- Date: November 14, 2004
- Location: Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego
- Time: Multiple instances
Five vessels had begun travelling together in US waters off the coast of San Diego in what is known as a carrier strike group. The purpose of this deployment was to conduct “workups”, or training exercises, prior to the carrier strike group’s deployment to the Arabian Sea. The lead vessel was the USS Nimitz, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. On its most recent training exercises, it had shared the waters with two destroyers, the USS Higgins and the USS Chafee; a state-of-the-art SPY-1 radar-equipped missile cruiser called the USS Princeton; and a nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Louisville. At the time the incident took place, the Nimitz and the Princeton travelled close together. The other vessels were otherwise occupied.
For nearly two weeks leading up to the incident, the radar operators aboard the Princeton had regularly logged UAP activity in the air surrounding the vessels. Over one hundred UAP. They performed acrobatics that would challenge any aircraft the radar operators had ever seen. They even popped up on the radar at 80,000 feet, where you begin to get into space, well above the normal envelope of aircraft, even military aircraft, with only a few notable exceptions, which include the U-2, the Blackbird, and the alleged Aurora. What’s more perplexing was that the objects would drop from 80,000 to 50 feet in a fraction of a second, then go right back up. There is no aircraft made by humans that can do that.
The Tic Tac encountered by the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group exhibited propulsive performance characteristics that imply a propulsion system power generation/output of 1.1 trillion watts. That is more than 100 times the daily electrical utility power generation in the US. Simply put, that is the power required to do what these things do. If an aircraft performs such a feat, you’d expect to hear a “crack” or sonic boom as it flies beyond the speed of sound. Operators in the vicinity detected no such boom. There was no acoustic signature, as we tend to say. It was as if the rules of normal physics didn’t apply.
The carrier strike group had relied solely on electromagnetic systems to track these things. Until then, no one had gotten eyes on the objects. That was all about to change. On this particular November morning, the radio operators spotted what looked like a fleet of UAP━fourteen of them, to be precise━in the vicinity of a training area designated for military maneuvers. Two US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets were conducting training exercises when they were asked to go get their eyes on the UAP. In each US Navy aircraft sits a pilot, known as the “front seater”, and a Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) colloquially pronounced “Wizzo”, also known as the “back seater”.
The senior pilot in the air that day was Commander David Fravor, who was considered one of the best Navy pilots. One of a rare breed, Fravor was often one of the few individuals who were known to run toward danger, not away from it. Commander Fravor graduated Top Gun with honors and was now the skipper of the elite Black Aces. His call sign, “Sex”, was an inside joke bestowed upon him by his colleagues upon graduating flight school━a rich and deep military tradition. On this particular mission, Fravor’s aircraft call sign was FASTEARGLE 01. In his back seat was Commander Jim Slaight, call sign “Clean”. An experienced and effective WSO, Slaight was often known as the “warheads on foreheads” guy, due to the precision with which he dropped his bombs.
Making up the other half of the team was another US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet piloted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Alex Dietrich, who was more skilled and deadly than her call sign━”New Girl”━suggested. Fresh out of training, Dietrich flew circles around her peers, probably the reason she was handpicked for her assignment with the Black Aces. Accompanying Dietrich as her WSO was another aviator known by the call sign “Noodle”. Together, New Girl and Noodle made up FASTEAGLE 02.
Fravor and Dietrich were flying their aircraft at approximately 20,000 feet when they both looked down into the sea. It was a forgeous day, the sea calm. In this one spot in the pacific, the water churned and roiled. It looked the way the surface of the water would look if a ship or some other vessel had sunk. There were whitecaps flaoting on the water and a giant patch of bubbles rising from them. At this moment, all four pilots noticed something even stranger. A bizarre obnject darted back and forth over the whitecaps, about 50 feet above the water. The obejct was about 46 feet long━about the length of a semitruck━and shaped like an elongated oval or cigar. The pilots would later recall the object’s gleaming whiteness, as if its exterior were covered with a white, candy-coated shell. That description would later inspire the UAP’s nickname. More unnerving was the way the Tic Tac performed over the roiling water. It moved unlike anything anyone had ever seen.
As Fravor closed in, the Tic Tac instantly trained itself on Fravor’s fast-approaching aircraft. The Tic Tac gained altitude as if intending to meet Fravor and Slaight somewhere in the middle, but the Tic Tac mirrored Fravor’s maneuver in a way that never permitted him to get any closer. Top Gun instincts kicking in, Commander Fravor aggressively headed directly for the Tic Tac. As Fravor and Slaight approached the Tic Tac━”poof”━it disappeared over the horizon in a split second. Never before had Fravor or Slaight encountered anything like this type of performance. Fravor felt his heart leap in his chest. Whatever this technology was, it was faster and more capable than anything the United States had in their inventory by an order of several magnitudes.
A few moments ticked before the Princeton contacted both Hornets. “You’re not gonna believe this, Commander”, the operator told Fravor. “Whatever that thing is, it’s at your CAP point!”
“What the━” Fravor muttered.
How was such a thing possible? The combat air patrol (CAP) point is a designated point that is preloaded into the aircraft and is used as a meeting point for navigation and exercises. Few people know the location of a CAP point; it is impossible to extract from aircraft systems themselves. Yet the Tic Tac somehow knew the intended meeting point of the two Hornets, though it was sixty miles away. Not only did the Tic Tac have secret information, but it managed to scramble to that location within seconds after leaving Fravor and Slaight in the dust. Low on fuel, Fravor wisely decided to end the exercise. Both jets zipped back to the carrier.
Upon hearing about this incident, another pilot eagerly offered to go find the Tic Tac. To everyone’s surprise, he found it. Seeing it on radar, and then with the naked eye, the pilot attempted to gain a lock on the Tic Tac. Cycling through various modes on his aircraft radar, he found it difficult to obtain one. UAP have been known to jam radar. Navy fighter pilot Lieutenant Chad Underwood managed to capture some video footage of the UAP, using Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared Radar (ATFLIR or FLIR for short).
There is quite a bit of mind-boggling information in that short video clip:
- First, the UAP defies the pilot’s attempt to get a good lock on it.
- Second, it has no wings, no air intake, no exhaust plume, no cockpit, and no distinguishable control surfaces.
- Third, it displays no heat or acoustic signature.
- Fourth, it’s flying at hypersonic speeds and able to execute a maneuver almost instantaneously.
The craft’s instant disappearance was also alarming. Both Underwood and Fravor/Slaight reported the UAP disappearing over the horizon in an instant. How was that possible?
Back in 2004, very little follow-up had been conducted when the pilots returned to the Nimitz. Several of the pilots later told Jay Stratton at AAWSAP/AATIP that they had been debriefed by intelligence officers. They saw no evidence of a subsequent investigation. Kicked up the chain of command, their story died. The senior master of arms on board the USS Princeton later told Luis Elizondo that during a routine SITREP (“situation report”) with senior brass aboard the ship, the captain dismissed the entire incident, saying, “Well, you had your fun with this. Let’s get back to work now.” By then, many crewmen aboard the Nimitz and the Princeton had shared the video via the government’s classified email system.
Underwood, an otherwise serious and focused pilot, never indulged in flights of fancy. Neither Fravor nor Dietrich had displayed any propensity to exaggerate. Their crews perceived them as the best of the best. Fighter pilots are trained to spot, and know the differences betwee, an Su-22, a MiG-25, and other similar-looking fighter jets from twenty miles away. They must then make a split-second decision: Is the obnject friend or foe? Should we shoot ir down or protect it? Beyond a few questions a NORAD investigator put to Underwood, I was told no other internal agency investigated the encounter. T
References & Sources
- Imminent by Lue Elizondo