The 2004 Nimitz "Tic Tac" Encounter: What the Record Shows

Bottom Line

On November 14, 2004, two F/A-18F Super Hornets from the USS Nimitz were sent to investigate radar contacts off Southern California. Their crews reported a white, wingless, oblong object that outmaneuvered them and vanished. The Navy has confirmed that the infrared video associated with the case is authentic and that the object remains unidentified. But the radar data and other sensor records that could test the witnesses' account have never been made public, and no official analysis has resolved the case.

The Case at a Glance

The Setting

In November 2004 the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was operating off the coast of Southern California, roughly 100 miles southwest of San Diego, at the start of a training cycle ahead of a deployment to the Persian Gulf. Retired Commander David Fravor, then commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41, the "Black Aces," described the setting in written testimony to the House Oversight Committee on July 26, 2023.

According to Fravor, air controllers on the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) told his flight that training was suspended for "real world tasking." The controllers, he wrote, "had been observing these objects on their Aegis combat system for the previous 2 weeks," with contacts "descending from above 80,000ft and coming rapidly down to 20,000ft," where they "would stay for hours and then go straight back up."

The Intercept, in the Pilots' Words

Fravor led a flight of two two-seat F/A-18Fs, giving four observers: two pilots and two weapons systems officers. The second pilot was then-Lieutenant Alex Dietrich. Arriving at the location at 20,000 feet on a clear day with calm seas, the crews noticed an area of disturbed white water.

"As all 4 looked down we saw a small white Tic Tac shaped object with the longitudinal axis pointing N/S and moving very abruptly over the white water," Fravor told Congress. "There were no Rotors, No Rotor wash, or any visible flight control surfaces like wings."

Fravor descended to get a closer look while Dietrich's aircraft stayed high to watch. He said the object turned to align with his jet and climbed toward him in a circling pattern. When he cut across the circle to intercept, at about half a mile, "it rapidly accelerated and disappeared right in front of our aircraft." The white water was gone too.

As the flight headed back toward its planned holding point, roughly 60 miles away, Fravor said the controller reported that the object had reappeared on the Princeton's radar at that point. By his account, it had covered the distance in less than a minute.

Dietrich has publicly corroborated seeing the object in interviews, including on CBS News' 60 Minutes, while generally stopping short of conclusions about what it was.

The FLIR1 Video

After returning to the carrier, Fravor told another crew preparing to launch what he had seen. That crew recorded the roughly 90-second infrared targeting-pod video now known as "FLIR1." Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood, a pilot in the squadron, has said in interviews that he recorded it.

The video's path to the public was not official. According to Navy spokesperson Joseph Gradisher, it was posted online by a crew member in 2007, and the Navy became aware of it in 2009. It reached a wide audience in December 2017, when The New York Times published it alongside its report revealing the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

In September 2019 the Navy confirmed the footage was genuine. Gradisher said the three widely circulated Navy videos, "one from 2004 and two from 2015," showed "incursions into our military training ranges by unidentified aerial phenomena," and that "the Navy has characterized the observed phenomena as unidentified."

On April 27, 2020, the Department of Defense formally released the videos. Spokesperson Susan Gough said the department was authorizing the release of footage that had been "circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017," to "clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos."

The video itself shows a small, dark infrared shape that the camera tracks before it moves quickly out of frame. On its own it cannot establish size, distance, or speed, and its significance depends heavily on the surrounding testimony.

The 2009 Review and the Delay

By Fravor's account, the Navy did not treat the event as an incident requiring investigation. "What is shocking is that the incident was never investigated, none of my crew were ever questioned, tapes were never taken," he told Congress.

He said he was first contacted about the case in 2009 by Jay Stratton, who he understood was working with a Defense Department program studying anomalous threats. A written summary of the encounter from that period, which Fravor calls "the Unofficial Official Report," later circulated publicly after it was obtained by journalists in 2018. It was not released through an official government channel, and its provenance has been debated.

What Official Offices Say Now

As of this writing, AARO has not published a case resolution report on the Nimitz encounter. Its former director, Sean Kirkpatrick, has told reporters that the case remains an unknown in part because the sensor data from 2004 is not available to analyze.

That leaves the case in an unusual position. It is officially acknowledged, the video is officially authentic, and the witnesses have testified under oath, yet the government has published no technical analysis of the event.

What Is Missing

• Radar data: the USS Princeton's SPY-1 radar tracks and any E-2 Hawkeye airborne radar data have not been released.
• Aircraft radar tape: Fravor says a separate tape showed the F/A-18F's APG-73 radar being jammed. It has not been made public.
• Full cockpit audio and mission records: the released FLIR1 clip is short and lacks the full flight context.
• Contemporaneous reports: no official incident report written at the time has been published.

Without these records, the most extraordinary parts of the case, including the altitude drops, the 60-mile relocation, and the radar jamming, rest on witness recollection rather than data the public can check.

How to Weigh the Case

Why it is taken seriously: the witnesses were trained aviators, several people observed the object at once, the aircrew say the observation was cued by ship radar, and a genuine military sensor recorded something the Navy could not identify. That combination is rare.

Why it remains unresolved: the public evidence consists mainly of testimony given years later and a short video that cannot establish range. The data that could confirm or challenge the account is either lost, classified, or unreleased.

Both believers and skeptics tend to claim more than the public record supports. A careful reading is that something unusual was observed by credible witnesses, and that the case cannot be resolved in either direction without the missing sensor data.

Timeline

Key Points

• The Navy and Pentagon confirmed FLIR1 is authentic and the object unidentified.
• The object's shape, maneuvers, and speed come from witness testimony, including sworn statements.
• Radar tracks, the radar tape, and contemporaneous reports have not been released.
• AARO has not published a resolution report on the case.
• The case cannot be resolved either way without the missing sensor data.

Primary Sources

• David Fravor: statement to the House Oversight Committee (2023)
• House Oversight hearing transcript, July 26, 2023
• Department of Defense: release of historical Navy videos (2020)
• NBC News: Navy confirms the videos (2019)
• The New York Times: Pentagon UFO program report (2017)
• CBS News: the Tic Tac pilots