The 2004 Nimitz encounter and the Navy videos

The Nimitz strike group was working up off southern California for a Persian Gulf deployment. According to Fravor's 2023 statement to Congress, the Princeton's air controller had watched unidentified radar tracks for about two weeks: objects that appeared above 80,000 feet, descended to about 20,000 feet, loitered for hours and climbed back up⁠[1]. Kevin Day, the Princeton's senior radar operator, has said his screen showed well over 100 such tracks over the course of a week, and that his team first suspected an equipment fault⁠[3].

On 14 November a two-versus-two training exercise was cancelled for "real-world tasking". Fravor's section was vectored to a contact west of its combat air patrol point, about 40 miles south of the ship. The jets' own radars showed nothing. At about 20,000 feet, with a clear sky and calm sea, the crews saw white water off the right side and, against it, a small white Tic-Tac-shaped object moving abruptly, with no rotors, rotor wash or visible wings. Fravor descended in a clockwise spiral; the object climbed to meet him; at about half a mile it accelerated and was gone, and the white water had gone with it⁠[1]. Dietrich, flying high cover, lost sight of it at the end⁠[1]. Back at the CAP point about 60 miles east, the controller reported the object there on the Princeton's SPY-1 radar⁠[1].

A second section launched afterwards. Underwood, the weapons systems officer, acquired a target on radar and then on the aircraft's ATFLIR targeting pod and recorded it. The clip shows a featureless shape against sky which, at the end, moves sharply left and out of frame⁠[11]. Fravor said the recording crew saw no infrared plume⁠[1].

The event was not reported up the chain. Fravor told Congress that no one questioned his crews and no tapes were taken; the incident "became a great story to tell friends" until Jay Stratton of the Pentagon programme contacted him in 2009⁠[1].

The accounts reached the public in stages, and what exists today is a layered record. The earliest written version is an undated, unlogoed report compiled in 2009 with statements attributed to seven F/A-18 pilots and ship radar operators. It surfaced in May 2018 through the Las Vegas reporter George Knapp, who said four unnamed people confirmed it was genuine and that copies had come through Luis Elizondo; the Pentagon did not release or confirm it⁠[13]⁠[14]. Fravor calls it the "Unofficial Official Report"⁠[1]. It has not been authenticated by any agency.

Fravor's own account was first published by the New York Times on 16 December 2017, with his weapons systems officer Jim Slaight corroborating⁠[5]. Fravor has repeated it since in many interviews and in sworn testimony to the House Oversight Committee on 26 July 2023, where he also said the object was about the size of his aircraft and had reappeared 60 miles away in under a minute⁠[1]⁠[2]. Dietrich did not speak publicly until a CBS 60 Minutes interview broadcast on 16 May 2021, in which she described the same object and said it had "no predictable movement, no predictable trajectory"⁠[15]. Underwood, who recorded FLIR1 but did not see the object with his eyes, gave his first interview to New York magazine in December 2019; he described erratic radar behaviour and said he does not know what it was and does not assume it was alien⁠[16]. Day gave his first on-camera account for a 2019 television series⁠[3]. Several enlisted sailors have since said in interviews that data drives were collected after the event; those claims rest on their recollection alone⁠[17].

Three features of this record matter. The aircrew accounts are consistent with each other on the shape, the colour and the absence of wings and exhaust. Specific numbers (80,000 feet, 60 miles in under a minute) come from what the radar controller told the pilots, not from anything the pilots measured. And the only written account dated before 2017 is a document whose provenance is unverified.

Three unclassified videos exist. FLIR1 is Underwood's 2004 recording. GIMBAL and GOFAST were recorded by F/A-18F crews from USS Theodore Roosevelt off the US east coast in 2015; GOFAST shows a small object low over the sea and GIMBAL a dark shape that appears to rotate above a cloud layer⁠[6]⁠[8]. All three were published by the New York Times and To The Stars Academy in 2017 and 2018. In September 2019 the Navy's deputy chief of information, Joseph Gradisher, confirmed to The Black Vault that they were Navy recordings of "unidentified aerial phenomena", and on 27 April 2020 the Department of Defense released them through the Naval Air Systems Command FOIA reading room "to clear up any misconceptions by the public"⁠[6]⁠[18].

The videos are compressed copies of cockpit display recordings. The original files and their metadata have not been released, and AARO's analysis of GOFAST had to extract the pod's on-screen numbers by hand⁠[9]. No radar data from the Princeton, the E-2C Hawkeye or the F/A-18s has been released, nor have any contemporaneous debriefs. The 2021 ODNI assessment, which covers this event as its earliest case, describes 144 reports between November 2004 and March 2021, 80 of them with multiple sensors, and explains one (a deflating balloon)⁠[7].

The Princeton's SPY-1 track data, the E-2C's radar recordings and the F/A-18 mission tapes from 10 to 16 November 2004 would show whether the tracks existed, how fast they moved and whether they were consistent with the pilots' sighting. Fravor says no tapes were collected⁠[1]; whether logs survive on the ships' systems is unknown. The original FLIR1 file with its metadata would let analysts repeat on FLIR1 what AARO did for GOFAST⁠[9]. The 2009 report, if an agency confirmed its origin, would date the aircrew statements to within five years of the event rather than thirteen. In 2026 the House task force on declassification has asked the Department of War for further UAP videos, and the PURSUE release programme has begun publishing historical records; a release of the Nimitz radar or debrief material through either channel would move this case⁠[21]⁠[22].