Nat Kobitz was the former Director of Science and Technology Development for the United States Navy (USN).1 Journalist Ross Coulthart reported that Kobitz phoned him unprompted in early 2020 after receiving a letter from him,2 and that Kobitz called from his home in USA Baltimore, at the age of 92, more than a quarter of a century after a Pentagon meeting he had attended.3 At the time he was fighting a terminal illness.4 His daughter, Celia Kobitz, was named by Coulthart in this context.5 Kobitz left the Navy role in 1994 and subsequently set up a private consultancy, NKA Science.6
Kobitz said that during his career he worked on the launch vehicle airframe for the Gemini space program and on numerous Navy surface ship and submarine projects over nearly three decades.78 He said he was involved in developing a Navy unmanned aerial vehicle project called Sea Scout.9 According to Kobitz, the Sea Scout prototype was lost when it flew too close to a presidential family wedding in Texas and was jammed by security protection systems,10 and the programme ended after the crash, as the vehicle had cost a million dollars to build and no further funding was available.11 Kobitz also confirmed he worked on Anti-Gravity Propulsion research for the Navy, describing his own contribution as relatively unexciting and, in his account, a very low-energy ion propulsion system.1213 He said he did not believe the United States had cracked the secret of anti-gravity despite years of secret research.14
In July 1993, one year before leaving the Navy, Kobitz met Gordon Novel and Novel’s son Sur Novel at the 1993-07 Pentagon meeting between Gordon Novel and Nat Kobitz.15 Sur Novel later confirmed that the figure given the pseudonym “Wally Katz” in Gordon Novel’s book on the Alien Reproduction Vehicle (ARV) Fluxliner was in fact Kobitz,16 and recalled his father showing Kobitz a drawing of the Fluxliner alien reproduction vehicle by Mark McCandlish in Kobitz’s Pentagon office.17 Sur Novel described Kobitz’s facial reaction to the drawing as one of surprise, as though he recognised what it was, rather than alarm.18 Coulthart has said he has a sceptical hunch that Novel embellished what Kobitz said at the meeting to lure readers of his book into funding an anti-gravity propulsion project.19 When later asked directly by Coulthart, Kobitz said only that the Fluxliner story “rings a bell”,20 and after being sent a more detailed version of McCandlish’s graphic, Kobitz said he recognised it and concluded it was a hoax.21
Kobitz told Coulthart he had been read into programmes involving crashed UFOs or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) and had never been read out of that clearance, though he said he could not speak about it.22 Asked whether he was aware of any recovered alien spacecraft held by the US government, he said he had only hearsay information and was being careful not to speculate about matters he did not know directly.23 He reacted with dismissive laughter when Coulthart recited the official US Air Force explanation, involving Project Mogul, for the debris recovered at the Roswell incident (1947).24 Kobitz confirmed to Coulthart that the United States has been trying to develop recovered alien technology,25 while making clear across several long conversations that he would not breach the terms of his national security oath to reveal full details of what he knew.26
During his time at NKA Science, Kobitz was invited to visit Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, USA, Ohio, to examine strange pieces of metal held under high security, a visit later recorded as Nat Kobitz’s visit to examine a metal fragment at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.27 He had earlier been read into a programme working with recovered UAP technology during his Navy career.28 He said he saw a piece of material reported to him as a titanium alloy not known to the Air Force,29 approximately 0.9 by 1.2 metres in size.30 The fragment showed no attachment except something that appeared welded but was not actually welded,31 and was integral with the surrounding skin, comparable to being integral with a bulkhead.32 Manufacturing staff initially believed the joint resulted from electron beam welding, which typically leaves a small bead or line, but Kobitz did not think it looked that way;33 he observed that it appeared cast in place, with no interruption of the kind typical electron beam welds sometimes show.34 His expert opinion was that there was no known industrial process that could replicate the bond he saw,35 though he reserved judgement on whether the fragment came from a craft not of this world.36
Kobitz also made inquiries with Navy colleagues, on Coulthart’s behalf, about patents held by Salvatore Pais, and none of the colleagues had any information on Pais or on working prototypes of his patented designs.37 Coulthart has said he is in no doubt that Kobitz told him the truth of what he knew and saw about the alleged crash retrieval programme,38 and has described Kobitz as one of the most senior US Defense Department insiders ever to go public with claims of retrieved alien technology.39 In a later interview, Coulthart said he received a reply letter from Kobitz and subsequently had a series of phone calls and online meetings with him,40 that Kobitz lived in Baltimore,41 and that by the time they spoke Kobitz was dying slowly from cancer and staying with his daughter.42 Kobitz passed away while the two were still in the process of talking extensively about what he knew.43 Coulthart said Kobitz introduced him to people with direct knowledge of the Legacy Program and told him he had himself been read into it,4445 that Kobitz was an expert in electron beam welding,46 that he was invited to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base after leaving the Navy though Coulthart suspected he still held a security clearance,47 and that he was taken deep underground there to what was clearly a highly secure installation.48 Coulthart described Kobitz as one of the top scientists in the United States Navy,49 who had worked at US Naval Weapons Centre China Lake and had been inside top-secret facilities buried in hillsides in different parts of the United States.50 Through Kobitz’s instigation, Coulthart said he met people inside the Legacy Program who put everything on the line to tell him what they knew.51