On the afternoon of November 14, 2004, U.S. Navy Cmdr. David Fravor and his F/A-18F squadron were undergoing a training exercise with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, California, when his radar detected an anomaly.
Fravor looked down from his fighter jet and noticed something white and oblong right above the whitewater. He saw an object onscreen, observed in both infrared and visible light, that was about 45 feet long without wings or other protrusions. It seemed to be eerily moving along with the plane, leaving no exhaust behind. But when Fravor made an attempt to intercept the strange craft, it took off at warp speed. It accelerated so fast that the sensor was unable to keep tracking it.
What is now known as the infamous “Tic-Tac” sighting remained classified for over a decade. When a bootleg video of this UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomenon) surfaced on the internet several years after the encounter, it went mostly unnoticed, and so did the rumors of a possible alien spacecraft. That is, until Fravor’s account of it exploded onto the front page of The New York Times in 2017. The Tic-Tac incident would spark the creation of the Department of Defense’s UAP Task Force.
Fravor, now retired, eventually testified at a hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs in 2023. The public’s reaction? “The internet shrugged,” as Forbes remarked.
At that same hearing was retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, former chief meteorologist of the Navy. He would eventually give a testimony of his own about another UAP video, taken when he was an active-duty officer, at a later congressional hearing. Gallaudet has been investigating these phenomena for much of his career both in and out of the military.
To read more, click here.