A former US Navy fighter pilot recently shared details and some of her thoughts about an unusual experience nearly two decades ago, an encounter with an unidentified flying object nicknamed the “Tic Tac”.
In mid-November 2004, while the US Navy’s Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was training off the Pacific coast in preparation for an upcoming deployment, the destroyer USS Princeton detected several flying objects. unidentified (UFO), moving in unexplained ways around the carrier group.
On November 14, 2004, after once again detecting one of the unusual spots, two F/A-18 Super Hornets were dispatched to observe the surrounding area where the strange object was discovered. The fighters were flown by Dave Fravor, then a squadron commander, and Alex Dietrich, then a lieutenant.
When they arrived at the area, the pilots saw a mysterious object, said to be “an oblong egg or ‘Tic Tac’ shape”, “solid, white, smooth, edgeless” and “uniform”, according to a military report about this event that CBS News obtained several years ago. (Tic Tac is a popular lozenge in the US, shaped like a capsule – PV).
In a recent television interview, Fravor recalled seeing “this little white Tic Tac-looking object” moving across the water in, as Dietrich put it, “unpredictable movements.” and “no predictable trajectory.”
“This is not at all what we expected,” Dietrich, who retired from the military as a lieutenant commander, told Insider, explaining that the carrier strike group and accompanying air squadron were training train for deployment to the Middle East, where they may be called upon to carry out precision strikes, convoy surveillance and close air support, among other tasks.
“A flying ‘Tic Tac’ was not in our plans,” she said, recalling their encounter with the strange object.
In the interview, Dietrich described the experience as “disturbing.” Neither plane was armed at the time, and Dietrich said she “felt in danger without anything to defend herself.”
Speaking to Insider, the former naval pilot said that it’s not entirely clear how she or her commander would react and deal with the mysterious object they didn’t expect to encounter.
“We do air-to-air scenarios where we expect to encounter adversary aircraft and we have a plan for how to approach them,” Dietrich explains.
Dietrich said that at the time, she “had not been briefed on any protocols for intercepting or merging with a flying saucer.”
During the encounter, Dietrich kept his distance while Fravor maneuvered his plane closer to investigate. As the commander approached the unidentified object, which Fravor said was about the size of his plane, it suddenly accelerated and disappeared. Another US Navy aircraft later recorded an image of this object on infrared video.
The U.S. military officially declassified that video last year, along with several other videos from various incidents, and noted in a statement that the phenomena seen in the videos remain “unknown.” determined”. The following video is from the 2004 “Tic Tac” incident.
Dietrich recalled that she experienced a “rolling wave of emotions” during the 2004 incident, with emotions ranging from excitement to anxiety. She said her primary concern was to find out if it was an enemy, some kind of threat, or even just a flight safety issue. They haven’t found the answer, and it’s still unclear what it is.
Over the years, there has been a lot of speculation about this incident and others, but Dietrich told Insider that she doesn’t let her mind “run away to wild conclusions or fantasies about what it could be.” could happen.”
“I gave my report, and I moved on with my life and my career,” she said, admitting that she had not followed the issue closely in the years since.