Why does the USAF still deny Rendlesham Forest happened?

It's 1980. Multiple military personnel witness a landed craft over three consecutive nights in Suffolk. We've got testimony, we've got declassified documents, we've got soil samples. Yet the official line is still 'weather balloon' or 'lighthouse reflection' depending on which day you ask them.

Why? What's the actual point of maintaining that lie? The Rendlesham incident happened. Hundreds of people know it happened. The only beneficiaries of pretending it didn't are the governments that know what it actually was and haven't got the bollocks to tell us.

Anyone got any thoughts on what they might have been hiding? Or am I just being paranoid?

Because admitting an unknown craft landed at a British RAF base with American nuclear weapons would cause absolute pandemonium. Nuclear deterrent is built on certainty and control. If the public knew we couldn't even defend our own airspace, the whole house of cards falls apart.

We've got testimony, we've got declassified documents, we've got soil samples.

Actually, we don't have verified soil samples. We have claims about soil samples. We have testimony from people with acknowledged interests in UFO narratives. We have documents that could mean literally anything. This is exactly why scepticism matters.

The Ministry of Defence released their official report in 2010 saying they investigated it thoroughly and found nothing extraordinary. You can literally read it. The fact that believers claim 'cover-up' no matter what evidence emerges (or doesn't) is the problem here.

Look at the bigger picture though. Why would they deny Roswell? Why the Robertson Panel in 1953? Why the memo telling NATO countries to shut down UFO reporting lines? There's clearly a coordinated effort across multiple governments to suppress information. Rendlesham is just one incident in a much larger pattern.

This is going to sound mental but I reckon it's not about the public panicking. It's about the fact they've made treaties with whatever's coming here, and they can't tell us because we'd never consent. It's not a cover-up to protect us - it's a cover-up to protect them.