USS Nimitz

USS Nimitz (CVN-68) is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of the United States Navy and the lead vessel of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group.¹ In November 2004, the carrier served as the primary platform for the series of events now widely referred to as the 2004 Nimitz UAP Encounter, making it central to one of the most extensively documented UAP cases in US military history. The carrier’s strike group for that deployment comprised USS Princeton (CG-59), USS Chafee (DDG-90), USS Higgins (DDG-76), and USS Louisville (SSN-724).²

Carrier Air Wing 11 (CVW-11), embarked aboard USS Nimitz at the time, included Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 (VMFA-232) flying F/A-18C aircraft, Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41) flying F/A-18F aircraft, Electronic Attack Squadron 135 (VAQ-135) flying EA-6B aircraft, Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 117 (VAW-117) flying E-2C Hawkeye aircraft, and Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30 (VRC-30) Det 3 flying C-2A aircraft, among other units.³ In November 2004, the strike group was at the beginning of a workup cycle in preparation for a combat deployment to the Persian Gulf to support ground forces in Iraq.⁴

On 2004-11-14, the USS Nimitz was conducting training exercises off the Southern Californian coastline ahead of its planned deployment.⁵ The carrier strike group was operating approximately 160 kilometres southwest of San Diego.⁶ Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41) was attached to Carrier Air Wing 11 and stationed aboard the Nimitz at that time, with David Fravor serving as the squadron’s commanding officer.⁷ The planned exercise involved launching aircraft from the Nimitz to simulate high-fidelity air defence training scenarios.⁸ When radar operator Kevin Day aboard USS Princeton again detected a cluster of unidentified objects and confirmed that the USS Nimitz’s own radar was observing the same contacts, he recommended to Captain James Smith of the Nimitz that aircraft be dispatched to investigate.^9,10 An E-2C Hawkeye launched from the Nimitz also detected the closest UAP on its radar, providing further corroboration.¹¹

Following the captain’s concurrence, Fravor’s flight launched from the Nimitz and, after checking in with the air controller aboard USS Princeton, was redirected from training to real-world tasking associated with the unidentified contacts.¹² Radar tracking of the Tic Tac Sighting was achieved by USS Princeton, the USS Nimitz, and the E-2C Hawkeye, though the F/A-18 fire control radars did not acquire the object.¹³ Upon returning to the Nimitz, Fravor described what he had witnessed to a crew preparing to launch; that crew subsequently obtained the approximately 90-second forward-looking infrared (FLIR) video of the Anomalous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) that was later released by the US government in 2017.¹⁴ Shortly after the incident, two unidentified individuals arrived by naval helicopter aboard the Nimitz, and Petty Officer Patrick Hughes was ordered to hand over data bricks from the E-2C Hawkeye to two individuals described as air force personnel.¹⁵

In the immediate aftermath of the encounter, very little formal follow-up was conducted once pilots returned to the Nimitz.¹⁶ Fravor later testified that neither the ship’s captain, the admiral, nor any other commanding officers spoke to him about the incident following his return.¹⁶ Nevertheless, the video footage and associated radar data circulated among crewmen aboard the Nimitz and USS Princeton via the government’s classified email system.¹⁷ The 2004 Nimitz UAP Encounter was later documented in the Navy F/A-18F Nimitz Encounter Video and the FLIR1 Video, and studied by officials associated with the Pentagon’s UAP programme, who described footage of a whitish oval object chased by two Navy F/A-18F Super Hornets from the carrier off the coast of San Diego.¹⁸ The 2017 NYT Pentagon UAP Article identified the 2004 Nimitz encounter as a key case, and the encounter was subsequently the subject of the 2004 Nimitz UAP Incident and Fravor’s Fravor House Oversight Committee Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Testimony, 2023. The 2004 encounter was documented by radar, by camera, and by four naval aviators.¹⁹

Luis Elizondo, former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), later assessed that the UAP incidents involving USS Theodore Roosevelt bore all the hallmarks of the Nimitz and Princeton case from 2004, noting that both the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Nimitz were nuclear-powered vessels.²⁰ The Nimitz encounter has remained a reference point in UAP research and congressional oversight, with To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science publishing associated video footage in December 2017 and Christopher Mellon publicly stating at To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science’s launch that the US government could verify the events involving the USS Nimitz on 2004-11-14.