EDITORIAL GUIDE
USS Nimitz Tic Tac 2004 — Navy Intercept Archive
The USS Nimitz encounter of November 14, 2004, is the cornerstone of the modern UAP disclosure era. A white, oblong, wingless object tracked for two weeks by the USS Princeton was intercepted by Navy Commander David Fravor's F/A-18 — and the DoD officially declassified the FLIR footage in 2020. The 2026 NARA archive release adds the full sensor logs and DIA assessment.
Two Weeks Before the Intercept
The Nimitz encounter is often described as a single event on November 14, 2004. In fact, it began approximately two weeks earlier, when the USS Princeton — a Ticonderoga-class cruiser equipped with the AN/SPY-1B Aegis radar system — began tracking unknown objects in the area where the carrier strike group was conducting pre-deployment training. Radar operators tracked objects appearing at extreme altitude (above 80,000 feet) and descending to near sea level in seconds, remaining for variable periods before departing at high speed or disappearing from radar without explanation.
For two weeks, Princeton tracked these objects without identifying them. The radar system had recently been recalibrated after an upgrade, which led some analysts to initially suspect equipment error. But the anomalous contacts persisted across multiple radar sweeps and were corroborated by multiple operators using independently calibrated systems. By the time Commander Fravor's flight was tasked to intercept on November 14, the Princeton crew had weeks of tracking data suggesting something unusual was operating in the training area.
The Intercept and the FLIR Recording
Commander David Fravor and his wingman were vectored to the intercept area by Princeton's radar controller. What Fravor observed was a white, oblong object — roughly 40 feet long, with no wings, no propulsion surfaces, and no visible heat signature — hovering approximately 50 feet above the ocean over a circular disturbance in the water below. When Fravor descended in a spiral toward the object, it mirrored his movements and then accelerated away faster than he could track, departing to a pre-briefed rendezvous point 60 miles away in under a minute.
A second F/A-18 flight equipped with the Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared pod subsequently found and recorded the object at the rendezvous point. The resulting footage — officially released as FLIR1 — shows a white ellipsoid object exhibiting thermal characteristics inconsistent with conventional aircraft, moving against the prevailing wind while displaying no conventional propulsion output. The DoD officially confirmed and released this footage on April 27, 2020.
What the Archive and Congressional Record Show
The 2026 NARA archive release added two significant documents: the full USS Princeton sensor log for the two-week pre-intercept tracking period, and a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment concluding that the observed performance characteristics 'have no correspondence to any known U.S. or adversary aerospace system.' Both documents were previously classified and are now accessible via the NARA RG 615 catalog.
In July 2023, Commander Fravor testified under oath before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, restating his full account. Commander Ryan Graves also testified, describing recurring UAP encounters in restricted airspace as 'not rare or anecdotal' — observations consistent with the Princeton's two-week pre-intercept tracking log. Together, these materials make the Nimitz case the most thoroughly documented entry in the entire UAP archive.