Summary
US Navy pilots near the USS Nimitz carrier strike group encountered a wingless, tailless object shaped like a Tic-Tac. The related videos were later officially acknowledged as authentic by the Department of Defense.
Detail
Background. In November 2004, the USS Nimitz carrier strike group was conducting routine training southwest of San Diego, California. Over roughly the preceding two weeks, the cruiser USS Princeton's AN/SPY-1 radar had repeatedly detected a group of unidentified targets that would drop from about 18,000 m to near sea level within seconds, then hover or depart at high speed — motion inconsistent with any known aircraft.
The encounter. On November 14, two F/A-18F Super Hornets were vectored to intercept. The pilots visually observed a white object roughly 12–14 m long, with no wings, tail, visible exhaust, or control surfaces — shaped like a Tic-Tac — moving above the ocean. As one jet attempted to close in, the object departed at extreme speed. On the way back, the aircraft's forward-looking infrared pod (ATFLIR) captured the now well-known footage.
Technical analysis. What makes this case notable is corroboration across multiple sensors: surface-ship radar, airborne radar, pilot eyewitness, and infrared imagery all at once. A technical study by an independent nonprofit estimated that, if the imagery and radar data are accurate, the object's acceleration would far exceed known engineering limits. Skeptics, however, note that some radar anomalies may relate to a fault in the training-data injection system, and that the sensor data retained at the time was insufficient for full forensic analysis.
Aftermath. After the video leaked through unofficial channels in 2007 and 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense formally confirmed it as authentic Navy footage in 2020. This case directly drove congressional hearings, the creation of AARO (the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office), and the systematic 2026 PURSUE declassification. It is widely seen as the turning point that brought the modern UAP issue into the mainstream.
Footage
Technical detail
| Object size | ~12 m (40 ft) |
| Morphology | No wings / no tail / no visible exhaust |
| Sensor | AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR forward-looking IR |
| Platform | F/A-18F · USS Nimitz CSG |
| Radar | AN/SPY-1 (USS Princeton) |
Sources
- ↗ National Archives — UAP records
- ↗ DoD / PURSUE disclosure (CNN report)
- ↗ FLIR1 footage (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
