To your first point, a lot are around bases and rural areas, but there's a lot of sightings in large cities as well. (Phoenix for example)
Sure. Large urban areas are bound to have some sightings; especially considering all the extra possible explanatory phenomena happening around densely populated areas and the sheer number of possible observers. However, when adjusting sightings for per capita, rural areas, military bases, and test ranges are the hot spots.
To the 2nd, most critics say it's "our" tech, so to say most can't connect the dots isn't true. Even hardcore believers admit a percent of sightings aren't otherworldly. Still the question where the technology comes from is legitimate. It's not just a few decades ahead.
They end up being the exact same question, just proposed slightly differently. Essentially, the crux of the issue is whether UFO technology (tic-tac and others) are a result of human-only US black projects or a result of aliens/alien-assisted technology drop?
There are two main persuasive arguments for the former:
1) The US military white platforms are still propelling US military dominance via cutting-edge technology. This is astonishing given the fact that there hasn't been a fundamentally new US military white technology released in over 40 years; stealth technology was developed in the 70's. For the most part, we have been recycling, slightly modifying, and repurposing old technology to meet the needs of new platforms as time progressed. This is especially true of aircraft technology with respect to speed. The SR-71 is still the fastest air-breathing (white) plane despite being developed in the late 50's and early 60's.
Within the last 40 years, US black projects have had virtually unlimited budgets, the smartest engineers, and the best supercomputers (also black projects) to develop new fundamental technological advances. It should also be noted, that the US places supreme importance on air dominance technology in comparison to other countries. Thus, it isn't a stretch to imagine US black air dominance projects having technology sufficiently advanced which would be indistinguishable from "magic" to the average person; no different than taking a smartphone to someone 40 years ago.
Couple caveats. Bear in mind, I am referring to the new fundamental technology. There have certainly been a lot of cool technology released, think looking through a platform and targeting with only your eye balls, but that isn't really fundamental. One could certainly make the argument of AI being a fundamental new technology. I would agree. There have been whispers of AI being developed 20-30 years ago for black project design and cyber capabilities.
2) While it is almost a statistical certainty that there is other (intelligent) life in the universe, there is almost the same statistical certainty that such alien life is not traveling to Earth via propulsion. Propulsion, liberally defined as any technology which moves a physical object through spacetime (could be wrap drives, not just our caveman oxidizing chemicals via Newton's third law propulsion), is utterly insufficient for intergalactic travel. Thus, any alien visiting Earth would be doing so via interdimensional travel. Documented UFO technology is obviously moving through spacetime vs interdimensional. Thus, we can safely rule out aliens traveling to Earth via observed UFO technology.
The most generous argument for aliens intervention would be interdimensional aliens technology dropping for the US military and no one else.
