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The "Tic Tac": What did the Nimitz pilots see in 2004?

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On November 14, 2004, two U.S. Navy fighter jets were directed to an unknown radar target over the Pacific Ocean. The pilots saw a white, wingless, pill-shaped object that, according to them, disappeared from in front of them at astonishing speed. The Pentagon officially released the infrared video of the incident in 2020, and still considers the object unidentified.

When: November 14, 2004
Where: World
Witnesses: Fighter pilots David Fravor and Alex Dietrich and their two weapons systems officers, and the radar operators of the USS Princeton. The video was recorded by the crew of another aircraft.
Official position: According to the U.S. Department of Defense's 2020 statement, the phenomenon seen in the video remains unidentified. According to the Navy's report, the incident was confirmed by interviewing the crew, but very little data is available for technical analysis.

Exercise over the Pacific Ocean

In November 2004, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its escort ships were conducting exercises southwest of San Diego, near the coast of Mexico's Baja California. The group was preparing for a Middle East deployment. The airspace was monitored by the cruiser USS Princeton, which had an advanced Aegis radar system.

David Fravor, who at the time commanded one of the Nimitz's fighter squadrons, the VFA-41 Black Aces, wrote in a written statement given under oath before the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023 that the Princeton's radar operators had by then been tracking unknown targets for about two weeks. According to his account, these rapidly descended from above 80,000 feet (about 24 km) to about 20,000 feet (about 6 km), stayed there for hours, then climbed back up vertically.

The encounter

On the morning of November 14, two two-seat F/A-18F Super Hornets took off from the Nimitz for an air combat exercise. One was flown by Fravor, the other by Alex Dietrich, and each had a weapons systems officer in the back seat. The aircraft were unarmed. The Princeton's air controller announced that the exercise was being suspended and directed them to a real target.

When the aircraft arrived above the radar target at about 20,000 feet, the pilots saw nothing on their own radar. The sky was clear and the sea was calm. Fravor noticed a white, frothing patch on the surface of the water below to his right, which he described in an interview with CBS as the size of a Boeing 737. Above the patch, a small, white, pill-shaped object was moving back and forth erratically.

According to Fravor, the object had no rotor, wings, or any other visible control surfaces, and no exhaust trail was visible. He estimated its size as similar to that of his own fighter jet. According to a report later released by the Navy, the object was solid white, smooth, without edges, and about 14 meters long.

It disappeared right in front of us

Fravor and his weapons systems officer descended to take a closer look, while Dietrich stayed above them to keep both in sight. According to Fravor's statement, the object turned its long axis toward his aircraft and began climbing in a spiral. When Fravor, at about 4,600 meters, came within roughly 800 meters of the object, which was at about 3,700 meters, it suddenly accelerated and disappeared in front of his aircraft. Dietrich, who was flying about 2,400 meters higher, also lost sight of it. When they turned back, the frothing patch had also disappeared from the water.

According to Fravor, the Princeton's air controller then reported that the object had reappeared on radar at the aircraft's holding point about 100 kilometers away, less than a minute later.

Dietrich told CBS's 60 Minutes that the object's movement was unpredictable, and that it was unsettling that they could not categorize it as anything.

The video

The returning pilots told what had happened to a crew that was just about to launch. In the afternoon, another F/A-18F took off, equipped with an infrared targeting camera (ATFLIR). The weapons systems officer in the back seat, Chad Underwood, briefly locked onto an oval heat signature with the camera and recorded it. The aircraft's crew did not see the object with their own eyes, so they could not confirm whether it was the same one as in the morning. This recording later became the video known as "FLIR1."

According to Fravor's statement, the video shows that the object does not emit the infrared plume typical of ordinary jet engines. According to him, the aircraft's radar recording would also have shown that the object was jamming the radar, but this recording was not made public.

An anecdote instead of an investigation

According to Fravor, the incident was never investigated: the crew was not interviewed, the recordings were not collected, and a few days later it was just a good story among friends. According to the report released by the Navy in 2023, the incident report stalled at the 3rd Fleet because there was no procedure for forwarding it. The events could be confirmed after the fact by interviewing the crew, but very little data remained for technical analysis.

How did it become world famous?

2007: the video was posted online without authorization, but hardly anyone noticed it.
2009: a 13-page summary of the incident was produced in the name of AATIP, the Pentagon's secret UFO research program. The document's author and official status are disputed, because it is unsigned and undated.
December 16, 2017: the New York Times reported on the AATIP program and the Nimitz incident in an article, and also published the video. The Department of Defense later also called this release unauthorized.
September 2019: the Navy confirmed that the video is genuine and that it considers the object seen in it an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP).
April 27, 2020: the Pentagon officially released the video together with two other Navy recordings. According to the statement, the phenomena remain unidentified.
July 26, 2023: Fravor testified under oath before a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. According to him, the object far surpassed anything the United States had at the time, has today, or will have in the next ten years.

What do the critics say?

According to American skeptic analyst Mick West and researchers on the Metabunk forum, the FLIR1 video on its own does not prove extraordinary performance. According to them, the heat signature seen in the video is also consistent with the body of a distant jet aircraft and the glow of its engines, and the object's distance, size and speed cannot be reliably determined from the recording. According to the critics, the object's sudden "shooting off" at the end of the video may also result from the camera's tracking and zoom.

The critics have not found a convincing explanation for the eyewitnesses' account either.

The sober take

What is certain: On November 14, 2004, the four-person crew of two Navy fighter jets flew to an unknown radar target, and according to the pilots they saw a white, wingless object about 14 meters long above the water. On the same day, another aircraft recorded an oval heat signature with an infrared camera. The Navy and the Department of Defense officially consider the phenomenon unidentified.

What is not proven: The Princeton's radar data and the fighter jets' radar recordings are not public. The claims about extraordinary speed and radar jamming are based on the eyewitnesses' account and cannot be verified with measurement data. The author and official status of the 2009 summary are disputed. It is also not known for certain whether the afternoon video shows the same object the pilots saw in the morning.

Strengths and weaknesses of the explanations:

Distant aircraft in the video: this may explain the FLIR1 recording, but not the close-range, visually observed encounter in the morning.
Camera distortion: this may explain the sudden "disappearance" seen at the end of the video, but not the pilots' account.
Secret American or foreign device: according to the pilots and the Navy, no such device is known, and there is no evidence for this either.
Perception error: four experienced aviators saw the same thing at the same time, which is a strong argument for the credibility of the account. At the same time, estimating distance and speed over open water, without a reference point, is difficult.

Open question: The most important evidence in the case, the ship's and the aircraft's radar data, has not been publicly analyzed. Until it surfaces, the Nimitz incident rests on the credibility of the eyewitnesses and a short video that can be interpreted in many ways.