hmmm, so trained pilots misclassified a bird?

Turns out humans are fallible, even expert one. If we assume a very, very tiny chance that a trained pilot will misidentify a target, multiply that by the millions of hours of pilot flight time in the US military, and out pop some rare extreme outliers on a fairly regular basis.

But that isn't even speculation. We know the pilots misunderstood what they were seeing, because the telemetry data refuting their misunderstanding is right there on the recording.

To argue their case though, how often does the target tracking system they were using pick up a bird? They may never have seen it do something like that before, and may not even have known it was possible. Also it's one thing for a knowledgeable expert to calmly review and decode the telemetry data at a desk, but the pilot was a little busy also flying an airplane at the time.

But it could be a UFO from alpha Centauri!!!! Just kidding, I gotcha.