... but aren't the observations itself part of the standard narrative, and the nonstandard part is how people explain them? (One standard explanation being that they are just some next-level high-tech stuff being tested.)
> but aren't the observations itself part of the standard narrative
Only in a technical sense.
When people talk about UFOs, they are not referring to known things like weather balloons, planes or fighter jets, but, instead, to something out of the ordinary. However, every "standard" explanation offered is one of these things.
I assume you mean UFOs as in "alien flying saucers".
I think the rationally correct belief is that we simply have no evidence of aliens at this time, and since we virtually know absolutely nothing about what pilots saw (all we know is that there are these observations), we just fall back to our priors (base assumptions). Sure, it might be aliens. And hence the ancient aliens meme. It might all be secret military stuff. (Or the mix of the two, hence the storm Area 51 meme.)
And in this case I don't see what's wrong with the standard narrative.
If there are truly aliens flying regularly in our atmosphere we should strap a few 4K recorders on regular airline planes, and we just have to wait.
Not to mention the increasing number of space launches and spacecraft up there. And increasing number of downward looking observatories.
You can come up with any number of scifi-ish explanations: aliens, humans from the future, lost/forgotten civilizations. But it could also be someone testing an uncommon craft.
Frankly, we don't know, and one of the reasons is, I believe, people are hesitant to take a serious look at it (or even talk about it) because they don't want to be classified as kooks.
