The 2004 USS Nimitz "Tic Tac" UFO Encounter

Location:

Off the coast of San Diego, California. November 2004.

Who Was Involved:

• U.S. Navy personnel aboard the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and the USS Princeton guided missile cruiser.
• Multiple highly trained fighter pilots, including Commander David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich.
• Radar operators, techs and eyewitnesses.
• The case was later confirmed in declassified Pentagon footage (released in 2017 and acknowledged as authentic by the U.S. Navy in 2020).

What Happened:

• The Navy's radar systems on the Princeton detected multiple unidentified flying objects appearing suddenly at 80,000 feet, then dropping to near sea level in under a second - something no known aircraft can do.
• Fighter pilots were scrambled to intercept.
• Commander Fravor described seeing a white, 40-foot-long "Tic Tac" shaped object hovering above the ocean.
• The object had no visible wings, rotors or exhaust - but it maneuvered rapidly, reacting to the pilots' movements in ways that defied known physics.
• It vanished in an instant, only to reappear seconds later at the pilot's next rendezvous point - as if it anticipated them.

Why It's So Credible:

• Multiple eyewitnesses, all military professionals.
• Multiple sensor types confirmed the object - radar, infrared, visual.
• No known technology (even in 2025, 21 years later) can move like that, with that speed and acceleration.
• No evidence of hoax, drugs or technical malfunction.
• The footage is publicly available and was officially released by the Department of Defense.

But Was It Aliens?

The military calls it a UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) - not "alien", just unknown. Could it be: Secret tech from another country? Experimental U.S. tech? Something not of this Earth? That's the big question.