The 2004 Navy encounter that stayed secret until The New York Times found it
A 2004 US Navy encounter with an unidentified object remained largely unknown for over a decade until it was revealed by The New York Times in 2017.
Although the ‘Tic Tac’ encounter took place in 2004, it remained largely unknown for years. The case drew worldwide attention only in 2017, after The New York Times reported on previously undisclosed Pentagon programmes studying unidentified aerial phenomena and published details of the incident along with a video.
The encounter began on November 14, 2004, when retired US Navy Commander David Fravor was leading an F/A-18F squadron from the USS Nimitz during a training exercise about 100 miles southwest of San Diego. Radar operators aboard the USS Princeton had been tracking unidentified objects descending from about 80,000 feet in an extremely short time before disappearing, and Fravor and fellow pilot Lt. Cmdr Alex Dietrich were sent to investigate.
They found a small white object, resembling a Tic Tac mint, hovering above an unusual patch of disturbed water, with no wings, visible markings or exhaust plume. As Fravor moved in for a closer look, the object appeared to respond to his manoeuvres before accelerating rapidly and disappearing, with radar detecting it about 60 miles away within a minute.
After Fravor’s encounter, another Navy aircraft recorded infrared footage of the object, which later became one of the most widely shared UFO videos after it surfaced publicly. The Pentagon has not confirmed the object’s origin, and the case remains one of the most closely examined unresolved cases involving military witnesses.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/by JMK
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