The FLIR1 ('Tic Tac') video
Infrared footage of an object filmed by a US Navy F/A-18 from the USS Nimitz group off southern California on 14 November 2004.
2004 CE · 31.50, -117.50 · status: official
The account
Weapons systems officer Chad Underwood recorded the clip with his jet's targeting pod after David Fravor and Alex Dietrich's crews reported a white, wingless object; Underwood coined the nickname 'Tic Tac'. The New York Times published the clip in December 2017, and the Pentagon formally released it in April 2020.
The sceptical view
The video itself shows a small, featureless infrared blob; sceptics such as Mick West argue that glare and distance make a distant aircraft a possible match, while the pilots' visual accounts are the stronger evidence.
The researched reading
Authentic military footage that is ambiguous on its own. It neither proves nor disproves the extraordinary visual account it is attached to.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something known, misidentified | 40% | The clip shows a small IR blob that changes shape with sensor modes; analyses such as Mick West’s show that a distant jet engine’s glare fits, and the ‘sudden exit’ coincides with the camera losing lock and zooming. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 25% | Taken with the pilots’ testimony and radar, the object filmed may be the same unexplained object, but the video alone does not show it. |
| Secret human technology | 15% | A drone or test vehicle filmed at long range is possible. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 8% | Viewers read the clip in the light of the pilots’ earlier visual account; on its own it shows nothing extraordinary. |
| Undetermined | 5% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 3% | The Navy confirmed the footage as authentic in 2020. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 2% | No atmospheric effect explains a tracked IR target. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 2% | Nothing suggests an unusual natural source. |
Official position: The Department of Defense released the video in 2020 and labels the object unidentified.
Connections in the atlas
- Alex Dietrich
- ODNI Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
- ? What was the Nimitz “Tic Tac”?
- "Glowing Auras and Black Money" (New York Times)
- ▶ From Skinwalker Ranch to the 2017 AATIP story
- 'Tic-Tac' dives beneath the sea
- David Fravor
- Mick West
- Pentagon officially releases the three Navy videos
- The New York Times reveals AATIP
- USS Nimitz 'Tic Tac'