I think that if I wanted to solve this at all costs, one of tve things I'd do (in addition to working with radar engineers and scientists of course) is to hire a number of magicians to get them to try to recreate the experience of the pilots.
Because those pilots are good and highly skilled, but so are Penn and Teller and they still get fooled from time to time so it is not impossible.
I.e. I disagree with everyone: those that underestimate pilots and say we don't have good photos and also those who think pilots are infallible.
I don't think you're quite understanding the endeavor at hand (which is my point): let's say they could replicate it, and now they have to deploy it in a live scenario.
So now they have to go off to the coast of the USA in a restricted area used for navy drills and testing, probably coming from the Pacific side. Let's say Penn and Teller get access to a brand new submarine from China that's has stealthy as they can be, enough to set up the experiment.
Then they had to stay there for days teasing both the ships radars and navy pilots by make things pop up on their radars and make them move large distances in short periods of time (seconds), and get them to chase radar blips.
Now comes the day that a squadron of jets are asked to check something nearby their location (which mean they have to tap into Navy communications systems), launch the illusion, make it react to the pilots unexpected behavior (one dove the other remained above), and then make it desapear (and then proceed to jam radars, to eventually exit out).
(This is roughly the story of the Fravor incident.)
I think just the first point, of entering USA waters, more specifically restricted waters and air space actively controlled by the Navy - which was doing drills - already shows technology superiority.
Which was my point.
They have to know what the radars and sensors are and how they work (hackers, compromised top level people), how to jam them (superior tech), how to be stealthy (superior tech), how to create illusions for jet pilots while fooling jet sensors (superior tech).
I'm not saying these are aliens, but surely looks like tech superiority or the whole defense system collapsing all together even the pilots.
If this was done by a couple of guys, with too much free time on a shoe string budget, that can fool the most advanced navy, well that's not good either.
I think that if I wanted to solve this at all costs, one of tve things I'd do (in addition to working with radar engineers and scientists of course) is to hire a number of magicians to get them to try to recreate the experience of the pilots.
Because those pilots are good and highly skilled, but so are Penn and Teller and they still get fooled from time to time so it is not impossible.
I.e. I disagree with everyone: those that underestimate pilots and say we don't have good photos and also those who think pilots are infallible.