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The Navy and the UAPs

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One of the strangest mysteries of the modern U.S. Navy is a series of events that played out in 2004 and 2014–15, on each coast, involving what the Pentagon now calls “unexplained aerial phenomena” (UAP). In 2004 and 2014–15, Navy personnel flying carrier-based strike fighters and on surface warships spotted aircraft with flight and engineering characteristics currently considered impossible. The sightings are evidence that someone, somewhere has operationalized technology far beyond the apparent state of the art. The unknown craft, if not under the control of the U.S. government, might well represent a serious threat to American military superiority in a future conflict.

The story first became public in December 2017, when The New York Times broke a story about UAPs and the Nimitz Strike Group. The USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and her escorts were doing workups in advance of their 2005 deployment. Retired Commander David Fravor, one of the aviator eyewitnesses, says the ships were approximately 60 miles off the “midpoint between San Diego and Ensenada, Mexico” on 14 November 2004. Along with the Nimitz was the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) and several support ships.

Fravor, at the time skipper of the Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 41 “Black Aces,” and Lieutenant Commander Jim Slaight were flying an air-defense training mission from the Nimitz, with Marines from the VMFA-232 “Red Devils” set to play the bad guys. The Princeton was to coordinate the exercise.

Unbeknownst to Fravor, the exercise was about to take a turn. During the previous two weeks, radar operators on the Princeton had tracked unknown aircraft flying highly unusual maneuvers. The craft would descend from 80,000 feet, drop straight down to 20,000 feet, loiter for three to four hours, and go straight back to 80,000 feet again. As many as a dozen of these craft were sighted on the cruiser’s SPY-1 radar at a time. The Nimitz’s E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft could also see the craft.

Once airborne, Fravor received a request from Princeton Control to specify his aircraft loadout. He replied that his F/A-18F was equipped with a CATM-9 captive-carry training missile. The Princeton informed him the air-defense exercise was canceled in favor of a “real-world vector.” The controller explained the situation with the sightings and tasked Fravor’s flight of two F/A-18Fs to investigate the mysterious craft.

The strike fighters flew west until Princeton Control declared “merge plot”—meaning the radar returns of the objects were blurred with returns from the Super Hornets. The Navy flight crews looked down to the right and noticed a cross-shaped object, approximately the size of a Boeing 737, just under the surface of the water with waves breaking above it. Just above the underwater object was a white, oval-shaped object approximately 40 feet long—dubbed “the Tic-Tac” after the breath mint. All four naval aviators observed the objects with their own eyes, unaided. The aircraft did not resemble a helicopter nor did the water show any sign of rotor downwash.

Fravor descended to get a better look while his wingman continued flying at altitude. As Fravor’s altitude decreased, the Tic-Tac began rising to meet him. Fravor and the object flew closed—until the object abruptly seemed to disappear. The 737-sized object in the water also disappeared.

As the two F/A-18Fs left the area, Princeton Control radioed that the Tic-Tac had reappeared—at the strike fighters’ original rendezvous point (before they were retasked to investigate the object). By Fravor’s estimate, the object had traveled 60 miles in 30–40 seconds, which works out to roughly 7,200 miles an hour. The Princeton did not track the Tic-Tac’s rather; rather, the object simply seemed to reappear on the cruiser’s SPY-1 radar. The fighter crews flew back to the rendezvous point but did not observe the object, which also did not appear on their radar.

A third F/A-18F took off immediately after Fravor’s flight landed. The plane’s weapon system officer (WSO) detected the Tic-Tac on radar but immediately encountered antiradar jamming, presumably emitted by the object. The airplane’s other sensors had slewed to target, however, and the WSO was able to observe it and record video with the AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) sensor and targeting pod. The video, released by the U.S. government, later was uploaded to YouTube by a UAP-investigation group. It shows an oblong-shaped object that holds in the center of the ATFLIR for several seconds before rapidly accelerating left and out of the camera’s field of view.

In March 2019, The New York Times broke a second story about a series of UFO sightings—again by U.S. Navy personnel—this time, off the East Coast. The sightings took place from summer 2014 to March 2015 and involved Super Hornet air crews flying from the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). Lieutenants Ryan Graves and Danny Aucoin of the VFA-111 “Red Rippers” spoke on the record to the Times about their UAP encounters. As with the Nimitz in 2004, the “TR” was engaged in a training workup in advance of a deployment to the Persian Gulf.

Graves describes the UAPs he and the other pilots saw as similar to a “sphere encased in a cube.” Graves explains that UAPs would appear at “30,000 feet, 20,000 feet, even sea level” then depart at up to hypersonic speeds. The objects also would fly up to 12 hours at a time, far longer than conventional high-performance aircraft could do unrefueled. Aucoin says his own CATM-9 captive-training missile picked up the UAP. The AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR could observe the objects but the sensor did not register heat sources from any propulsion systems or any form of hot engine exhaust.

The 2014–15 sightings differed from the Nimitz’s in one important way: The jets’ onboard radar could detect the objects. Fravor’s older generation F/A-18F had the AN/APG-73 radar system and could not detect the UAPs, while the pilots of VFA-111 had newer Super Hornets with AN/APG-79 active electronically scanned array radars that could. The newer system possessed increased sensitivity and greater processing power.

The objects were sighted several times over a period of almost a year, resulting in two more released videos: “Gimbal” and “Go Fast” (both available on YouTube). In the Gimbal video, one pilot remarks that the radar—presumably using the AN/APG-79’s search-while-track feature—picked up a “whole fleet” of the UAPs. According to the pilots’ voices in the video, the craft were flying against the wind, which was 120 knots out of the west. All three videos were recorded with the AN/ASQ-228.

The New York Times interviewed three additional pilots who spoke about the objects but declined to go on the record. Other East Coast pilots reportedly had their own sightings. In one instance relayed by Graves, a UAP allegedly flew between two Super Hornets flying 100 feet apart. The incident resulted in the squadron filing an aviation flight safety report.

The three videos posted to YouTube by To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences have been confirmed by the U.S. Navy as authentic, showing what the service classifies as unidentified aerial phenomena. UAP is a broad category, however, that includes literally anything that flies but is not identified, whether a frisbee or a flying saucer. While the videos are “genuine,” the viewer is left to wonder what exactly they depict.

What are the objects? The UAPs can only be defined based on their observed characteristics. The West Coast sightings were of a 40-foot long, oblong-shaped objects. The East Coast sightings were generally of a “sphere within a cube”–shaped objects, though Graves has alluded to at least one sighting more like the Tic-Tac. Both types flew at hypersonic speeds and were capable of instantaneous acceleration to extremely high speeds. Neither appear to emit heat for propulsion when viewed in infrared.

The objects appeared to have some limited antiradar and/or stealth capability. In 2004, the AN/APG-73 radar could not detect them, though the ship-based SPY-1 and E-2 Hawkeye APS-145 radar could. In 2004, the UAP also jammed a Super Hornet’s radar, leading to the obvious question: Why would a UAP carry a radar jammer?

What could power the craft and what is the source of the craft propulsion? This is a wide-open area for speculation, and the only thing we can say with any certainty is that they do not use conventional aircraft propulsion. For one, ATFLIR confirms there is no heat-generating internal combustion engine that expels hot air and exhaust gases in a trail behind the aircraft. Not even a scramjet engine—or any other known engine—would allow it to reach speeds of 7,200 miles an hour instantaneously.

Another mystery is that the craft seem to have the ability to hover, fly at amazing speeds, and then come to a quick stop, much faster than vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft such as the F-35B. The 2004 “FLIR1” footage shows the object going from a hover to zipping out of the camera field of view faster than any known aircraft. How any object can accomplish this is unknown.

Graves comments that the craft seem to carry an extremely powerful energy source, flying for 12 hours in ways that would require a conventionally powered aircraft to refuel after an hour. This would rule out jet fuel and the small size of the craft seems to rule out nuclear power. One possibility is the use of so-called “zero-point energy,” or the potential energy derived from a vacuum. As for a propulsion system, some speculation has focused on a system that can refract gravity, pushing an object in a direction other than straight downward to Earth.

The UAPs encountered in the 2004 and 2014–15 sightings could be secret, unacknowledged U.S. military aircraft. With what limited knowledge we have, that is the best-case scenario. (Alternately, they could be non-native to Earth, but that possibility creates far more questions than it answers.)

More alarming is the idea that the craft belong to another country, Russia or China in particular. The idea that a potentially hostile power could operate highly advanced craft so close to the borders of the continental United States is disturbing and calls many things into question in a conventional conflict. It would be as great a threat as nuclear weapons—probably greater—making obsolete the largest and most modern arsenal of tactical aircraft in the world. Strangely, the U.S. military has not demonstrated any particular concern about the sightings.

These UAP sightings remain a mystery. The objects, sighted by credible witnesses and detected and recorded by sophisticated sensors, are so far beyond the frame of reference of contemporary science and technology they meet science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Little can be learned without a craft for analysis or whoever operates them stepping forward. Until a better understanding of these UAPs is obtained, it would be prudent to consider these a potential threat.

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