From The NY Times: The Pentagon's Secret UFO Program

[mike]

There is also this one described as an excerpt

FAST EAGLES 110/100 UPON TAKE OFF WERE VECTORED BY PRINCETON AND BANGER (1410L) TO INTERCEPT UNID CONTACT AT 160@40NM (N3050.8 W11746.9) (NIMITZ N3129.3 W11752.8). PRINCETON INFORMED FAST EAGLES THAT THE CONTACT WAS MOVING AT 100 KTS @ 25KFT ASL.

FAST EAGLES (110/100) COULD NOT FIND UNID AIRBORNE CONTACT AT LOCATION GIVEN BY PRINCETON. WHILE SEARCHING FOR UNID AIR CONTACT, FAST EAGLES SPOTTED LARGE UNID OBJECT IN WATER AT 1430L. PILOTS SAW STEAM/ SMOKE/CHURNING AROUND OBJECT. PILOT DESCRIBES OBJECT INITIALLY AS RESEMBLING A DOWNED AIRLINER, ALSO STATED THAT IT WAS MUCH LARGER THAN A SUBMARINE.

WHILE DESCENDING FROM 24K FT TO GAIN A BETTER VIEW OF THE UNID CONTACT IN THE WATER, FAST EAGLE 110 SIGHTED AN AIRBORNE CONTACT WHICH APPEARED TO BE CAPSULE SHAPED (WINGLESS, MOBILE, WHITE, OBLONG PILL SHAPED, 25-30 FEET IN LENGTH, NO VISIBLE MARKINGS AND NO GLASS) 5NM WEST FROM POSITION OF UNID OBJECT IN WATER.

CAPSULE (ALT 4K FT AT COURSE 300) PASSED UNDER FAST EAGLE 110 (ALT 16KFT). FAST EAGLE 110 BEGAN TURN TO ACQUIRE CAPSULE. WHILE 110 WAS DESCENDING AND TURNING, CAPSULE BEGAN CLIMBING AND TURNED INSIDE OF FAST EAGLE’S TURN RADIUS. PILOT ESTIMATED THAT CAPSULE ACHIEVED 600-700 KTS. FAST EAGLE 110 COULD NOT KEEP UP WITH THE RATE OF TURN AND THE GAIN OF ALTITUDE BY THE CAPSULE. 110 LOST VISUAL ID OF CAPSULE IN HAZE.
LAST VISUAL CONTACT HAD CAPSULE AT 14KFT HEADING DUE EAST.

NEITHER FAST EAGLES 110 OR 100 COULD ACHIEVE RADAR LOCK OR ANY OTHER MEANS OF POSITIVE ID. FAST EAGLE 100 WAS FLYING HIGH COVER AND SAW THE ENGAGEMENT BY FAST EAGLE 110. FAST EAGLE 100 CONFIRMS 110 VISUAL ID; 100 LOST CONTACT IN HAZE AS WELL.

CPA OF ACFT 110 FROM CONTACT 4000-5000 FT.


Read more at U.S. Department Of Defense Video Shows Unknown Object Intercepted By U.S. Navy Super Hornet And We Have No Idea What It Was.

Full text here

 

[mike]

U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Force-11 Encounters Unknowns on November 14, 2004 near San Diego:

I am going to tell you about a Navy-UFO encounter that deserves a congressional investigation to determine if this happened or not. I am going to create three posts related to a recent UFO event that occurred in November of 2004 and involved the Navy’s Carrier Strike Group 11 off the southwest coast of California. This will be the first post and it will include the information that I initially obtained on the incident. If after reading these three posts you are reasonably convinced that this event happened then I will ask you to join me in a letter-writing campaign to a congressional subcommittee requesting that they ask for a debriefing of the incident from the Navy. Please share this FB site with anyone that you know who would be interested. #F18UFO #UFO
I was first told of this UFO incident in July of 2016 by an individual who was involved in the investigation of this event. He told me that the incident had been partially leaked to the internet, so that I could begin my investigation without involving my friend. Knowing a few of the key words I was able to locate the leaked story here: https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/ (Ignore the UFO photos in the article as those are just add-ons by the author for effect and are not related to the actual event.) What attracted me to this story was that it was not on a typical UFO site but was found on a site authored by a formal naval aviator and who predominately writes about naval aviator stories, not UFOs. So he had no UFO agenda to push. And the author went out of his way to establish the excellent background of the commanding officer of the F-18s known as the Black Aces. The story was full of “navy talk” and I spent considerable time deciphering that WSO = weapons system officer, SPY1 = phased array radar, E-2C Hawkeye = type of airborne early warning aircraft, BFM = basic fighter maneuvers, etc. Once I had read the full story, I felt that there was a strong likelihood that the event my friend had directed me to had actually occurred.
I next began online investigations to verify the identity of the individuals in the story and I found that those officers were all legitimate and had served in the Navy during that time. I searched additional websites for clues to this event. First, I found a Navy Event Summary document that had been leaked to the internet by an unknown source that mentioned this event. The document had much of the same information as was provided in the naval aviator’s story: dates and locations match up; USS Princeton detects objects on radar and dispatches the F18s; F18s don’t find a radar target but detect the object visually; F18s engage the unknown; and F18s are outmatched by the unknowns. I then ran the Navy Event Summary document by a retired naval officer and he indicated that the document looked legitimate in terms of its format. A copy of this summary document can be found here: https://drive.google.com/…/0By-yCcE3UvHcSlg0YlhyaGYyd…/view…
My friend who had originally told me about this case indicated that there had been video taken of the object and that it had been released to the internet several years ago and then was later removed. A copy of that video was obtained using the WayBack machine which is an internet site that maintains historical website data. The video is taken in the infra-red and depicts a hot object in the video cross-hairs for about 75 seconds before the object rapidly moves out of the video frame and towards the left. The altitude shown on the video matches the approximate altitude of the jets and the shape of the object in the video matches the pilots’ descriptions. A copy of this video can be found here: https://drive.google.com/…/0B61eOLiwJH1SWVIzZnNVc0taR…/view…
Of these three documents, the one that I find the strongest is the story by the naval aviator. The Navy Event Summary and the F-18 video support the story but more was needed. The question in my mind then became---could I support this information from another source. In December of 2016 I submitted nine FOIAs to various departments of the Navy and Marines to try and verify this event. In Part II of this series, I will share the information on the FOIAs that I submitted.

Scientific Coalition for Ufology

 

[Realm]

There is also this one described as an excerpt

That is the leaked log I mentioned.

There's one interesting discrepancy between that and the Fightersweep article. That log talks about Fast eagle 100 (Slaight) and 110 (Fravor), whereas the article states their call signs were Fasteagle 01 (Fravor) and 02 (Slaight). If the article was mostly based on the log, wouldn't it use those same IDs? Or are those 100 and 110 also supposed to be call signs or some other IDs? To me this difference looks like even a stronger reason to ask, what report that author was referring to?

I have also noticed various other discrepancies between the sources, some of which are small and some seem to change the narrative somewhat, but since most of them are based on memories of events that happened long ago and written by editors who may not have understood everything they were being told correctly, that is to be expected. At least it doesn't look like some sort of well planned operation to repeat the exact rehearsed stories or something like that.

 

[mike]

Its a mystery. The two reports are about the same event, but use different language. One describes the object as a TicTac, the other as a capsule.
Its been claimed one of the reports was copied and sent to an aunt (TicTac report).

I can only guess that perhaps multiple reports get written, one is the pilots the other is the ships log version. I really can only guess.

As it stands i can see three options for this case going forward.

1: It has legs, and more information/evidence is released that strengthens its credibility.

2: It gets exposed as a Psyops or fake story

3: No more information positive or negative is added to the story and it remains a mystery forever unresolved to anyone's satisfaction.


While the incident is mysterious, it is pretty plainly not a hoax. The Department of Defense has released video of the unidentified object. The USS Princeton observed the UFO on radar, and six Super Hornets—twelve pilots and weapons system operators—saw the objects. (According to FighterSweep.com, which published an account of the incident in 2015, a seventh aircraft, a Marine F/A-18 was also involved.) The New York Times interviewed Commander Fravnor, who confirmed the incident took place.


What was it? There are three obvious but uncanny possibilities.

The first possibility is that the Super Hornet pilots, the Super Hornet’s electro-optical sensors and radars, and the USS Princeton’s radars all misinterpreted natural phenomena or malfunctioned at the same time, all of which appeared related but were actually not. Perhaps the Super Hornet’s crew was actually observing a conventional aircraft or even the sun, and had lost situational awareness to the point where they described such everyday objects as “a wingless capsule.” Maybe the Princeton’s radars were malfunctioning and had picked up, for example, two separate flights of birds and interpreted them as an object capable of jaw-dropping speeds. Together, the two crews could have pieced together ordinary, unremarkable events as one single remarkable one.

This is a discomforting explanation, because it assumes that the pilots and the Princeton’s crew were incompetent and unable to discern ordinary objects from extraordinary ones. It also assumes the guided missile cruiser's radar malfunctioned. If this explanation is correct, none of these pilots should have been flying for the Navy, and the Princeton’s air defense radar has a previously undiagnosed flaw. Given the level of skill necessary to fly from a U.S. Navy carrier it seems extremely unlikely these pilots were prone to fantasy or misidentifying the sun as a white, tic-tac-shaped UFO hovering close to the water.

The second possibility is that the objects are actually operated by an arm of the U.S. government. Rumors of the federal government studying crashed UFOs or experimenting with secret technology have been rampant for decades, though with scant proof. If these were indeed secret U.S. craft, it is clear why they’re being hidden. The Super Hornet was a top of the line aircraft in 2004 and yet the object easily out-maneuvered and out-accelerated it. If America’s enemies mastered such technology, most (but apparently not all) of our armed forces would be defenseless against them.

The third possibility is that the objects were alien craft, piloted by aliens or an artificial intelligence, using technology we can’t even imagine. The objects, their controllers, and their motivations could utterly alien and unknowable.

Regardless, something did happen over the Pacific Ocean on November 14th, 2004. Whether it was a mass hallucination and equipment failure, an accidental interaction with a hidden government agency, a Close Encounter of the First Kind, a combination of all three, or something else entirely is unknown. For now, the U.S. Navy’s sighting joins the list of hundreds of others that simply remain unexplainable.

 

[Flatwoods]

The first possibility is that the Super Hornet pilots, the Super Hornet’s electro-optical sensors and radars, and the USS Princeton’s radars all misinterpreted natural phenomena or malfunctioned at the same time, all of which appeared related but were actually not.

It's worth mentioning that, according the Fightersweep article, the radars had been picking up anomalous returns for several days. If so, it's possible that pilots had been aware of these strange radar returns, and if so, may have been expecting to see something highly unusual upon arriving at the vector. They may have had a pre-existing bias to interpret what they saw as a UFO.

 

[Han]

I am not really up to speed on this because I have been a bit sidetracked recently.

I have a question though, does anybody know what variant/s of FA-18 were being flown?
The reason I ask is because as I understand it: there are several types with different airframes and configurations, particularly a two seater version: F/A-18 B and D. (so potentially more eye witnesses)

I also believe this is the favoured aircraft of the Blue Angels display team:

 

[Han]

Ok as I understand it "Fast Eagle" is the radio callsign for the "Black Aces" (Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41))

VFA-41 - Wikipedia


I think below is a picture of "Fast Eagle 100"

and here is "Fast Eagle 110"

They both look like two seaters so that should be four eye witnesses. Two "pilots" and two "navigators" (or whatever the correct terminology is). EDIT:

Aircraft Super Hornet
Designation F/A-18F
Manufacturer Boeing Corporation
Type Carrier-borne Strike-Fighter
Crew 1 Pilot / 1 Weapons System Officer
Power Plant 2 x F414-GE-400 Afterburning Turbofans with 42,000lbs thrust
Dimensions Wingspan: 44' 11" and Length: 60' 2"
Weight 66,000 lbs gross weight
Speed Mach 1.8+
Range 1,000 miles tactical (unlimited with in-flight refueling) *




Sorry pictures not working you can see them here:

https://www.flying-tigers.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/BA4-Hornet.jpg

https://www.flying-tigers.co.uk/201...irshow-meet-the-fighters-11th-september-2016/

or

* The Official Homepage of the World Famous BLACK ACES

 

[Realm]

It's worth mentioning that, according the Fightersweep article, the radars had been picking up anomalous returns for several days. If so, it's possible that pilots had been aware of these strange radar returns, and if so, may have been expecting to see something highly unusual upon arriving at the vector. They may have had a pre-existing bias to interpret what they saw as a UFO.

I haven't seen any indication whatsoever they would have been aware of those at the time or expected anything extraordinary.

On the contrary, that Fightersweep article specifically mentions:
- What Dave didn’t know was for the past several days, Princeton had been picking up some bizarre returns
- He remembers thinking it was about the size of a 737 and maybe the contact they had been vectored on had been an airliner that had just crashed.

TTSA report also indicates they were quite clueless en route and all the way at various stages as they received new information, until they saw that strange object:
- Source inquired to OK-1, "What do you think it is?" to which OK-1 responsed, "It might be drug runners."
- I fully expected to see a low flying Cessna or helicopter coming from Mexico
- I was thinking to myself that this could be another September 11th -style attack that we were being asked to intercept.
- Source opined they thought they were witnessing a crash, perhaps that of an unidentified aircraft, as they made the mental transition from intercept mission to search and rescue.
- Source immediately become alarmed and initially thought that perhaps this was an unannounced, classified missile test by a U.S. Navy submarine.

That looks more like an opposite to pre-existing bias.

 

[Realm]

They both look like two seaters so that should be four eye witnesses. Two "pilots" and two "navigators" (or whatever the correct terminology is).

AFAIK the witnesses were:

CO of Marine Hornet squadron VMFA-232, Lieutenant Colonel “Cheeks” Kurth (on a single-seater Hornet I think):
- First on the spot, saw the disturbance of water higher up, was called off before the object was seen.

Cmdr. David/Dave "Sex" Fravor and his Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) on a two-seater:
- TTSA report calls them OK-2 (Fravor, I believe) and OK-3 (Identity not known publicly)
- One commenter of that Fightersweep article claims to know that WSO and says: "I would have thought it was BS if I didn't know the WSO that told the story. Most level headed guy you'll ever know. Smart as hell. He described it as a giant, flying Tylenol that could stop on a dime from super sonic speeds")
- First F/A-18F Super Hornet to arrive and the one that approached the object and saw it closest
- No FLIR onboard but according to that TTSA report, OK-2 (which I believe to be Fravor) made a copy of the gun tape.

Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight and his WSO on a two-seater:
- TTSA report calls them Source (Slaight, I believe) and OK-1 (Identity not known publicly)
- Second F/A-18F Super Hornet to arrive soon after (0.3 nautical mile distance), stayed higher up and saw the action between Fravor's jet and the object.
- No FLIR onboard

All of them returned to the carrier soon after due to low fuel, and then:

Back on Nimitz after recovery, the four crew headed down to the paraloft to remove their gear. The next four crews from VFA-41 were getting dressed for their training mission to the same area, using the same assigned Lat/Longs as CAP points. Dave and his crewmembers passed on what they had seen to the new guys and reminded them to get tape if they could.

By the time the new crew launched, rendezvoused and checked in with the E-2 for control, it was early afternoon; 1500. The planes separated, with one heading to that same southern CAP location. They were cruising along at 20K and 300kts, max endurance. Again, the jet, radar and also, this time, the FLIR were spanking new and operating perfectly.

So it was well after that initial action had happened that the four next jets launched and at least one of them had a FLIR onboard, and that was the one that took the video that we have seen (OK-4 and OK-5 in TTSA report).

So there seems to be at least 4 eyewitnesses that saw the object with their own eyes (two of which have now talked about it publicly with their own faces), one more that saw the disturbance in water, and at least 2 in a jet that saw it on FLIR at least.

Then there are the radar operators, who saw what was on the radar (including TTSA report OK-6, who was radar operator for E-2 Hawkeye radar aircraft that served as air traffic control, so at least two different radars made some contact). And it seems there wasn't that much secrecy about the event back then and lots of people on the carrier heard about it or saw the FLIR footage.

 

[SRL+]

Direct from the FWIW dept.

Mystery Surrounds Why Four Nations Launch Rockets in Four Days | Mysterious Universe

And just in case anyone is wondering ...

The Outer Space Treaty

 

[Realm]

Its a mystery. The two reports are about the same event, but use different language. One describes the object as a TicTac, the other as a capsule.

Exactly.

Its been claimed one of the reports was copied and sent to an aunt (TicTac report).

According to the TTSA report "Source" (Slaight?) made his own written notes on print paper and sent those to his aunt.

I can only guess that perhaps multiple reports get written, one is the pilots the other is the ships log version. I really can only guess.

I have assumed that Fightersweep is mostly written based on personal communication with Fravor (who was a friend of the author). But that seems to be just half of the story now since he mentioned that"report".

As it stands i can see three options for this case going forward.

1: It has legs, and more information/evidence is released that strengthens its credibility.

2: It gets exposed as a Psyops or fake story

3: No more information positive or negative is added to the story and it remains a mystery forever unresolved to anyone's satisfaction.

Yes and I have been surprised to see that this far it has been mostly option 1. Usually these stories tend to have developed some serious widening cracks already at this point. But for this one we have seen several people willing to speak about it publicly, others (unverified) who claim to know and trust them personally, one significant ex-insider who most likely has seen all the details of an actual investigation and so on. To me these are pretty exceptional developments for a story like this.

While the incident is mysterious, it is pretty plainly not a hoax.

It would definitely be the weirdest hoax I have ever seen... Even if you consider conspiracy kind of scenarios, hoax doesn't make any sense. The video and most details have already leaked more than a decade ago, mostly in a way that immediately made many assume it is a hoax, a detailed article was written in an aviation site in 2015 with little visibility, and now there's at least some semi-official confirmation that it happened, and several persons with confirmed backgrounds talk about it openly with their own face, risking their credibility.

The Department of Defense has released video of the unidentified object. The USS

Princeton observed the UFO on radar, and six Super Hornets—twelve pilots and weapons system operators—saw the objects. (According to FighterSweep.com, which published an account of the incident in 2015, a seventh aircraft, a Marine F/A-18 was also involved.) The New York Times interviewed Commander Fravnor, who confirmed the incident took place.

See my answer above, I believe there's more like 4 confirmed eyewitnesses to have directly seen the object. We know that at least one more crew of two managed to take that FLIR footage which shows it both in IR and optical (TV mode), but I don't think it has been stated anywhere directly that they saw the actual object with their own eyes. Since it reportedly happened in bright daylight on excellent weather with unrestricted visibility, they probably did but it is a different matter if it was big enough to see properly without that camera zoom.

The Fightersweep article describes in more detail how that third crew tried to get it on their radar in different modes and what they saw on their screens, and also how there were signs of radar jamming. But there's no clear indication that they saw it with their own eyes and lots of indication they had to search it with the help of their instruments only. TTSA report indicates the FLIR target was deemed the same because "Source" thought it was the same when he saw the video later. But I don't think that can be stated with certainty, especially since it took some time between those flights (still unsure how much exactly, as there are those issues with the reported times).

That in itself also means that the efforts at Metabunk are bound to fail to debunk this whole incident if they in their typical style concentrate just looking at one tree (that video) and forget or try to dismiss the forest as unrelated etc. (the whole context). At the moment at least it looks like that the video itself is that part that could be unrelated and was made with pre-existing bias. The rest of the story doesn't really depend on it being the same and correct target.

This is a discomforting explanation, because it assumes that the pilots and the Princeton’s crew were incompetent and unable to discern ordinary objects from extraordinary ones. It also assumes the guided missile cruiser's radar malfunctioned. If this explanation is correct, none of these pilots should have been flying for the Navy, and the Princeton’s air defense radar has a previously undiagnosed flaw. Given the level of skill necessary to fly from a U.S. Navy carrier it seems extremely unlikely these pilots were prone to fantasy or misidentifying the sun as a white, tic-tac-shaped UFO hovering close to the water.

Exactly. You need to make a whole lot of assumptions about multiple errors on behalf of several individuals and instruments to explain the event like that.

The second possibility is that the objects are actually operated by an arm of the U.S. government. Rumors of the federal government studying crashed UFOs or experimenting with secret technology have been rampant for decades, though with scant proof. If these were indeed secret U.S. craft, it is clear why they’re being hidden. The Super Hornet was a top of the line aircraft in 2004 and yet the object easily out-maneuvered and out-accelerated it. If America’s enemies mastered such technology, most (but apparently not all) of our armed forces would be defenseless against them.

And of course there's no evidence of any nation having the sort of capabilities that were described here. If it was one of their own, it would in my opinion be quite a weird way to test it and allow that to be leaked. If it was someone else, that would mean serious security implications and clear need to investigate further.

For now, the U.S. Navy’s sighting joins the list of hundreds of others that simply remain unexplainable.

And in my book it also joins a rather short list of really interesting events that give me a reason to take the extraordinary possibilities seriously.

 

[SRL+]

Is there any indication of an official debriefing or debriefings by a debriefing officer after the incident(s)?

 

[Realm]

Is there any indication of an official debriefing or debriefings by a debriefing officer after the incident(s)?

From TTSA report:

"Upon recovery of both aircraft, Source, OK-1, OK-2, and OK-3 arrived for their routine intelligence debriefing only to find that no debriefing official was available."

"After not receiving an intelligence briefing, Source, OK-1, OK-2, and OK-3 entered the Ready Room"...

However, in the Fightersweep article:

"In his debrief comments, Dave, his WSO and the two other crews stated the object had initially been hovering like a Harrier."

"Later, in the debrief, he explained that he had multiple telltale cues of EA."

The latter sentence talks about the WSO of the plane that took the FLIR footage and the first one mentions "two other crews". So maybe that expected debrief happened sometime later, possibly after both crews had returned.

 

[mike]

It's worth mentioning that, according the Fightersweep article, the radars had been picking up anomalous returns for several days. If so, it's possible that pilots had been aware of these strange radar returns, and if so, may have been expecting to see something highly unusual upon arriving at the vector. They may have had a pre-existing bias to interpret what they saw as a UFO.

One of the pilots has been quoted as saying they thought it was drug runners or another 911 type situation and was concerned they only had practice munitions and would be called on to use the plane itself as a weapon ie kamikaze scenario.

"What do you think its is ? to which OK-1 responded it might be drug runners. Source then remarked to OK-1 "bad ass"(as a new pilot the idea we were being asked to intercept drug runners was exciting to me) I fully expected to see a low flying Cessna or helicopter coming from Mexico)

2004 USS NIMITZ PILOT WRITTEN REPORT

And as the article states he thought it was a regular milk run as they call it.

The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group had been on station for a few weeks already, working to integrate the operations of the carrier with her various support ships, including the Ticonderoga Class Guided Missile Cruiser, USS Princeton. As far as Dave was concerned, it was a standard day in a normal work up cycle. Another step in the long journey in preparing the ships of the Strike Group and the planes of the Air Wing to work harmoniously for their upcoming combat deployment.


What Dave didn’t know was for the past several days, Princeton had been picking up some bizarre returns on their Death Star-worthy SPY-1 radar. On several occasions beginning 10 November, the Fire Control Officer and the extremely experienced Fire Control Senior Chief had detected multiple returns descending from far above the radar’s scan volume–somewhere higher than 80,000 ft. The targets, dubbed Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs), would drop from above 80K to hover roughly 50 feet off the water in a matter of seconds.

So no the expectation was to see something mundane. What happened next was a surprise to them.

 

[Flatwoods]

An intriguing video involving another naval UFO sighting that supposedly happened in 1986.

 

[Han]

One of the pilots has been quoted as saying they thought it was drug runners or another 911 type situation and was concerned they only had practice munitions and would be called on to use the plane itself as a weapon ie kamikaze scenario.

"What do you think its is ? to which OK-1 responded it might be drug runners. Source then remarked to OK-1 "bad ass"(as a new pilot the idea we were being asked to intercept drug runners was exciting to me) I fully expected to see a low flying Cessna or helicopter coming from Mexico)

2004 USS NIMITZ PILOT WRITTEN REPORT

And as the article states he thought it was a regular milk run as they call it.

The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group had been on station for a few weeks already, working to integrate the operations of the carrier with her various support ships, including the Ticonderoga Class Guided Missile Cruiser, USS Princeton. As far as Dave was concerned, it was a standard day in a normal work up cycle. Another step in the long journey in preparing the ships of the Strike Group and the planes of the Air Wing to work harmoniously for their upcoming combat deployment.


What Dave didn’t know was for the past several days, Princeton had been picking up some bizarre returns on their Death Star-worthy SPY-1 radar. On several occasions beginning 10 November, the Fire Control Officer and the extremely experienced Fire Control Senior Chief had detected multiple returns descending from far above the radar’s scan volume–somewhere higher than 80,000 ft. The targets, dubbed Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs), would drop from above 80K to hover roughly 50 feet off the water in a matter of seconds.

So no the expectation was to see something mundane. What happened next was a surprise to them.

This gives some context as to why the USO/UFO was described as being larger than a sub.

I originally wondered why it was described as being larger than a sub because they are (Military Submarines) as big or bigger than Airliners, however "drug runners" / "Civilian" subs would be much much smaller.

 

[Han]

From TTSA report:

"Upon recovery of both aircraft, Source, OK-1, OK-2, and OK-3 arrived for their routine intelligence debriefing only to find that no debriefing official was available."

"After not receiving an intelligence briefing, Source, OK-1, OK-2, and OK-3 entered the Ready Room"...

However, in the Fightersweep article:

"In his debrief comments, Dave, his WSO and the two other crews stated the object had initially been hovering like a Harrier."

"Later, in the debrief, he explained that he had multiple telltale cues of EA."

The latter sentence talks about the WSO of the plane that took the FLIR footage and the first one mentions "two other crews". So maybe that expected debrief happened sometime later, possibly after both crews had returned.

So if I understand it correctly there should be an OK-4?

Also VMFA-232, Lieutenant Colonel “Cheeks” Kurth only saw disturbance on the water and not the USO/UFO itself?

 

[mike]

This gives some context as to why the USO/UFO was described as being larger than a sub.

I originally wondered why it was described as being larger than a sub because they are (Military Submarines) as big or bigger than Airliners, however "drug runners" / "Civilian" subs would be much much smaller.

As the report states they were thinking drug runners in the context of planes/helicopters.

I think given the combined reference to airliner and bigger than a sub, he was describing something in the 150 meter long range

A 747 is 75 meters long . US subs range from 115 meters for an attack sub to 170 meters for the larger missile subs.

From the popular mechanics article:

There are several interesting details about the sighting here. For one, there were clearly two unidentified objects. The first was a large underwater object that was “much larger than a submarine.” For reference, the U.S. Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines are 377 feet long. The object also had some passing resemblance to a “downed airliner.”

Again given the airliner reference i think its safe to speculate the object was larger than either an attack sub (115m) or a boomer (170m)

Its one of the questions i'd very much like put to Fravor in his next interview. how long did he estimate the USO to be. Bigger than a submarine is a bit ambiguous.

 

[Constance]

And of course there's no evidence of any nation having the sort of capabilities that were described here. If it was one of their own, it would in my opinion be quite a weird way to test it and allow that to be leaked.

Obviously not property of the US: if that were the case, the last place it would be tested would be in the middle of weeks-long exercises involving the most important and most expensive naval ships and aircraft -- and their top pilots -- in the US military's possession.

Also not reasonably the Russkies', whose economy is on a par with Italy's.

The Chinese or Japanese? For what purpose?

Who else? Any suggestions?

 

[mike]

So if I understand it correctly there should be an OK-4?

Also VMFA-232, Lieutenant Colonel “Cheeks” Kurth only saw disturbance on the water and not the USO/UFO itself?

Yes some reports list Fravor as one of 4 pilots. But i think the count is much higher

A US fighter pilot has described in detail the moment he spotted a "UFO" hovering above the ocean off the coast of San Diego.


Pilot David Fravor was one of four people in two fighter jets sent to monitor the object after it was spotted by his bosses on board the USS Nimitz in 2004.
US fighter pilot reveals his close encounter with a UFO


The New York Times on Saturday reported on a mysterious interaction between the U.S. Navy and what could only be called UFOs. The sighting, which took place in 2004, involved a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser, seven Hornet and Super Hornet strike fighter jets, and a pair of unknown objects.
That Time the U.S. Navy Had a Close Encounter With a UFO

Im not entirely sure about the Seven number as claimed, you know how these press reports become chinese wispers.