Regarding top-secet projects, I think it's very real we have technologies that are beyond our public understanding, but the problem is when hysteria runs rampant because people tend to react very emotionally to the notion of something being top-secret.
A good example of hysteria running away with things is Roswell.
A scientist came forward several years ago who was involved in the Roswell incident. He revealed that the US government had developed a top secret project with the intention of listening to nuclear experiments from the Soviets. The technology used in the project involved sending up a large balloon with a payload that had a highly tuned microphone that was designed to detect nuclear explosions from 3000 miles away. The technology was based on ultrasound.
The codename for the project was incidentally called "flying disc" and unfortunately in testing the balloon got ripped to shreds in the atmosphere and crashed down in Roswell.
Afterwards, the Roswell airforce was then tasked to recover the crashed balloon. This was so that the Soviets did not discover that the US government had the technology to listen for Soviet nuclear bomb testing.
However due to the press and media relentlessly trying to find out what the crash was, they did partly uncover the project name "flying disc". But the name "flying disc" then became "flying saucer" due to the media trying to make headline stories and sell newspapers, and then it just took off into a form of its own which became a completely different version of events. But the US government didn't mind, because it distracted people from what the real secret was.
