A training flight changes course
On November 14, 2004, David Fravor was leading two F/A-18F Super Hornets from the USS Nimitz during training off Southern California. Each aircraft carried a pilot and a weapons systems officer. The USS Princeton interrupted their exercise and directed them toward an unidentified radar contact. According to Fravor, the ship’s controllers told them they had been observing unusual contacts for roughly two weeks. His jets had nothing on their own radars as they approached. At about 20,000 feet, the crews received a call indicating that their aircraft and the contact were close enough to occupy the same radar resolution cell. They began searching outside their cockpits.
White water in a calm sea
Fravor describes clear skies and calm water. A patch of churning white water caught their attention. He compared its outline and size to a submerged airliner, while emphasizing that they saw no underwater object. Above it, a white capsule moved abruptly back and forth. He describes a smooth surface, without visible wings, windows, or propulsion. To convey its appearance, he later compared it to a large white propane tank roughly 40 feet long. That size is his estimate. He initially considered a helicopter, but saw none of the disturbance its rotors would produce on the water.
Closing the distance
Fravor began a descending turn to investigate while Alex Dietrich kept the second aircraft overhead, watching both his jet and the object. Dietrich later recalled feeling vulnerable because they were unarmed. As Fravor came around, the object changed orientation and started climbing. He interpreted its movement as a response to his approach. With the two circling at different heights, Fravor turned across the circle to intercept it. He estimated that he came within about half a mile before the encounter ended.
Gone in a moment
Fravor says the object accelerated out of sight in less than half a second. The crew above lost it too. When he looked back down, the disturbed water had disappeared. He recalls watching the object for roughly five minutes. Soon afterward, the Princeton’s controller reported a contact at the jets’ planned patrol point, about 60 miles away. Fravor says the ship had not continuously tracked it across that distance; the contact reappeared at the patrol point. That was information relayed by radio: he never saw the object there. He describes feeling unsettled by movement unlike anything he had encountered in his flying career.
Back aboard the Nimitz
After returning to the carrier, Fravor told another crew preparing to fly about the encounter. That later flight produced the familiar infrared recording. Although the crews discussed what they had seen, Fravor says they were not questioned as part of an immediate investigation. He says it was not until 2009 that Jay Stratton contacted him to investigate the sighting, roughly five years after the flight.
From encounter to public record
The New York Times brought the encounter to a wider audience in December 2017. In April 2020, the Department of Defense officially released the infrared recording alongside two other Navy videos. The release confirmed the recordings’ provenance and described the phenomena in them as unidentified. Fravor later recounted the encounter to the House Oversight Committee in July 2023.
The question that remains
An authenticated recording and a witness’s interpretation answer different questions. The footage does not, on its own, establish the object’s origin or all the performance described in testimony. This case remains useful precisely because the public material can be examined without treating every associated claim as settled.