I've talked about Ufos with a family friend, ex pilot for the French army who is now high ranked (responsible for all flights security, whatever this entails, while still doing mandated monthly flight hours) at a commercial flight company (got upgraded to business twice :)).

He told me he thinks most UFO sighting from military pilots are probably just a combination of tiredness, speed and high g hallucinating. But especially speed. The most UFOs sightings were by American pilots at the time the F14 and F15 were in service and at the time when breaking mach1, or even mac2 was done a lot more (when he retired he flew at mach1 for 10 minute during his yearly 120h).

Aren’t there sensor readings confirming the sightings?

I don't know much about the subject. For him it's mostly confusion over seeing smaller aircrafts at very high speed, and sometimes hallucinations (from high G or lack of oxygenation due to high speeds and poorly functioning masks).

His arguments are that it's mostly pilots from older aircrafts (and especially f14 and f15) who saw Ufos.

Tbh I don't care much about UFO, it was just a topic at the time because there was a crop circle made by students (they paid for the crops obviously). I didn't pushed much against him.

I see. The theory that they're hallucinations is unlikely to be correct because the UAPs register on different sensors: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelima...

> Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.

There is a false assumption that US pilots would be aware of most US produced spy equipment being deployed or tested by the US government in US airspace.