
James Oberg is probably a very useful skeptic because he is so intimately familiar with all of the launchings and sky phenomena, knows geography, satellites, etc. so he is good at reigning in a lot of hysteria over UFOs. He doesn't gaslight much, and really tries to stick to factual events in the vicinity of sightings.
I, of course, avoided saying anything about my own sightings because I didn't want anybody to think I was crazy, but now that I am retired, I don't care.
The government position seems to be that even if these things breach our air space, if they present no immediate discernible threat, that any other information the government has about them is none of the public's business. Europe and Russia pretty much regard UFOs an issue of fact, not speculation, and the American government's continued secrecy and assault on the people who see these things really doesn't have the justifications that it used to, if it ever did.
That was just the 1st link that showed up, there are many more sources of information on the topic of Paul Hellyer and many others with military credentials who have written on the topic.
