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What makes me highly skeptical of the "totally aliens" take is, according to all currently known physics, it's impossible to travel between stars in a remotely reasonable timeframe without an engine with such massively powerful output that it'll be obvious to everyone, especially considering it would pretty much have to be pointed directly at the Earth.
This means that either 1. There are no aliens because it would be blindingly obvious, or 2. Any existing aliens that have made it here have technology capable of bypassing this apparent requirement, which would be so far beyond anything we can conceive of that we would probably be effectively primitive apes to them. And if they're that advanced, why are they spending their time zipping around the Earth in weirdo semi-invisible craft that can only occasionally be seen but never really interact with us. They'd be perfectly capable of taking whatever they want.
If aliens want minerals or lebensraum, there's no shortage out there. They would only be here for observation or fun. There's nothing to take, only sights to see or cheap laughs from messing with the locals.
You could definitely make a Von Neumann probe with only our known physics, that's enough to get a presence in every star system in the galaxy.
One could also conceive of stealthy engines with obscenely high exhaust velocities, directed in a tight beam so they're hard to see. Or perhaps some gigantic coilgun that accelerates a package to relativistic speeds. What do we know about high-speed space travel, we've got no experience at all!
What you're missing is that they have to slow down. They can't just go fast and stay that way, then they crash fast.
And slowing down requires exhaust pointed back vaguely in earth's direction, I would think.
Two beams of cold exhaust (more efficient that way, even), each angled epsilon radians off center in opposite ways, would be basically invisible but would still be 100% minus epsilon squared as efficient.
The bigger reason there's said to be No Stealth In Space is heat - your power plant will have to radiate a ton of waste heat, your life support will be warm, etc. But the catch is that your radiators don't have to be omnidirectional. A peer doesn't care; they can have a network of sensors in every direction ... but hiding from 21st century Earth would be easier.
I still don't believe in alien visitors. You can't hide the Dyson cloud they came from. If their tech can't get a Dyson cloud (enough orbital colonies to occlude their star noticably) operational they probably can't get here either; if their science is so advanced they don't need a Dyson cloud then they probably won't screw up and be seen while they're here. If their tech is still in flux ... why? the Universe is billions of years old; it would require a huge coincidence for the most advanced alien intelligence in our galaxy to be mere millenia ahead of us rather than eons ahead or behind.
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The UFOs we observe seem to have no problems with inertia or producing enormous plumes of exhaust. Maybe there's a physics breakthrough they've made that we aren't aware of.
Alternately, one could pulse the engine in other directions than directly towards Earth. Move the angle up 1 arcsecond and you're still decelerating but the particles will go past the Moon. Or use some planet as cover for your burn. Or use any technology or tactic that a peak-superintelligence could come up with, given stellar-scale resources. I can't stress enough how much we don't know about post-singularitarian civilizations, we are not in a position to define their capabilities and limits.
Maybe the probes arrived a million years ago - it seems overly convenient that we should reach technological civilization within 100 years of aliens first arriving. If they're out there, they ought to meet us in the distant past or distant future.
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