Lex Fridman Podcast #122: David Fravor on UFOs, Fighter Jets, and Aerospace Engineering

Episode 122 of the Lex Fridman Podcast, published 2020-09-08, features host Lex Fridman in a wide-ranging conversation with retired US Navy commander David Fravor. Fridman introduces his guest as a Navy pilot of 18 years and commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41), also known as the Black Aces Squadron, a squadron of 12 aircraft consisting of several hundred people.¹ Fridman describes Fravor as one of the people who with his own eyes saw and chased a UFO in 2004, an event he refers to as the Tic Tac Sighting,² and states that from his perspective as a scientist the account is the most credible UFO sighting in history.³ The episode was sponsored by Athletic Greens, ExpressVPN, and BetterHelp, and Fridman noted it was likely the longest episode of the podcast to that date.²⁸

The first portion of the episode covers Fravor’s aviation career. He attended the Navy Fighter Weapons School as Top Gun Class 4 1997,⁴ having previously been enrolled in the Strike Fighter Weapons and Tactics Instructor (SFTI) Programme. He describes his early career flying the A-6 Intruder (aircraft), a side-by-side two-seat bomber built in the 1960s capable of all-weather low-altitude night operations using terrain-mapping radar,⁵ and the formative working relationship he developed with his first fleet bombardier navigator, Chris Sato, a graduate of MIT who later moved to Apple Inc.⁶ Fravor was subsequently selected as commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41) after fleeting up from the executive officer position under then-Commander Weitzel (Vice Admiral),⁷ and when he commanded the squadron it flew the two-seat F-18F Super Hornet (aircraft). The episode includes detailed discussion of cockpit systems including the APG-73 Radar, the ATFLIR Pod, the Joint Helmet Mounted Cuing System, and Sensor Fusion (aviation), as well as Digital Flight Controls (aircraft), 3D Spatial Awareness in Aviation, and Carrier Landing Night Operations.

The central portion of the episode concerns the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group Anomalous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) Detection Matter, 2004-11-10 to 2004-11-16. Fridman describes the USS Princeton as beginning to detect objects flying at approximately 8,500 metres altitude at about 190 kilometres per hour off the coast of California from 2004-11-10.⁸ On 2004-11-14, Fravor’s training mission was cancelled and replaced with a real-world tasking from the Princeton; the intercept involved four crew members across two F/A-18F aircraft.⁹ No video was recorded during Fravor’s visual intercept — all four crew members observed the Anomalous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) directly.¹⁰ Fravor describes the object as smooth and white, with no wings, no visible propulsion, and no windows,¹¹ and observed no rotor wash on the water surface below, eliminating helicopter as an explanation for its hovering behaviour.¹² He descended to approximately 4,600 metres during the intercept,¹³ approached to approximately 800 metres from the object,¹⁴ and estimated the total visual observation at approximately five minutes¹⁶ before the AAV accelerated and disappeared in less than approximately half a second.¹⁵ Alex Dietrich flew the second aircraft and maintained a higher altitude throughout, providing an independent viewing angle.

Following Fravor’s flight, Chad Underwood launched and recorded what became the Anomalous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) Recording 2004-11.¹⁷ Fravor explains that when Underwood locked his APG-73 Radar onto the AAV, the radar indicated it was being jammed across every available radar mode,¹⁸ and that the original recording is approximately one minute and thirty seconds long — claims that it is ten minutes are false.¹⁹ Fravor recounts the Fravor CVIC Tape Incident, in which Carrier Intelligence Center (CVIC) officers collected the FLIR tapes, and how he subsequently retrieved them. The tape had been available informally online for years before official release; Fravor’s weapons systems officer sent him a link to the footage on strangeland.com around 2008, and it later migrated to YouTube. The episode also addresses the Nimitz Unofficial Investigation: approximately five years after the incident, around 2009, Fravor received a call from a government employee conducting what he describes as the unofficial official investigation.²⁰ The resulting report was subsequently obtained by Harry Reid and passed to George Knapp, who published it with redactions.²¹ The investigator was identified by Fravor as an original member of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was run at the Pentagon by Luis Elizondo.²²

The later sections of the episode address broader UAP context and sceptical responses. Fridman raises Mick West’s hypothesis that Fravor and the other aircrew may have miscalculated the size and distance of the AAV;²³ Fravor disputes this, estimating the object at approximately 40 feet (approximately 12 metres) long — roughly the size of an F/A-18F Hornet — based on 16 years of experience judging aircraft dimensions from the air, and notes that all four witnesses returned with the same assessment.²⁴ Fravor expresses the opinion that the AAV was not US-developed technology, reasoning that an advance of that magnitude would typically be preceded by detectable academic research at leading universities.²⁵ The episode also covers the 2015 Atlantic Coast UAP Sightings, in which pilots confirmed radar contacts were real by slewing a targeting pod onto them and detecting a heat signature,²⁶ and the Virginia Beach UAP Near-Miss, in which an object described as a cube inside a sphere passed between two aircraft at approximately 30 metres clearance.²⁷ Additional discussion touches on the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and its principals including Tom DeLonge, Christopher K. Mellon, and Steve Justice; the Rendlesham Forest Incident; Project Blue Book; Bob Lazar, whom Fravor met at the McMinnville UAP Festival; and the SpaceX development programme, with Fravor drawing on his acquaintance with a Fravor Friend Unnamed SpaceX Employee who worked on the SpaceX Falcon 1 Development project.