>At this point, I believe that this was a fairly orderly shutdown (temporary or permanent) that wasn't communicated very well. The "FBI" and "Blackhawk helicopter" were probably federal employees removing federal property from the observatory's antenna arrays before handing it over to the university. I suppose it's possible that some of that could have been classified, since it's situated within line of sight of a military base where project testing occurs and it's conceivable that they might have used that site to received telemetry, but I don't see any reason to think that it's anything more than a case of poor communication between agencies and a pile-on by people who aren't familiar with the details and who want to see something that isn't there.

Also, it's really common to go overkill for training purposes.

For example, sending two F15s to go sit on the ground at an air show includes them refueling mid-air and intercepting a B52 that's also headed to the same air show so they can check those training boxes.

Sending the Navy seals to fast-rope in to an observatory and recover the federally owned gigabit switches from the telecom closet is the kind of overkill you get in the name of training.