Lately, the UFO community has been all abuzz about the United States Navy’s release of several videos taken by their aviators showing unknown craft traveling at very high speeds and performing impossible maneuvers. The first video was taken in November 2004 by Navy pilot Chad Underwood as he flew off the USS Nimitz during a training exercise west of San Diego. The USS Princeton, a Ticonderoga class battle cruiser attached to the Nimitz carrier group, picked up an unknown target on its AN/SPY-1B radar system, and requested a section of FA-18 fighters to intercept and identify the target. The FA-18s managed to record their interaction with the object.
On 14 November, CMDR David Fravor, CAG on the Nimitz, was on patrol when he too encountered the unusual object. Both pilots described it as approximately 45 feet in length, white, cylindrical-shaped with rounded ends. In other words, a flying tic tac. The most interesting part is that both pilots were surprised that the object had no flight control surfaces, no visible form of propulsion, and no exhaust plume. When viewing the video footage taken by both pilots, the infrared mode on their cameras should have shown an intense heat signature if the object was propelled by a traditional jet engine, but it showed no elevated heat signature at all.
Underwood said “It was behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal.” CMDR Fravor said, “It seemed to dive below the water, resurface, then speed out of sight as we approached.” Underwood added, “It was going from like 50,000 feet to 100 feet in seconds, which is not possible.” Fravor said the same, adding that he had a close flyby with the object, reporting that it traveled at tremendous speed, much faster than anything he’d ever encountered, and that “This thing would go from one way to another, similar to if you threw a ping pong ball against the wall.”
Then in 2013 and 2014, naval aircraft (FA-18 Super Hornets) were sighting similar objects in the eastern United States, off the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. One pilot even reported that when he was deployed to the Persian Gulf later, his air wing encountered the same phenomena, causing him to speculate that they were in some way following the carrier strike group.
In 2017, the New York Times ran an article about the Nimitz encounters, and released a video of the tic tac UFO encounter in 2004. The article also mentioned the existence of a covert Defense Department project called the “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.” It appears that the DoD had been studying UFOs for some time, even though they denied it. AATIP’s director, one Luis Elizondo, quit and began working with “To the Stars Academy” CEO Tom DeLonge (guitarist for Blink-182) to try and gain some disclosure about the tic tac UFO events. History Channel produced a TV series about their efforts called, “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.”
Recently, the Navy officially declassified the videos and declared them authentic. To many this was a “disclosure” moment. Many said that the Navy was finally admitting to the existence of UFOs, which in their parlance meant alien spacecraft.
Not so fast. The Navy only admitted to the authenticity of the videos – they made no comment about the nature of what the videos recorded. Yes, they are unusual – they have all these insane, physics-busting abilities, but one shouldn’t automatically shout “alien spacecraft.” The tic tac craft didn’t land on the flight deck of the Nimitz, expel a pair of alien grays who then introduced themselves as citizens of Zeta Reticuli.
Bottom line is, we still don’t know exactly what these objects are. We do know that they are physical. They were tracked by multiple radars, they were picked up by the FA-18’s tactical displays, they were seen visually by the Navy pilots who encountered them. They disturbed the surface of the ocean enough when they submerged that the Navy pilots could see said disturbance from the air. All of this means they were physical objects. But there are more explanations for what they are than alien spacecraft. Some say they are craft piloted by interdimensional beings, others claim they’re spiritual. But they might simply be advanced, covert aircraft developed and being tested by a top secret faction of the US military, or by some rival nation such as Russia or China. Keep in mind that at times, the military industrial complex doesn't exactly let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. There's a lot of compartmentalization. There may be a lot of denial being spouted by numerous sources, but much of that may be because certain factions of the government and military might genuinely not know what's going on.
And honestly, while I do not think they were radar anomalies, or weather balloons, or the planet Venus, or swamp gas, I prefer to accept a more rational explanation than alien spacecraft.
I guess I’m just not there yet.
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