A rational person would ask if these objects are UFOs that have travelled the unimaginable distance of a hundred light years or perhaps are they advanced stealthy drones perhaps even secretly designed and being tested by the US Air force or a hostile power.
Say you're running a black development operation. Maybe making some kind of stealthy recon drone or multipurpose recon/attack system. But this is very, very close-hold. You know politicians and their staffers might as well be a direct line to our adversaries. Regrettably even some personnel high up in the military chain of command have become more political animals than fighting men and women. So this is strictly "need to know" and no-one not directly involved needs to know. No one.
How do you test it? The contractor developing it claims it is of course the best thing since sliced bread. It is the be-all end-all of stealth tech. "No one can see this xyz high-zoot, velco-enabled, dolphin-friendly wedge..." You don't want to run big test campaigns. Aviation buffs and our adversaries watch for those, they are very public. But you want to put it through it's paces and verify that it can do what is claimed and that it can do it without getting caught doing it... So why not put it up against the best military tech out there - the US? Just make sure it is not doing anything overtly hostile that might get it shot-down / destroyed in case it does get detected. But make it an unannounced test. Good training for the military, valid test for the contractor's widget...
Of course not everything works quite as well as advertised on the first try. Some things might get detected due to unforeseen circumstances or plain old screw-ups. (defense contractors are human too) Deny you're doing anything - remember, no-one needs to know. Since these things literally are "unidentified" flying objects, lump reports into the files with the rest of the alien sightings and cattle mutilation crowd. Instant cover for your black program. Berate the contractor, come back with a dot rev, lather, rinse, repeat...
Are there no other options?
That doesn't sound rational so far.
And why do they use the same photographer that takes pictures of Bigfoot. Grainy, long distance, distorted...
Don’t think they are traveling hundreds of light years. I think they skip in and out like a stone over water.
So the travel is in the end, less.
Awful lot of assumptions there. Is that thing an object? Maybe. Did that object travel the vast distances of space? No way to know. Drones? USAF isn't saying.
Conjecture 1: If the thing in the sky is objectively an object, and it's manmade, then no sane military-industrial manufacturer is going to tip their hand to the enemy. Safe bet.
Conjecture 2: If the thing in the sky is objectively an object, and if it is not made by man, then it is made by something other than present day humans. Also a safe bet, but odds are diminished.
Conjecture 3: If the object is made by something other than present day humans, then what are the likely of these unlikely options? Aliens? Time Travelers? Interdimensional thingy whatsits? Demons? Angels?
SubConjecture A: Demons or Angels? How do you even show evidence for that? Witness testimony. Not a safe bet.
SubConjecture B: Interdimensional thingy whatsits? Not sure how you would present evidence for that? "MIST" creatures crawl out of CERN? Not a safe bet.
SubConjecture C: Time Travelers? I guess you could build a quantum/ quantum- entangled computer that would transmit information back to the time of its original creation so that current people could get future tech blueprints with which to build, but I don't thing we're there yet, and that doesn't explain strange "objects" in the skies in prior decades/centuries. Not a safe bet.
SubConjecture D: Aliens. So far there's no evidence of life anywhere except Earth and low Earth orbit. Still, the ingredients surely exist all over the universe.
Extraterrestrial Hypothesis: If alien life exists, and if they have developed advanced civilizations, even millions of years ago, the speed of light is the speed of light, and it's highly doubtful little Glrxix would jump into a little saucer and cross the vast distances of space in one. Odds - no way!
Aliens take a mothership here and only use their little saucers and triangles as local shuttles. Still a long way to travel. How do you sustain a crew over thousands of years? Not a safe bet.
Aliens create and program AI self sufficient as to be self replicating. They could build sub light probes that could carry the source alien's DNA samples along with anything else they need to start terraforming (alien forming) planets or monkeying with the local life to make the alien DNA better suited to the target planet's biosphere. Birth them in tubes and let 'em go crazy with their new planet - just buzzing around in their shuttles and checking in on how their hybrid experiments are going. So while the AI probes could take thousands of years to get to other stars, AI don't care. AI goes to sleep except for course corrections and little nibbles of energy here and there. Not a safe bet, but of the ETH, the most probable of the improbable in my opinion.
BINGO