Case · C-065

Nimitz Carrier Strike Group: the “Tic Tac” off San Diego

Pacific Ocean, off San Diego (California) · United States · Nov 14, 2004

In flight Pilots Radar Video

What happened

On November 14, 2004, during an exercise of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group off California, controllers aboard the USS Princeton vectored two F/A-18s toward a radar contact. Commander David Fravor testified under oath in 2023 that the four crew members saw a white “Tic Tac”-shaped object move erratically above a patch of churning water, then accelerate and vanish, and that, according to the controller, in less than a minute it reappeared at the patrol point, about 60 miles away. Another crew later recorded the FLIR1 video with the infrared sensor, circulated online since 2007 without authorization and officially released by the Department of Defense on April 27, 2020. Fravor stated that the episode was not investigated at the time, while the pilot who shot the video said he did not see the object with the naked eye.

Proposed explanation

No official explanation: for the Department of Defense the phenomenon remains unidentified. Mick West (Metabunk) believes that the FLIR1 video, shot after the encounter, probably shows a distant, out-of-focus aircraft and does not document hypersonic speeds; his analysis does not address the visual observation described by Fravor and the other pilots.

Official investigation

U.S. Navy; Department of Defense (release of the FLIR1 video in 2020)

Words of the document

moving very abruptly over the water like a ping pong ball

Official documents

1. Statement by the Department of Defense on the Release of Historical Navy Videos · U.S. Department of Defense · Apr 27, 2020
2. Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency (hearing transcript) · U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Accountability · Jul 26, 2023

Sources

1. The Black Vault, the Navy confirms that the videos show unidentified aerial phenomena (September 10, 2019) (analysis)
2. The Black Vault, the Navy provides the dates of FLIR1, GIMBAL and GOFAST (September 11, 2019) (analysis)
3. Mick West, “Explained: The Navy UFO Videos” (Metabunk, April 27, 2020) (analysis, skeptical)
4. Mick West, factual errors in Elizondo's “Imminent” on GIMBAL, FLIR1, GOFAST and Aguadilla (Metabunk, August 23, 2024) (analysis, skeptical)

On this site

People 2

• David Fravor
• Mick West

Claims 3

• Luis Elizondo: Writes that in the FLIR1 case (the Nimitz “Tic Tac”) the pilot saw the object first on radar and then with… Contradicted
• Luis Elizondo: Announces that To The Stars Academy intends to release previously unpublished footage from real U.S… Partly verified
• Luis Elizondo: Claims under oath that the GOFAST, GIMBAL and FLIR videos were part of the work of the AATIP program of… Partly verified

Timeline 1

• 2004: The 2004 “Tic Tac” case (Nimitz), later recounted to Congress by David Fravor

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UAPgrade's entries are compiled with artificial intelligence (three verifiers with opposing roles) and checked against the sources listed above: how we work. Have a document that changes this entry? Bring it to the Investigations Unit.