Why is Rendlesham Forest still classified? Serious question.

Right, I know this gets done to death, but we're now over 40 years past the Rendlesham Forest incident and the UK Ministry of Defence documents are still heavily redacted or locked away. The Americans released their UAP report, there's actual congressional hearings happening, and we're still playing games with paperwork from 1980.

Why? If it was a weather balloon or Venus or whatever the skeptics say, what's still classified about it? Either:

A) It was something genuinely unexplained and we're being kept in the dark for "national security"
B) It was something embarrassing and they're protecting an institution's reputation
C) It's genuinely just bureaucratic nonsense and nobody knows where the files are

Thoughts? Anyone got any actual information about Freedom of Information requests on this?

Mate, you're assuming the government even knows what it was. Bureaucracies don't keep secrets well - they keep things classified because the original classification decision is never revisited. It's probably filed under three different systems now and nobody's bothered to consolidate it.

The fact that it's still redacted after 44 years is actually proof of something unusual, not proof of a cover-up. If it was Venus or a plane, why wouldn't they just say so? The redactions suggest they either don't know or it was something they didn't want acknowledging at the time for military reasons.

I filed an FOI request in 2019. Got back four pages of mostly black marker pen. Literally cost me the request fee just to receive heavily redacted information. The system is designed so you can't actually find anything out. By design.

Either: A) It was something genuinely unexplained and we're being kept in the dark for "national security" B) It was something embarrassing and they're protecting an institution's reputation C) It's genuinely just bureaucratic nonsense and nobody knows where the files are

None of those options explain why we're still classifying it. The answer is almost certainly D) because revealing what happened is more embarrassing than the mystery. British institutional pride basically.

The interesting thing nobody talks about is the US involvement. Those were US Air Force personnel on a British base. America's the one that probably wanted it classified, and we just went along with it. That's the real story - the "special relationship" preventing transparency.