The 2004 USS Nimitz encounter refers to a series of interactions between United States Navy personnel and one or more unidentified aerial objects during a training exercise approximately 160 kilometres southwest of San Diego, California.
In the two weeks preceding the visual encounter, radar operators aboard the USS Princeton detected objects on the SPY-1B radar system that exhibited unusual flight characteristics, including descents from approximately 24,000 metres to sea level in less than a second.1
On 14 November 2004, Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich were vectored to intercept one of the tracked objects. They observed a white, featureless, capsule-shaped object approximately 12 metres in length hovering above a disturbance in the ocean surface.2
After the initial encounter, a second pair of aircraft was launched. One of these aircraft, equipped with an Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared pod, recorded video of an object. This footage, known as the FLIR1 video, was among three videos officially released by the United States Department of Defence in April 2020.3
The encounter is considered one of the most well-documented UAP incidents due to the combination of radar data, multiple independent witnesses, and infrared video evidence.