The Infamous USS Nimitz UFO incident

Compiled by Bill Knell

The USS Nimitz UFO incident refers to a 2004 Radar-Visual encounter of an unidentified flying object by US fighter pilots of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. In December 2017, infrared footage of the encounter was released to the public.

Fighters were approximately 100 miles from the coast of San Diego when they were directed to intercept a UFO.

A 2015 account of the incident on FighterSweep.com, interviews with one of the pilots, and subsequent news reports describe the sighting of an "unidentified flying object" by six Super Hornet fighter jets over the Pacific in November, 2004.

According to The Washington Post, the video was released by former intelligence officer Luis Elizondo to shed light on a secretive Department of Defense operation to analyze reported UFO sightings.

Prior to the incident, early November 2004, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently for two weeks on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.

When the same event occurred again around 12:30 EST on 14 November 2004, an operations officer aboard Princeton contacted two airborne US Navy jet fighters from USS Nimitz. The first fighter aircraft was piloted by Commander David Fravor, commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41, assisted by his weapon systems officer (WSO) in the back seat, and the second was piloted by Lieutenant commander Jim Slaight and his WSO, serving as a wingman. They were then training aboard two FA-18F Super Hornets in a routine combat exercise.

Princeton's radio operator first asked the AWACS of the Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 117, which was assisting the two F-18s in their training, to guide them to intercept the unknown aircraft. As the radar of the Grumman E-2 Hawkeye failed to acquire the target except for a unusable faint plot, Princeton's radio operator directly instructed the pilots to change their course and investigate the unidentified radar spot observed by Princeton's own radar. Princeton's radio operator further asked the pilots if they were carrying operational weapons; they replied that they were not.

The weather conditions for that day showed excellent visibility with a blue sky, no cloud cover, and a calm sea. When the jet fighters arrived on site, the crew of four saw nothing in the air or on their radar. Looking down at the sea, however, they noticed a turbulent oval area of churning water with foam and frothy waves "the size of a Boeing 737 airplane" with a smoother area of lighter color at the center, as if the waves were breaking over something just under the surface. A few seconds later, they noticed an unusual object hovering with erratic movements 50 feet above the boiling water. Both Fravor and Slaight later described the object as a large bright white Tic Tac 30 to 46 feet (10 to 14 meters) long, with no windshield or porthole, no wing nor empennage, and no visible engine or exhaust plume. According to Fravor "I have no idea what I saw. It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s. But I want to fly one".

Fravor began a circular descent to approach the object, but he claimed the UFO was intentionally avoiding any short range dogfight radar lock-on with "impossible" maneuvers that made engagement difficult. As Fravor got closer descending, he reported that the object began ascending along a curved path, maintaining some distance from the F-18, mirroring its trajectory in opposite circles. Fravor then made a more aggressive maneuver, plunging his fighter to aim below the object. At this point the UFO accelerated and went out of sight in less than two seconds, leaving the pilots "pretty weirded out".

A few minutes later, Princeton reported that the radar spot had reappeared 60 miles away. According to Popular Mechanics, a physical object would have had to move faster than Mach 3.0 to cover such a distance in the reported time. The jets went to investigate the new radar location, but "By the time the Super Hornets arrived the object had already disappeared." After losing visual contact with the object, both F-18s were low on fuel and had to return to Nimitz.

On return of the first team to Nimitz, a second team took off at approximately 15:00 EST, this time equipped with an advanced infrared camera (FLIR pod). This camera recorded an evasive unidentified aerial system on video, publicly released by the Pentagon on 16 December 2017 alongside the revelation of the funding of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program.

This footage is known as the 2004 USS Nimitz FLIR1 video. It officially shed some light on a decade-old story that was largely unknown, except for a 2015 second-hand story on FighterSweep.com that, in spite of providing a lot of details, remained unconfirmed at that time.

A second infrared footage, known as the GIMBAL video, has been released by the Pentagon alongside the 2004 FLIR1 footage. Although the media often present the two videos together to illustrate the 2004 USS Nimitz UFO incident, the GIMBAL video is unrelated, filmed at the East Coast of the United States at an unknown date.

From NPR:

The U.S. Navy abandoned "safety through ignorance" and now drafts guidelines to report UFO sightings.

In some cases, pilots say they observed small spherical objects flying in formation.

A recent uptick in sightings of unidentified flying objects - or as the military calls them, "unexplained aerial phenomena" - prompted the U.S. Navy to draft formal procedures for pilots to document encounters, a corrective measure that former officials say is long overdue.

"Since 2014, these intrusions have been happening on a regular basis," Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, told The Washington Post on Wednesday. Recently, unidentified aircraft entered military-designated airspace as often as multiple times per month. "We want to get to the bottom of this. We need to determine who's doing it, where it's coming from and what their intent is. We need to try to find ways to prevent it from happening again."

Citing safety and security concerns, Gradisher vowed to "investigate each and every report."

Luis Elizondo, a former senior intelligence officer, told The Post that the new Navy guidelines formalized the reporting process, facilitating data-driven analysis while removing the stigma from talking about UFOs, calling it "the single greatest decision the Navy has made in decades."

Chris Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and a staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was less laudatory.

"I don't believe in safety through ignorance," he said, scolding the intelligence community for its lack of "curiosity and courage" and "failure to react" to a strong pattern of sightings.

In some cases, pilots - many of whom are engineers and academy graduates - say they observed small spherical objects flying in formation. Others say they've seen white, Tic-Tac-shaped vehicles. Aside from drones, all engines rely on burning fuel to generate power, but these vehicles all had no air intake, no wind and no exhaust.

"It's very mysterious, and they still seem to exceed our aircraft in speed," he said, calling it a "truly radical technology."

According to Mellon, awestruck and baffled pilots, concerned that reporting unidentified flying aircraft would adversely affect their careers, tended not to speak up. And when they did, he said there was little interest in investigating their reports.

"Imagine you see highly advanced vehicles, they appear on radar systems, they look bizarre, no one knows where they're from. This happens on a recurring basis, and no one does anything," said Mellon, who now works with UFODATA, a private organization. Because agencies don't share this type of information, it's difficult to know the full extent of activity. Still, he estimated that dozens of incidents were witnessed by naval officers in a single year, enough to force the service to address the issue.

"Pilots are upset, and they're trying to help wake up a slumbering system," he told The Post.

Lawmakers' growing curiosity and concern also appeared to coax action out of the Navy.

In 2017, the Pentagon first confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a government operation launched in 2007 to collect and analyze "anomalous aerospace threats." As The Post's Joby Warrick reported, the investigation ranged from "advanced aircraft fielded by traditional U.S. adversaries to commercial drones to possible alien encounters."

According to former Pentagon officials and documents previously seen by The Post, program funding, which totaled at least $22 million, was suspended in 2012.

Gradisher, the Navy spokesman, said that "in response to requests for information from congressional members and staff, officials have provided a series of briefings by senior Naval Intelligence officials as well as aviators who reported hazards to aviation safety."

Elizondo, who also ran AATIP, said the newly drafted guidelines were a culmination of many things. Most notably: that the Navy had enough credible evidence - including eyewitness accounts and corroborating radar information - to "know this is occurring."

"If I came to you and said, 'There are these things that can fly over our country with impunity, defying the laws of physics, and within moments could deploy a nuclear device at will' - that would be a matter of national security."

With the number of U.S. military people in the Air Force and Navy who described the same observations, the noise level could not be ignored.

"This type of activity is very alarming," Elizondo said, "and people are recognizing there are things in our aerospace that lie beyond our understanding."

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