USS Nimitz 'Tic Tac'
Navy pilots and radar tracked a fast, wingless object off California.
2004 CE · 32.70, -117.50 · status: unexplained
The account
Cmdr David Fravor's account and the FLIR video were later acknowledged and released by the Department of Defense.
The researched reading
One of the strongest UAP cases: multiple aircrew and radar over days. The gap is data: without the original radar and sensor records it cannot be settled either way.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Genuinely anomalous | 30% | Two crews saw the object visually in daylight, radar tracked it for days, and no ordinary explanation fits all of it; the raw radar data, however, have never been released. |
| Something known, misidentified | 24% | Balloons, drones or distant aircraft can look small and fast to a closing pilot, and the FLIR clip taken later that day is consistent with a distant jet seen through glare. |
| Secret human technology | 18% | A US or foreign advanced drone tested near a carrier group is possible, though the claimed performance exceeds any known vehicle. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 14% | The detailed accounts were made public 13 years later; memory compresses and dramatises fast events, and the four witnesses discussed it together. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 6% | The USS Princeton’s newly upgraded SPY-1 radar may have produced spurious tracks (clutter or anomalous propagation), and the ‘churning’ water could have been a submerged reef or whales. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 4% | No known natural phenomenon behaves like a wingless body mirroring an aircraft. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 4% | Witnesses are named, credentialed naval aviators; deliberate fabrication is unlikely. |
Official position: The US Navy and Department of Defense classify the object as unidentified; AARO has not resolved the case.
How the account grew
A 2004 Navy training encounter off California remained an internal story for over a decade. A 2017 New York Times article, a 2020 Pentagon release and sworn testimony in 2023 moved it from rumour to the centre of official UAP debate.
| Year | Who | Added |
|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Cmdr David Fravor, Lt Cmdr Alex Dietrich; Lt Cmdr Chad Underwood (FLIR) | A white, oval object seen for about five minutes after radar contacts; Underwood records infrared video and coins 'Tic Tac'. |
| 2007 | Online UFO forum (per Wired) | A copy of a video circulates online with little attention. |
| 2017 | New York Times (Cooper, Blumenthal, Kean); Luis Elizondo; Christopher Mellon | The FLIR video, the secret AATIP programme and Fravor's account become front-page news. |
| 2019 | Pentagon spokeswoman | Confirms the videos were taken by naval aviators. |
| 2020 | US Department of Defense | Formal release of three videos, labelled unidentified. |
| 2021 | 60 Minutes (Fravor and Dietrich) | Both pilots describe the encounter on network TV. |
| 2023 | David Fravor, House Oversight hearing | Under oath, describes radar tracks of objects dropping 80,000 ft in under a second. |
Connections in the atlas
- Alex Dietrich
- ? What was the Nimitz “Tic Tac”?
- "Glowing Auras and Black Money" (New York Times)
- ▶ From Skinwalker Ranch to the 2017 AATIP story
- Elizondo, 'Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs'
- ▶ The government UFO files
- Kevin Knuth
- Mexican Air Force FLIR video, Campeche
- David Fravor
- Cooper, Blumenthal & Kean, 'Glowing Auras and Black Money' (New York Times)
- Helene Cooper
- USS Russell 'pyramids' & USS Omaha 'sphere' (confirmed 2021)