USS Nimitz UFO incident



In December 2017, a video of a 2004 encounter between US Navy fighter jets and an unidentified flying object was released to the public.

A 2015 report of the incident on FighterSweep.com, interviews with one of the pilots, and subsequent news reports describe a sighting of an "unidentified flying object" and an "unidentified swimming object" by six Super Hornet fighter jets over the Pacific in November, 2004. The video shows infrared footage of the encounter.

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, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program.

November 2004 sighting
On November 14, 2004, two F/A-18F Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off the coast of San Diego were contacted while on a training mission by a nearby U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser, USS Princeton (CG-59), and instructed to investigate a mysterious aircraft that Princeton had been tracking for two weeks.

"The objects appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering. Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up."

When the Super Hornets arrived at the last known location of the unidentified aircraft, they found two objects. One was hovering and moving erratically fifty feet over the water, and the other was "much larger than a submarine" and directly below the surface of the water, "churning the surface". According to Commander David Fravor, one of the Super Hornet pilots, the hovering object then flew directly towards the jets. When one of the Super Hornets turned towards the unidentified aircraft, the object accelerated away. After communicating with USS Princeton, the two Hornets were directed to a location 60 miles away where the object had already been detected on radar. When the Super Hornets arrived, the object was not found by the pilots.

The flying object was later described as "wingless, white, and shaped like an oblong pill" and "oval in shape", and variously described as 24-30 or 40 feet long, with no visible markings or glass. According to Popular Mechanics, the object flew faster than 2,400 miles per hour, and unlike typical aircraft, did not emit any hot exhaust. After returning to Nimitz, the two Super Hornets were relieved by four more Super Hornets, this time equipped with Forward looking infrared sensors. The second flight of Navy fighters also encountered the aircraft and recorded it on infrared video.

The footage they captured was later made available on YouTube. The video footage shows oval-shaped objects that match a pilot's description of objects vaguely shaped like Tic Tacs.

The objects were observed by Princeton on radar, and six Super Hornets. This account of the events was confirmed by Commander Fravor in an interview with The New York Times. Pilots who flew the mission that interacted with the object also maintain their stories of the events.

Critical analysis
Defense and security writer Kyle Mizokami suggested three possibilities that could explain the sightings. The first is equipment malfunction or misinterpretation; USS Princeton’s radars and the Super Hornets' electro-optical sensors and radars could have all malfunctioned, or the crew could have misinterpreted a number of natural phenomena. The second is classified government technology: if the objects were aircraft operated by the US government, it would make sense that they were kept secret, as the object easily outmaneuvered multiple Super Hornets, a jet that was considered state-of-the-art in 2004. The third possibility is that the sightings were caused by objects of extraterrestrial origin.

The New York Times included a disclaimer in its reporting of the incident: "Experts caution that earthly explanations often exist for such incidents, and that not knowing the explanation does not mean that the event has interstellar origins".

Physicist Don Lincoln suggested that it was "very unlikely that what these pilots are reporting turns out to be an unfriendly superweapon or an alien craft," however he would like to see the reports investigated "under the premise that the best science is done when as many opinions are considered as possible, preferably in the open and subject to peer review." According to Lincoln, "unidentified doesn't mean flying saucer or a Russian superweapon. It merely means unidentified."