The Encounter

On November 14, 2004, Commander David Fravor and his wingman were flying F/A-18F Super Hornets off the coast of San Diego when they were directed by the USS Princeton — the guided-missile cruiser accompanying the Nimitz carrier strike group — to investigate an unknown contact. The Princeton had been tracking anomalous objects on its advanced SPY-1 radar for two weeks. The objects would appear at 80,000 feet, drop to sea level in seconds, hover, and then disappear.

What Fravor found when he arrived at the designated coordinates has become the most consequential UAP encounter in modern history.

What Fravor Saw

Fravor described a white, oblong object — roughly the size and shape of a Tic-Tac breath mint, about 40 feet long — hovering above a churning patch of ocean. The water below it was disturbed in a circular pattern, as if something large had recently emerged from beneath the surface.

Fravor descended toward the object in a circular pattern. The object mirrored his movements — matching his descent, then climbing to meet him. When Fravor cut across the circle to intercept it directly, the object accelerated away at a speed he described as unlike anything he had ever seen. It vanished in seconds.

"It had no wings, no exhaust plume, no rotors," Fravor told the New York Times in 2017. "It was just hovering there. And when it left, it was gone — like a bullet out of a gun."

The FLIR Video

A second set of F/A-18s arrived minutes later and managed to capture the object on their AN/ASQ-228 FLIR targeting pod. The resulting footage — known as the FLIR1 video — shows a white, oblong object moving erratically and then accelerating out of frame. The pilots can be heard reacting with disbelief.

The video was classified, then leaked, then officially released by the Pentagon in April 2020 — one of three Navy UAP videos confirmed as authentic by the Department of Defense.

The Physics Problem

What makes the Nimitz encounter scientifically significant is not just the witness testimony but the performance characteristics the object demonstrated. Based on the radar tracks from the Princeton and the FLIR footage, researchers have calculated that the object:

• Accelerated from a hover to hypersonic speed in under a second
• Executed turns at g-forces that would kill any human pilot
• Operated with no visible propulsion system
• Produced no heat signature consistent with any known engine

A 2019 paper in the journal Entropy by physicist Kevin Knuth and colleagues analyzed the Nimitz data and concluded the object demonstrated performance characteristics "far beyond the state of the art in human aerospace engineering."

The Aftermath

Fravor went public in 2017 after the New York Times broke the story of the Pentagon's secret UAP program, AATIP. His account was corroborated by three other pilots who were present, by the Princeton's radar operators, and by the FLIR footage itself.

He has since testified before Congress, appeared in documentaries, and become one of the most credible voices in the UAP disclosure movement. His consistent, detailed account — delivered with the calm authority of a decorated combat pilot — has been instrumental in shifting the UAP conversation from fringe speculation to mainstream policy debate.

Sources & Original Media

• Go Fast — official USG UAP footage released by the Pentagon (April 2020)
• Commander David Fravor interview — New York Times (December 2017)
• Fravor testifies before Congress — House Oversight Committee (July 2023)
• Knuth et al. — "Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles" (Entropy, 2019)
• Pentagon confirms authenticity of UAP videos — DoD statement (April 2020)