USS Nimitz / Tic Tac

What can be opened

Nothing written in 2004. A slide of the Navy’s UAP Task Force, dated 31 August 2020, says how the report went: “Pilots reported the incident through Intelligence Personnel, there was a large amount of harassment and ridicule throughout the Nimitz.” and “Reporting terminated at 3rd Fleet, there was no process to share the reporting.” No report, radar record or flight log from that day is public. What can be opened:

• the FLIR1 recording, in the Navy FOIA reading room, 1 minute 16 seconds long (our measurement). The Department of Defense released it with two videos of January 2015 on 27 April 2020. The Navy’s public-affairs card of 24 July 2020 says the Navy confirmed in September 2019 that the three videos “were indeed copies of actual Navy videos”, and that the 2004 video “was widely shared throughout the ship at that time. In 2007, one of those crewmembers posted the video onto the public web.”;
• two Navy slides on the case: the UAP Task Force slide “‘Tic Tac’ Case 14 Nov 2004”, sent to NASA in September 2020 and also filed on its own, and slide 5 of a Naval Intelligence Activity briefing of 17 May 2021, which lists “2004: USS NIMITZ CSG in SOCAL (U)” with the note “Public and Congressional attention” beside a frame captioned “SOCAL, Nov 2004”;
• the testimony of Cdr. David Fravor, commanding officer of VFA-41 in 2004, given under oath to a House subcommittee on 26 July 2023 (witnesses sworn, p. 9 of the printed hearing), and his written statement for that hearing. His is the only participant’s account that can be opened.

What the slide says

The task force slide lists the units of the strike group, USS Princeton (CG-59), VAW-117 (E-2C Hawkeye), VMFA-232, VFA-41 and USS Louisville (SSN-724), and places the case “30 Nautical Miles off the Coast of Mexico (south west of San Diego)”. It describes the object partly in words it sets in quotation marks without saying whose, “solid white, smooth, with no edges” and “uniformly colored with no nacelles, pylons, or wings”, and gives its length as “approximately 46 feet”. Its last line: “Although the debriefs of aircrew and other personnel within the Strike Group validated the event, there was very limited data to support technical analysis.” Beside the text it shows two frames that resemble frames of the FLIR1 recording (our viewing); it does not say where they come from.

The encounter, as Fravor testified

Fravor’s flight was to fly a training exercise with USS Princeton as its control. “We were told that the training was going to be suspended and we are going to proceed with real-world tasking. As we proceeded to the west, the air controller was counting down the range to an object that we were going to” (p. 13). On arrival, “All four of us, because we were an F–18F so we had pilots and WSO in the backseat, looked down and saw a white Tic Tac object with a longitudinal axis pointing north south and moving very abruptly over the water like a ping pong ball. There were no rotors, no rotor wash, or any sign of visible control surfaces like wings.” As Fravor descended, the object “began to climb”, and “As we pulled nose onto the object within about a half mile of it, it rapidly accelerated in front of us and disappeared.” (p. 13)

He told the subcommittee that the radars of his flight never held it: “The Princeton tracked it. The Nimitz tracked it. The E2 tracked it. We never saw it on our radars. Our fire control radars never picked it up.” (p. 41) What the ship saw reaches us only through his words.

What must not be presented as measurement

“60 miles in under a minute.” Both numbers are the controller’s, as Fravor recalled them in 2023: “the controller came up and said, ‘sir, you are not going to believe this, but that thing is at your CAP point roughly 60 miles away in less than a minute.’” (p. 14) To read them as a speed you must assume that both radar indications were the same object and that the track was not lost and picked up again. No radar record can be opened to check either.

“From 80,000 feet.” The version that can be opened is again the controller’s, relayed by Fravor: “these objects had been observed for over 2 weeks coming down from over 80,000 feet, rapidly descending to 20,000 feet, hanging out for hours and then going straight back up.” (p. 13) It gives no time and ends at 20,000 feet.

The jamming. Fravor did not fly the sortie on which the radar was jammed; he relays its crew: “My crew that launched after we landed experienced significant jamming to the APG–73 radar” (p. 21). He also said that the record is missing: “What you do not see is the radar tape that was never released, and we do not know where it is at” (p. 14).

“The object entered the ocean.” Asked whether he had witnessed “an additional object under the water”, Fravor answered: “I will say we did not see an object. There was something there to cause the whitewater and when we turned around it was gone. So, there was something there that obviously moved.” (p. 21)

The case does not carry the mark ◆: the radar tracks are known only from testimony, and FLIR1 comes from another flight, with no measurement of the object on it in any document we can open (see the methodology).

FLIR1 and the encounter are two flights

After landing, “We were talking to one of my crews, who was getting ready to launch. We mentioned it to him, and they went out and luckily got the video that you see, that 90-second video.” (p. 14) The recording comes from that later sortie. The Navy slides that set video frames beside the case do not say when the frames were recorded or what the camera was pointed at. No document we can open establishes that the object on FLIR1 is the object Fravor saw.

Why this scores where it does

Witnesses: 4. Four aviators in two aircraft who saw the object together, by Fravor’s sworn testimony (pp. 13–14), and debriefs that, by the UAP Task Force slide of 2020, “validated the event”. Not 5: only Fravor’s account can be opened.

Radar: 2. “The Princeton tracked it. The Nimitz tracked it. The E2 tracked it.” (p. 41), but no radar record can be opened, and Fravor said that the radar tape “was never released” (p. 14).

Optics: 3. FLIR1, an infrared recording that the Navy confirmed as one of three “copies of actual Navy videos” (CHINFO card, 24 July 2020). Not higher: it was recorded on a later sortie, and no document we can open establishes that it shows the object of the encounter.

Physical trace: 0. None.

Multi-channel: 3. Several aviators by sight, the radars of two ships and of the E-2 by testimony, and an infrared recording from a later sortie: channels that agree in the accounts, but that no document we can open ties to one another.

Documentation: 3. Slides from two UAP Task Force briefings, of 2020 and 2021, the Department of Defense’s release, the CHINFO card and sworn testimony of 2023. Not higher: nothing written in 2004 can be opened, and the slide of 2020 says “Reporting terminated at 3rd Fleet”.

Anomaly: 3. An object that “rapidly accelerated in front of us and disappeared” (pp. 13–14). That it was then at the CAP point, “roughly 60 miles away in less than a minute”, is the controller’s placement as Fravor relayed it, not a measurement that can be opened.

Data today: 2. The radar tapes and any record of the aircraft’s positions cannot be opened; what remains is FLIR1, the slides and the testimony.

The overall is 2.4: class C, material gaps.

What would settle it

The radar records of USS Princeton and of the E-2C for 14 November 2004 and the two weeks before it, the radar and targeting-pod data, with time and range, from the sortie that recorded FLIR1, the aircraft positions and the communications recording. None of them can be opened, and the task force slide says that reporting “terminated at 3rd Fleet”.