This. Being a pilot is a lot of work. Depending on the craft, there’s a lot of things you must know and commit to memory; some things shouldn’t be committed to memory (best if technical manuals, standard operating procedures, etc are used).

Very experienced pilots share similarities with very experienced engineers. Maybe the analogy I’m looking for is: an engineer might not know the capabilities and limitations of each peripheral device they use, but can still be experienced. Also bear in mind, that this type of piloting is a high-stakes job; extraterrestrial craft are arguably less common than those made on earth and the pilots probably take this into consideration.

That said, I think this this whole ordeal is really interesting. Reading the comments, I think the “lasers” and “plasma” stuff + dropping “vehicle” from the nomenclature (i.e. “unidentifiable aerial phenomenon”) is rather interesting.