Radar-Visual (RV)

A radar-visual (RV) case is one where an object is tracked on radar and simultaneously observed by eyewitnesses, so two independent evidence streams — one instrumental, one human — corroborate the same anomalous return at the same time and place. That double corroboration is why RV cases sit at the top of ufology's own evidentiary hierarchy: a lone visual sighting can be misperception, and a lone radar blip can be a known propagation artifact, but a matching pair is much harder to wave away with either explanation alone. The July 1952 Washington, D.C. flap — radar operators at National Airport and eyewitness pilots reporting the same unidentified returns on two consecutive weekends — is the case that established the category and forced the Air Force to convene the Robertson Panel in response. Tehran, 1976, in which two Iranian F-4 fighters lost instrumentation while pursuing a radar/visual target, and the Belgian wave of 1989-92, tracked by NATO-liaised military radar alongside thousands of ground witnesses, extended the pattern into the jet age. Skeptics counter that radar itself is not infallible — anomalous propagation, where temperature inversions bend radar beams into false "ghost" targets, has explained a meaningful share of historical RV reports, including part of the Washington case.