---- ## Overview - **Source**: declassification and witness testimony - Witness (F/A-18 Pilot) - [[👤 David Fravor]] - Witness (Master-At-Arms) - [[👤 Sean Cahill]] - **Incident Type**: #UAP #encounter - **Incident Date**: 2004 - **Reported Date**: 2019 - **Author**: [[🏛️ United States Navy]] declassified video from the USS Nimitz - **Location**: Off the coast of Sothern California - **Trust Score:** 54/65 - <span style="color: limegreen;">HIGH</span> <details> <summary><b>Trust Score Analysis</b></summary> <IMG src="https://publish-01.obsidian.md/access/1c31a6f93f82a49b0a9eb31193d6cdec/_images/tic_tac_trust_score.png" alt="Trust Score"/> </details> ## Summary Four (4) F/A-18 Pilots intercepted a #UAP on the southern coast of California. Launched from the USS Nimitz, the pilots witnessed an aircraft that defied our (Human) current understanding of physics and principles of flight. To-date, this incident has been declassified and video from the F/A-18s made public. ## Testimony - See [[David-Fravor-Statement-for-House-Oversight-Committee.pdf]] for full text As we launched off the USS Nimitz, we checked in with the air controller on the USS Princeton, we were told that training was going to be suspended for real world tasking. My wingman joined up and we proceeded towards a contact to the west of our CAP (Combat Air Patrol) point. The CAP point is where we would hold prior to commencing our training runs, roughly 40 miles South of the ship. As we proceeded to the west and as the air controller counted down the range, we had nothing on our radars and were unaware of what we were going to see when we arrived. The air controller on the ship also had no idea but had been observing these objects on their Aegis combat system for the previous 2 weeks. They had been descending from above 80,000ft and coming rapidly down to 20,000ft would stay for hours and then go straight back up. When we arrived at the location at 20,000 ft, the controller called Merge Plot, which means that our radar blip was now in the same radar resolution cell as the contact. As we looked around, we noticed some white water off our right side. The weather on the day of the incident was as close to a perfect day as you could ask, clear skies, light winds, calm seas (no whitecaps from the waves) so the white water stood out in the large blue ocean. 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. There were no Rotors, No Rotor wash, or any visible flight control surfaces like wings. As we started a clockwise turn to observe the object, My WSO and I decided to go down to get closer and the other Aircraft stayed in High cover to observe both us and the Tic Tac. We proceeded around the circle about 90 degrees from the start of our descent and the object suddenly shifted it longitudinal axis, aligned it with my aircraft and began to climb in a clockwise climbing turn. We continued down for another 270 degrees when we made a nose low move to head to where the Tic Tac would be when we pulled nose onto the object. Our altitude at this point was approximately 15,000ft with the Tic Tac at about 12,000ft. As we pulled nose onto the object at approximately ½ of a mile with the object just left of our nose, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared right in front of our aircraft. Our wingman, roughly 8,000ft above us, also lost visual. We immediately turned to investigate the white water only to find that it was also gone. As we turned back towards our CAP point, roughly 60 miles east, the air controller let us know that the object had reappeared on the Princeton’s Aegis SPY 1 radar at our CAP point. This Tic Tac Object had just traveled 60 miles in a very short period of time (less than a minute), was far superior in performance to my brand- new F/A-18F and did not operate with any of the known aerodynamic principles that we expect for objects that fly in our atmosphere. We returned to Nimitz and mentioned what we had witnessed to one of my crews who were getting ready to launch. It was that crew that took the now famous approximately 90 second video that was released by the USG in 2017. What is not seen is the Radar tape that showed the jamming of the APG-73 radar in the aircraft, but we do see on the targeting pod video that the object does not emit any IR (infrared) plume from a normal propulsion system that we would expect. ## Media <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zlrz84nEXtk" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe> ## References - https://www.history.com/videos/uss-nimitz-tic-tac-ufo-declassified-video