Military personnel, who have had “close contact” ….
How close is close?
How many such persons?
Why do civilian pilots (whose total flight hours vastly exceed military pilots) report relatively very very few anomalies?
Why are all photos so very vague?
Why don’t we have any clear photos in the age of ubiquitous hi-res iPhones?
Why do they always show the same grainy crappy photos that I saw 40 years ago?
The short answer to most of your questions is “national security”, “secrecy” and “compartmentalization”.
If you are truly interested in the history of this topic here are some excellent books:
https://www.amazon.com/Nukes-Extraordinary-Encounters-Nuclear-Weapons/dp/1434398315
https://www.amazon.com/Confession-Hidden-Alien-Encounters-Revealed/dp/1695688856
It was a civilian pilot who created the term “flying saucer” back in 1947.
(Technically he called them “saucers” but the media added the “flying” part.)
If you were familiar with the decades of literature on this topic you would not be asking the questions you are asking.
Any civilian pilots who reported UFOs were in clear and present danger of losing their pilot’s license.
Military pilots were told to sit down and shut up...or else they would lose their military clearance. That was just the first threat. If necessary the threats got nastier.
Again—if you are truly interested in this topic these are classic historical texts that hold your hand and walk you through the basics:
https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State-Chronology/dp/1571743170
https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State-1973-1991/dp/0967799511
“How close is close?”
If you were familiar with the literature you would know that various craft have hovered directly over and/or landed on military bases in some cases with hundreds of witnesses—many of whom have come forward after all these years.
.Gov meanwhile ran a massive and expensive disinformation campaign to keep the public dazed and confused—and judging by many of the FR threads on this topic these efforts apparently were quite successful.
;-)