The United States Navy (USN) is the branch of the US armed forces most frequently connected to modern Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) reporting, principally through the 2004 USS Nimitz UAP encounter. In November 2004, two Navy F/A-18s from the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) intercepted one of the objects at close quarters in conditions of perfect visibility.1 David Fravor was the senior pilot in the air that day and was considered one of the Navy’s best,2 having commanded his squadron for only one month and holding, at the time, the most junior O5 command in the Navy.3 Lieutenant Junior Grade Alex Dietrich piloted the second F/A-18 Super Hornet involved.4 The rendezvous point where the encounter began, known as the cap point, lay approximately 97 kilometres away and was known only to a handful of Navy personnel and pilots.5 Fravor said that when a Navy jet flown by Chad Underwood later tried to lock onto the object with radar, there were clear indications of deliberate jamming.6 According to The Fourth Mind, the object was recorded on the pilots’ cameras and on the radar of the USS Princeton, and the encounter has been confirmed as anomalous by the Navy.7 Following the dogfight with Fravor, the objects resumed tracking south at approximately 185 kilometres per hour, as if nothing had happened.8
After 2012, Luis Elizondo worked with Navy and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).9 On 2017-12-18, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) located a classified email Elizondo had sent that August requesting assistance from a Navy civilian employee to declassify one or more videos.10 Jay Stratton was, separately, skilled at getting fellow Navy personnel to talk about their UAP encounters,11 and Navy intelligence leadership tasked him with quietly building a whole-of-government interagency UAP task force with more authority than AATIP had ever had.12 Elizondo later attended a meeting with senior Navy officials, CIA representatives and a National Security Agency (NSA) representative at which the Go-Fast Video and Gimbal video were shown.13 The Go-Fast footage itself came with little context beyond having been captured by a Navy F/A-18 using its advanced targeting forward-looking infrared (ATFLIR) pod,14 while the Gimbal object was initially described only as having been seen and videoed by Navy fighter pilots at an unspecified location.15 In September 2019 the Navy formally acknowledged it could not offer a satisfactory explanation for the UAP its pilots were witnessing,16 and Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher said the service had not publicly released characterisations, hypotheses or conclusions about the objects in the Tic Tac, Go-Fast and Gimbal videos.17 On 2020-04-27, in the 2020-04 Pentagon release of three Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) videos, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) authorised the release of three unclassified Navy videos,18 one filmed in November 200419 and two in January 2015,20 all of which had already been circulating in the public domain following unauthorised releases in 2007 and 2017.21
Ryan Graves, a former Navy F/A-18 Hornet pilot with a decade of service including two deployments during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Inherent Resolve,22 was trained as an aviation safety officer by the Navy.23 After a translucent, bubble-like object was encountered, Graves’ squadron filed a safety report with the Navy but never heard back.24 Graves later said the Navy implemented a Range Fouler Report to gather information from pilots about UAP encounters on training ranges.25 According to In Plain Sight, Congressman Mark Walker wrote to the Secretary of the Navy on 2019-07-16 regarding UFO sightings.26 In it, Walker asked what resources the Navy was dedicating to investigating the sightings, whether any physical evidence had been found, and whether foreign adversaries or private companies might have developed the technology.27 Navy Undersecretary Thomas Modly replied that the Department of the Navy took UAP reports very seriously and continued to log and investigate the accounts.28 Christopher K. Mellon has said that many of the UAP encountered by Navy pilots appeared to exhibit performance characteristics far more impressive and concerning than any of the objects the United States Air Force (USAF) shot down in February 2023,29 noting that USAF F-22 Raptor fighters operating in the same training areas as Navy pilots had superior sensor systems.30 Mellon arranged for Navy aviators to brief members and staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee,31 and later said that, in facilitating meetings between Navy pilots and congressional oversight committees alongside Elizondo, he found the Air Force notably unhelpful, if not hostile, to inquiries on the subject.32 Journalist Bryan Bender’s 2019-04 Politico story on new US Navy Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) reporting guidelines, reported via In Plain Sight, revealed in April 2019 that the Navy was drafting new guidelines for reporting UFOs33 and had given briefings by senior naval intelligence officials and aviators to Congressional members and staff.34
The Navy was named assignee on a series of patents Salvatore Pais filed over three years.35 In April 2016, during the 2016-04 Salvatore Pais gravity wave spacecraft patent application, Pais filed for a spacecraft driven by gravity waves.36 When the US Patent and Trademark Office initially rejected his hybrid craft application, the Navy vouched for his work in an appeal letter,37 and it went on to secure the patent for his Electro-magnetic Forcefield Generator patent as an operable device.38 The Navy did not apply to have Pais’s patents kept secret under the US Invention Secrecy Act, despite being able to do so.39 Ross Coulthart has suggested the Navy may have filed the patents to prevent China or Russia from claiming rights over the described technology, avoiding future royalty payments.40 Nat Kobitz, the Navy’s former Director of Science and Technology Development,41 confirmed he had worked on anti-gravity or field propulsion technology and that the Navy was researching it, though he described his own work as relatively unexciting.42 He left the role in 1994 to set up a private consultancy, NKA Science.43 Kobitz was read into a programme working with recovered UAP technology during his Navy career.44 Separately, Admiral Thomas Wilson arrived ten minutes late to a 2002 meeting with physicist Eric Davis at the EG&G building, accompanied by two Navy officers in uniform, one a lieutenant and one a commander, while he himself wore civilian clothes.45
The Navy’s connection to unconventional aircraft designs predates the UAP era. In the early 1940s it operated an experimental circular aircraft nicknamed the “flying flapjack”, the Chance Vought V-173, now held in a museum.46 A related design, the V-173/XF5U-1 “Flying Pancake”, was intended to maintain uniform airflow over its wingspan so the aircraft could take off and land at exceptionally low speeds without sacrificing the high-speed performance the Navy wanted in a fighter.47 According to a 2024 US government historical review, the project was cancelled in 1948 in favour of turbojet engines.48 According to Dark Mission, the Church of Scientology has claimed that L. Ron Hubbard was sent by the Navy to infiltrate and break up a black magic cult operating in Los Angeles.49 Mike Bara has written that, per Navy documents, Hubbard was assigned to intelligence duties in July 194150 and remained in the Navy reserves until October 1950.51