Anyone that thinks these "whistleblowers" are real should take a look at the track record of america on its treatment of real whistleblowers.
Real whistleblowers in the US go to prison, mysteriously die or flee the country to non-extradition countries.
This shit doesn't even stand up to the most basic level of critical thinking. If they were actually blowing the lid of some grand conspiracy that the US military doesn't want you to know they would be treated like that's what they're doing.
Not to mention, the term isn't "alien aircraft". It's unidentified flying objects (i.e. aircraft). Those balloons from China were originally UFOs too. All a UFO is, is unidentified. It's a gigantic logical leap to presume that an object is alien just because it's unidentified. It's the exact same sort of thinking that leads to religion and attributions to God. Lack of information or understanding doesn't mean the banal explanation is impossible.
Plus, no government program on this scale is ever going to remain secret. We know the moon landing isn't faked because of just how many people would've had to agree to keep it a lie and stick to a careful narrative. The same is 100% true of aliens.
People still bring up the ""spy"" balloons despite the fact the US gov has basically pulled back on everything it said about them, it's so fucking weird, they were just boring weather balloons but they were used to cause such a ridiculous amount of drama.
Everyone's standard for evidence is basically crap. No evidence required just need some guys to say "yeaaaah totally, trust me bro" and that's that. This lack of any standards for evidence is leads to people believing made up bullshit like Iraq having WMDs as a justification for war. It allows them to put testimonies of things out there and people will just believe them on testimony with no actual material evidence required.
You're more spot on than you may know. The assessment by the CIA and American intelligence was that Saddam may have had WMDs. They had no certainty, but the Bush administration presented it that way regardless.
That and every media outlet went nuts with breakdowns of what the facilities could be, what bunker busters could achieve, what kinds of weapons and how fast they could be made, all so we could invade a country we had no business invading (Well, Haliburton and Raytheon had business), kill tons of innocents, and bomb a baby formula factory...
It was masterful, if absolutely damnable, politics. People were agitated because of 9/11. If you could successfully tie any group to the attack, you'd have popular support for attacking the group.