USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter

Record summary

What happened Personnel aboard USS Princeton had reportedly tracked unusual returns during a carrier-group exercise. On 14 November, Navy aviators including David Fravor and Alex Dietrich were directed toward one contact and described a smooth white elongated object maneuvering above disturbed water. A later aircraft recorded the infrared video known as FLIR1. The Department of Defense officially released that video in 2020 and said the aerial phenomena in the three Navy videos remained characterized as unidentified at that time. The release authenticates the recording as Navy footage; it does not independently verify every performance estimate in later interviews or establish the object's origin. Evidence Multiple trained aircrew accounts, carrier-group radar reports described by operators, military communications and an officially released infrared video recorded later in the event sequence. Explanations considered A distant aircraft or balloon, sensor and range-estimation errors, and misinterpreted radar tracks have been proposed. Publicly available data are insufficient to reconstruct the reported close visual encounter decisively. What remains uncertain The public lacks the complete raw radar and sensor dataset. FLIR1 alone does not show the most dramatic maneuvers described by witnesses, and it may not depict the same object Fravor saw earlier. Primary source Statement on the release of historical Navy videos — U.S. Department of Defense Further source trail USS Nimitz UFO incident — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident