The Nimitz Encounters

[A51Watcher]

http://thenimitzencounters.com/

[zorgon]

Dreamtime ENTERTAINMENT  says it all

Opening credits say: "This film is not presented as fact"

This is a nice X-Files type show... but WHY do they always insist on playing music over top of the narrators? I can't understand a word they are saying in those planes... neither can my daughter, who still has excellent hearing

Well thanks for posting this...  the list if names in the credit is sure interesting. Looks like 4 names has ensconced himself with the money people

Oh well I am getting old  and this presentation pretty much seals it for me with the "UFO" program. Looks to me like a new breed of fake disclosure

What I see is a submarine below the surface... did you know the NAVY was testing UAV's that could be launced from UNDERWATER?

When was this TicTac video first released? 2004 I think we found?

Well this was a Lockheed Martin release in about 2005  Lockheed Martin MPUAV Cormorant

Nuclear-armed submarines, once a cornerstone of the Cold war deterrent, may soon find a new 21st century mission.  Lockheed Martin is developing an unmanned aircraft that can be released from the ballistic missile tube of a Trident Submarine -- 150 feet underwater.  Floating to the surface, its wings unfold, booster rockets fire, and it is airborne.

Called the Cormorant, this jet-powered autonomous aircraft could act as a spy plane or deliver firepower in a surgical strike. When the mission is over, the Cormorant receives computer signals from the submarine that can direct it to a rendezvous point.

Landing back in the sea, a tether is connected to the Cormorant by a robotic underwater vehicle and the aircraft can be reeled in to the submarine that is loitering just below the surface.

Made of titanium and other advanced materials, the Cormorant weighs about four tons. To compensate for underwater pressures that are three times greater than the maximum pressure that a typical aircraft can withstand, the inside of the Cormorant will be pressurized with inert gas or air. Smart, stealthy, and fast, the Cormorant's gull-like wings can fold and unfold around the body of the aircraft.

All Credit goes to Lockheed Martin

2007 Press Release



While I am NOT saying that this one is the same as the TicTac...  I AM saying it was likely a test of some other more sophisticated NAVY drone and they sent 2 pilots up to see their reaction... (one was a rookie in training)  Radar images not decisive? PROBABLY testing cloaking methods.

And what a coincidence that the other pilot now works for TTSA? makes me go Hmmmmmm

The wake we see in the video looks like something big just below the surface... described as big as a 707 if I heard right. Sounds about right for  a nuclear sub

Sigh.... well George DeLonge and 4 Names will likely make big bucks in the UFO business  and toss people like John Lear under the bus... because they cannot control what John will say.

I just hope they don't do the same to Bob...

[bigpappy51]

I believe all we are seeing is an Anti Ship missile which you can see an incredible resemblance below starting around 15 seconds when you see the missile over water.. Also David Fravor states you will never see any High Definition video of this incident ? Well why not I don't understand if this was the DOD releasing this why cant we see the other videos of the other so called Tic Tac craft coming out of the water ?




BigPappy51

[zorgon]

Close encounters of the Toledo kind: Fravor pursued UFO in 2004

TOM HENRY
Blade Staff Writer
thenry@theblade.com

Toledo native and retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor chuckles at how the most famous story of his 24-year military career invariably tops all others when he finds himself chitchatting with friends and acquaintances.

Many people claim to have seen an unidentified flying object. But Commander Fravor, a 1982 Whitmer High School graduate, is one of the few who claim to have been in pursuit of a UFO while flying military aircraft.

"What was unique with ours is we actually interacted with it. We chased it. I went after it," Commander Fravor, 53, told The Blade in a telephone interview from his house in Windham, N.H., a city of 14,439 people that's 37 miles north of Boston.

Commander Fravor's mysterious encounter occurred on Nov. 14, 2004 when he and another pilot were on a training mission 140 miles southwest of San Diego.

It became a social media phenomenon just before this past Christmas after Commander Fravor went public with his story more than 13 years after it happened. The Pentagon released a video of the 2004 incident, and acknowledged the existence of what the U.S. Department of Defense had called its Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which tracked UFOs.

Funded at a cost of $22 million, that secretive government program existed from 2007 to 2012. It is believed to be continuing to some degree.

Commander Fravor was encouraged to tell his story to The New York Times by Luis Elizondo, a retired intelligence officer who ran that Pentagon program. Mr. Elizondo is now director of global security and special programs of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a group encouraging more transparency about UFOs. After The Times published its article, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, ABC News, Fox News, CNN, CBS News, Popular Mechanics, and many other national news outlets followed suit.

"There's enough credible evidence there are things flying around that we didn't build and we can't explain," Commander Fravor said.

Born and raised in West Toledo, Commander Fravor brings some tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating humor to the interview. He said he's gotten inevitable ribbing from his military buddies, but jokingly added he's "had no one come up to me and say I'm a complete whack job."

That's because — unlike the stereotypical UFO observer — Mr. Fravor has impeccable credentials.

At the time of his alleged sighting, he was commander of a 300-member Navy squadron aboard the USS Nimitz known as Strike Fighter Squadron 41. The pilots were flying the Navy's newest aircraft, the F/A-18F Super Hornet. He had more than 3,500 flight hours and was a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School known as TOPGUN.

He retired in 2006.

His 24 years in the military included 18 years as a Navy jet pilot and five deployments in Iraq, beginning with Desert Storm.

He recalls the weather was ideal on the day he's convinced he saw a UFO: Blue sky and no clouds. The sea was calm.

Three others were in the sky with him. In addition to the pilot in the other F/A-18F who accompanied him on that mission, a weapons system officer was in the back of both fighter jets. Their identities have not been disclosed, as they are still active military, Commander Fravor said.

Shortly after the two fighter jets began their training mission, they were redirected by a radio operator from the cruiser USS Princeton to a part of the Pacific Ocean where the Princeton had been tracking as many as a dozen mysterious objects for two weeks. Objects had been seen dropping straight down from above 80,000 feet and stopping at 20,000 feet.

In this case, a huge object — approximately 10 feet wide and 40 feet long — hovered as low as 50 feet above the ocean. There was a disturbance in the water directly below it, with waves possibly generated by a second unidentified object much larger than a submarine that may have been submerged beneath the water.

Commander Fravor said he and the trio accompanying him had their eyes glued on the airborne object for about five minutes.

He said numerous times that UFO had the appearance of a giant "Tic Tac" breath mint. It was an oblong, all-white tubular device with no windows and no wings. It had no exhaust, and its energy source and form of propulsion were unknown. It wasn't a plane, a helicopter, a drone, or anything he'd seen in his years as a Navy jet pilot.

"In 18 years of flying airplanes, this thing had characteristics I never saw," Commander Fravor said. "It was almost jaw-dropping. It was very strange."

He said he told the other pilot to stay up high, that he was going down for a closer look. As soon as he got within 3,000 feet — a little more than a half-mile — the object zoomed away at bullet speed, he said.

"As I  get within about a half-mile of it, it just rapidly accelerates," Commander Fravor said. "As it crosses my [fighter jet's] nose, it just disappears. It's gone."

In one of his many other interviews, Commander Fravor said the mysterious aircraft took off at a speed "well above supersonic."

It was gone within two seconds on a day so clear he had 50 miles of visibility and could easily see large objects 10 miles away.

"I believe it was something not from this world," Commander Fravor said Dec. 20 on Fox News during a nationally televised interview with host Tucker Carlson.

One reason Commander Fravor said he's going public is he wants to demystify UFOs, in hopes the U.S. government and people in general will take the potential for them more seriously.

He encourages experts to think outside the box and "reverse engineer" what they know about aeronautics.

"I highly doubt that technology exists on this planet," Commander Fravor said. "What if we were able to find an energy source to do this? The way these things are maneuvering — it almost defies the laws of physics. Gravity's not a factor to them."

He applauds To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science for getting some documents declassified, and pushing the issue.

The group includes other former members of the CIA, Defense Department, and the Intelligence community at large. It was co-founded by Tom DeLonge, who serves as president and interim chief executive officer. Mr. DeLonge also co-founded rock bands Blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves, among his many other ventures.

In an op-ed published March 9 in The Washington Post  and referenced in a Newsweek magazine article days later, another retired Pentagon official now working for To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, claimed Commander Fravor is one of several U.S. pilots who have spotted mysterious flying objects that need to be taken seriously. A more recent sighting was along the East Coast in 2015, Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, wrote.

Mr. Mellon said in his piece the U.S. government is being foolhardy by "ignoring UFO sightings," claiming it's because "nobody wants to be 'the alien guy' in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue."

"This is true up and down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to progress," Mr. Mellon wrote, adding that Mr. Elizondo resigned from the Pentagon last fall "to protest government inattention to the growing body of empirical data."

The sightings don't necessarily mean there are aliens out there: The UFOs could be advanced Chinese or Russian technology, Mr. Mellon wrote in his piece. That, he argued, should in itself generate more curiosity among government officials. In his op-ed, Mr. Mellon also drew an analogy to when the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into low Earth orbit on Oct. 4, 1957, an event that began the race to the moon in the 1960s for technological superiority.

"Not everyone is taking it as seriously as it needs to be taken," Commander Fravor said of UFOs. "They're out there. We don't know their intentions. They have a capability we don't."

Commander Fravor said his mind-blowing, five-minute encounter from 2004 will forever stick with him as the highlight of a career that began shortly after he enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 17 while still a student at Whitmer High.

He said he did that against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to go to college first. The youth left for boot camp two days after his 18th birthday, and — two years later — was sent to the Naval Academy by the Marines.

Like many of his Ohio peers, Commander Fravor grew up idolizing Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, who hailed from the tiny northwest Ohio town of Wapakoneta. He at one time fancied himself as a future astronaut, especially after seeing Mr. Armstrong take mankind's historic first step on the moon on July 21, 1969. But, ultimately, he fell in love with fighter jets.

"I was always operationally focused. I loved what I was doing, I really did," Commander Fravor said.

He said the experience hasn't changed the way he sees science fiction movies, explaining that he's perfectly capable of making a distinction between a Hollywood film and what he saw over the Pacific in 2004.

As determined as he is for the United States to get a better understanding of UFOs, though, he hasn't lost his sense of humor.

"If I told you how many people have given me Tic Tacs, you'd laugh," Commander Fravor said.

Contact Tom Henry at thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published March 31, 2018, 3:59pm

https://www.toledoblade.com/local/2018/03/31/Toledo-native-David-Fravor-recalls-close-encounter-with-UFO.html

[zorgon]

Navy Pilot's 2004 UFO: A Comedy of Errors


Investigative Files
Joe Nickell
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 42.3, May / June 2018

The first I heard about a shadowy UFO research program operated by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 2007–2012 was when I was interviewed by New York Times reporter Helene Cooper on December 12, 2017. I was not named in the subsequent two articles (Cooper et al. 2017a; 2017b) except that one included my input under an introductory statement about UFO sightings. It read: "Experts caution that earthly explanations often exist for such incidents, and that not knowing the explanation does not mean that the event has interstellar origins" (Cooper et al. 2017b).

The DIA had not acknowledged the program's existence until it was revealed by Cooper and two coauthors, reporter Ralph Blumenthal and a credulous flying-saucer promoter and writer, Leslie Kean (see, e.g., Kean 2010). Had I known the latter was involved, I would have warned the New York Times to tread carefully.

Indeed, the respected newspaper did come in for some deserved criticism, including from New York magazine for "implying that extraterrestrials are real." The magazine added, "For ufologists who had dreamed of being taken seriously by the mainstream media, the story was a dream come true" (Wise 2017). Most problematic was the second of the articles, despite its disclaimer.

Strange Incident
That article told of a 2004 incident that occurred when two Navy F-18 fighter planes were sent to investigate a mysterious object and it suddenly accelerated—like nothing the airmen had ever seen before. Intrigued, I contacted Major James McGaha, with whom I have often worked, especially on UFO cases. A former U.S. Air Force special operations pilot, he is also an astronomer and so has a unique knowledge of the sky. We set to work on the case.

According to the New York Times article, navy airmen—Commander David Fravor and Lt. Commander Jim Slaight—had been with a squadron on a training mission over the Pacific some 100 miles from San Diego. The date was November 14, 2004. The incident began when Fravor was radioed by a radar operator on a Navy cruiser, the USS Princeton, asking them to investigate some unknown objects at a particular vector. He was accompanied by another F-18.

When the two planes arrived at what is termed "merge point"—that is, so close that the Princeton's radar could not distinguish them from the unknown object—the pilots saw nothing. But when Fravor looked down he saw the sea churning. Was this from a crashed aircraft as Fravor first thought or from, he would later suggest, possibly a submarine (as from the Nimitz's own carrier strike group)?

Unfortunately, there are different versions of Fravor's subsequent experience. First the New York Times, mentioning the churning water, states that "some kind" of white, oval aircraft about thirty to forty feet long was "hovering 50 feet above the churn." But as Fravor descended, the object ascended toward him. He said, "We were at least 40 miles away, and in less than a minute this thing was already at our cap point" (Cooper 2017b).

Yet something is wrong in the information here: How could someone see what a forty-foot object was doing from forty miles away?

Another version of Fravor's experience is provided in a "truly curious document that tells Fravor's story in the form of a military-style briefing" with portions blacked out to give a pseudo top-secret appearance (Wise 2017). It is in fact a third-person account of an interview with Fravor, produced by a fringe-ideas group called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. That group includes Luis Elizondo, who had previously headed the Pentagon UFO study (actually named Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program), mentioned earlier. The group's founders include former pop singer Tom DeLonge and former Scientologist and parapsychologist Harold E. Puthoff (Austin 2017).

In this second, earlier report ("Pilot report" 2017), which calls Fravor "Source," the unidentified object above the churning water "traveled from left to right over the disturbed water at an altitude of approximately 1000 to 3000 feet"—not fifty feet above, as the other version had reported. (Investigators can scarcely be expected to explain some occurrence when what is alleged is presented with such contradictions and seriously incomplete and disjointed reporting.) Fravor went on to say that as the second plane aggressively dropped and maneuvered, to catch up with the object, it behaved "as if it knew or somehow anticipated what they were going to do and even pointed toward them!" To us, it sounds almost as if the airmen were deliberately being buzzed by a reconnaissance drone! Were they being tested as part of their training?

Whatever actually happened, the UFO then disappeared, Fravor said, having "accelerated like nothing I've ever seen" (Cooper et al. 2017b). When the two jets returned to their aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, something interesting occurred: "... everyone on the ship had learned of Commander Fravor's encounter and was making fun of him" (Cooper et al. 2017b). They were playing alien movies such as Men in Black and The X-Files on the ship's onboard closed-circuit TV ("Pilot report" 2017). Given that "everyone" made fun of Fravor, one must wonder why: Did he have a reputation as a UFO believer, or did they know something he didn't?

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors

[zorgon]

The Video
Fravor says another group of F-18s "also encountered the same object later the same day." Viewing a video from that flight, "Source [Fravor] identified the object affirmatively as the one they saw earlier" ("Pilot Report" 2017). Apparently this video—not one from Fravor's plane—was the one released by the To the Stars group.

It seems possible that Fravor's sighting has become merged with the separate incident shown by the video. Both involve an object described as looking like a "tic-tac" candy mint—without apparent wings, rotors, windows, or other features—and completely white. This is indicative of an object seen on an infrared video (like the video in question). Thus, there may well be confusion as to what was supposedly seen by Fravor and what had been related to him. Such confusion could easily have occurred over the intervening thirteen years.

Either the first or second object in question, if seen only on a video screen, might well have been a drone or distant airplane. Even if it were too far away to be visible, its heat signature could have been viewed by infrared. Another possibility was given by Fravor himself. Interestingly, before the planes were sent to the site, the controller had made sure they were not weaponized. After the encounter, Fravor had "initially thought that perhaps this was an unannounced, classified missile test by a U.S. Navy submarine," but he now concludes, "There is no way any aircraft or missile that I know of could conduct maneuvers like what we saw that day" ("Pilot report" 2017). Nevertheless, there is confusion over just what occurred. Fravor insists, "I know what I saw" (quoted in Finucane 2018), while just as surely admitting, "I have no idea what I saw" (quoted in Cooper et al. 2017b). We have observed this many times: A person has mistaken perceptions, or he experiences something that seems unusual, and soon is insisting that he knows what he saw, ego becoming involved. In fact, he only knows what he thinks he saw, and that can change over time.

In any event, this brings us to the video in question, which shows an object's rapid acceleration to the left and disappearance from the video screen. What we see on the video is probably a trick of optics, according to Major McGaha. He believes the sudden leftward-zooming of the object resulted from the camera having momentarily reached the limit of its panning ability, at which time the F-18 was banking. This created the onscreen illusion that the object suddenly shot away. As corroboration, McGaha notes that the angle of the object's moving off the screen is correlated to the bank angle of the F-18. What was no longer viewed was presumed to have disappeared at a tremendous speed.

As it happened, this was Fravor's "first military assignment as a pilot for the U.S. Navy's F-18 Super Hornet." It obviously rattled him. As he was stung by being made fun of on returning to the Nimitz, he "made detailed written notes of the incident" that he mailed to an aunt, noting, "Keep this because this is important stuff about some real X-Files shit" ("Pilot report" 2017). No one was going to tell him he could have been mistaken about his experience—which, after all, appears to have been a series of misunderstandings and misperceptions.

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors

[zorgon]

Conclusions

New York magazine summed up the retired Fravor's current celebrity status:

It seems that To the Stars is trying to shroud Fravor's account in a spooky fog of faux top secrecy. This is a dicey strategy given Fravor's prominence in online UFO circles, and gives the impression that Elizondo's company is repackaging timeworn tales from the internet as freshly revealed government X-files. And, by extension, (it) calls into question the Times' wisdom in taking his claims about extraterrestrial encounters at face value. (Wise 2017)

To recap, we suggest that several things were going on during what was, after all, a training mission of the USS Nimitz carrier strike group. We believe the churning water Fravor first saw was caused by a submerging sub; that the sightings of a UFO above the water (variously reported)—which hovered, then came toward one pilot—could have been those of a reconnaissance drone; that there may have been confusion (then and later) over the object or objects caused by the admixture of visual sightings with infrared video viewing; and, finally, that one video image showing an object suddenly zooming off screen was likely caused by the plane's banking while the camera was stopped at the end of its sweep.

If UFO proponents claim inconsistencies in our scenario, we shall point out confusion and incompleteness in the reports. Apparently not only had the incident not been considered serious enough to have warranted a debriefing of Fravor—let alone of the several other pilots and radar operator—but most of the carrier group's personnel at the time regarded Fravor's response as laughable. Major McGaha and I regard the entire incident not as evidence of an extraterrestrial encounter but as a comedy of errors involving the pilots.


References
Austin, Jon. 2017. Pentagon UFO probe. Daily Express (London), updated December 28.
Cooper, Helene, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean. 2017a. Glowing auras and 'black money': The Pentagon's mysterious U.F.O. program. The New York Times (December 16).
———. 2017b. 2 Navy airmen and an object that 'accelerated like nothing I've ever seen.' The New York Times (December 16).
Finucane, Martin. 2018. This former navy pilot... Boston Globe (January 16).
Kean, Leslie. 2010. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Pilot report. 2017. 2004 USS Nimitz Pilot Report. Available online at https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/nimitz-report/; accessed January 5, 2018.
Wise, Jeff. 2017. What the New York Times UFO report actually reveals. New York magazine. Available online at http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/new-york-times-ufo-report.html; accessed December 27, 2017.
Joe Nickell

Joe Nickell, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and "Investigative Files" Columnist for Skeptical Inquirer. A former stage magician, private investigator, and teacher, he is author of numerous books, including Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1998), Pen, Ink and Evidence (2003), Unsolved History (2005) and Adventures in Paranormal Investigation (2007). He has appeared in many television documentaries and has been profiled in The New Yorker and on NBC's Today Show. His personal website is at joenickell.com.

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors

[A51Watcher]

I can buy that explanation Z, especially since this was a training mission with dummy missiles that could not come off the rail.

If this recreation is the best that Delonge has, it is no wonder that TTSA is heading into bankruptcy.

[zorgon]

I can buy that explanation Z, especially since this was a training mission with dummy missiles that could not come off the rail.

If this recreation is the best that Delonge has, it is no wonder that TTSA is heading into bankruptcy.

It really bothers me though on several fronts...

1) the obvious money making attempt to once again sell bullshit...

but more important...

2) The NAMES that are involved in this Bigelow, Puthoff, Knapp, Lazar, 4 Names, Harry Reid even Bruce Maccabee

It seems like anyone who is connected to UFOlogy over the years is in on this...

And Reid already stated he doesn't believe in "Little Green men" and roswell saucers, says its demons. 4 names hinted that all UFOlogy has been a lie andits all related to Skin Walker


WTF?  The pentagon says their UFO program is too expensive and NO RESULTS  then gives us the TicTac and Harry Reid?

And Elon Musk tosses in a Buck Rogers fabric rocket standing on its tail fins and says this will soon take 100 people to Mars?

ARGGGGGGGGGG

[bigpappy51]

George Knapp and The I-Team KLAS Obtained new documents about AATIP DD FORM 1910 saying that its proof the DOD released the 3 infamous videos that TTSA have put out.

https://www.lasvegasnow.com/news/local-news/exclusive-i-team-confirms-pentagon-did-release-ufo-videos/1963912703?fbclid=IwAR2rZmImUKtueP5uEC712YY78bSdT-_G3G2Er-NtEPRQum62DaSxdKaTJXc

Here's the DD FORM 1910 Document seems as if the bottoms not filled out I'm not a military document expert but I would think that has to be filled out.



Also here is the updated April 2016 DD FORM 1910 link which actually has the instructions on the proper way to fill the document out which is supposed to be on the back side of the document.

https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DOPSR/Docs/dd1910.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1pEabsw_ijSG_KfmiiFnXWCHN2GNJ75RY6abmk0MYIz2hUxNHRnlX1erM

BigPappy51

[spacemaverick]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5-jQ0GMYAI&list=LLFX6Sjncv7IWX5uHGxiSAIg&index=2&t=0s

Okay, this thread talks of the Nimitz encounter, but near the end of the video the USS Rosevelt encountered the same thing later on a few years later.  Silence from the government for more than a decade then this video from Black Vault

[bigpappy51]

That recreation was excellent the question is what are these white objects ? What I found bizarre was the testimony towards the end where these plain clothes Govt Air Force Officers were on board the Nimitz and took the Hard Drives from Patrick Hughes.

Same thing Happens to Hughes when he returned to The Princeton with plain clothed men who were with Hughes Commanding Officers. Is this technology ours and these men were used as guinea pigs ? Or are these craft ETs ?

[Shasta56]

I wish my cousin was still around.  Not only because I  miss him, but because he served on the Nimitz.  It would be interesting to hear if he saw anything unusual.  Alas, for profit health insurance rules his diabetes a pre-existing condition when he changed jobs and insurance.  He passed more than 6 years ago.

[A51Watcher]

So recently Bob said he was impressed with some of the gun camera footage related to the tic tac videos and how the craft suddenly pulled a 90 degree turn.

I later discussed this with a friend who was with me at the time and we were both like 'What the heck is he talking about?'.

We have not seen any footage where the craft does that.

So I went hunting on YT and found the footage he must be talking about at 4:52 -

[A51Watcher]