For most of his 18-year career as a U.S. Navy pilot, Commander David Fravor said his mother-in-law used to ask him a question, “Had he ever seen a UFO?” For 15 years, that answer was “no.”
But one clear afternoon off the coast of California in 2004, he says, that all changed. Commander David Fravor says in November of 2004 he had an unforgettable encounter with a strange aircraft that was defying the laws of physics. He claims to have chased an alien aircraft while on a training mission off the coast of California, and he has warned world leaders to take UFO sightings seriously.
Retired US Navy pilot, Commander David Fravor spoke out in support of a former US government intelligence officer, Luis Elizondo, who revealed in December of 2017 that he ran a real life “X Files” UFO research department at the Pentagon named the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) funded by $22 million in “black ops money” from Congress.
Elizondo secured the release of previously classified US Defense Department videos of UFO encounters, one of which shows the craft Commander Fravor saw darting off at an incredible speed.
Fravor was the commanding officer of the VFA-41 Black Aces, a U.S. Navy strike fighter squadron of F/A-18 Hornet fighter planes doing an exercise some 60 to 100 miles off the coast between San Diego and Ensenada, Mexico, in advance of a deployment to the Persian Gulf for the Iraq War, when they were diverted to check out an aircraft spotted on radar from their navy cruiser the USS Princeton.
The operations operator said they had been tracking up to a dozen mystery aircraft over the prior two weeks, but hadn’t had any manned planes deployed when they showed up.
The object first appeared at 80,000 feet (commercial jets usually travel between 30,000 feet and 40,000 feet), then hurtled towards the sea, stopping at 20,000 feet and hovered before dropping off the radar.
When Commander Fravor arrived at the UFO’s location, he saw a white aircraft hovering 50 feet above a disturbance in the ocean.
He said: “It was just moving randomly around, this 40 foot long white ‘Tic Tac’ looking thing, with no wings.”
“It was a clear day with a blue background and it was perfectly white. We didn’t see any windows, no form of propulsion, nothing, just a big white object.”
“It was rounded on both ends and had a cylindrical body which rounded in, same front to back.”
“I couldn’t tell what it was made of, it was bright white, but it wasn’t reflecting a bunch of light.”
Commander Fravor flew towards it and the aircraft began ascending towards him, passing him at about 12,000 ft. He thinks he got within a half mile of it.
He said, “I literally chased the thing and it started to mirror us, it was like it became aware we were there. I cut across to see if I could get closer and it rapidly accelerated and disappeared. Within a matter of a second it was gone.”
(Press Ctrl+left click above to view the radar video)
Asked what was going through his mind, he said: “I was thinking, ‘That’s pretty strange.’ In 16 years of flying I had never seen anything like that. Nothing that can hover and climb at that rate up and then accelerate and just disappear.”
“I was more curious then afraid. I wanted to see how close I could get to it, to see what it was.”
The radio operator on the USS Princeton then radioed and said the mystery aircraft had turned up right over their position.
At this point another aircraft was sent to investigate and recorded radar footage of the aircraft. The 90 second video shows the oblong shaped object hovering before it darts off to the left at what appears to be an unprecedented velocity.
Fravor said, “It jammed the radar, you couldn’t lock it with conventional radar, you could passively track it and see it, but if you tried to grab a lock on it the object wouldn’t allow you to do that.”
“When it takes off and goes to the side that’s a significant amount of distance to travel in a very short period of time, we’re talking miles, that thing just goes poof and in about a second it’s off the side of the screen.”
“You look at the video of it there’s no exhaust flume, there’s no indication of how that thing is moving around. Having seen a lot of different airplanes, you can always at least identify hot spots where the exhaust is coming out. I was close enough visually to go ‘we don’t have anything like that.’”
He insisted the object was alien in origin.
He said, “I know what I saw, it was impressive, and it had incredible performance.”
“I honestly don’t think humans have that technology to do what that thing did. Nor could the human body withstand accelerations like that. It’s an incredible technology to be able to go up to space, and back down and hang over the water like that.”
“I know what I saw and the other three people that were there saw at the same time. I think you would be hard pressed to question my credibility flying experience wise. I’m totally sane, in good health, I don’t do drugs.”
“We physically saw and chased it and we are the only ones that have actually gotten close to one of these things.”
He added, “You know, you see a lot of interesting things. But to show up on something that’s a 40-foot-long white ‘Tic Tac’ with no wings that can move, really, in any random direction that it wants and go from hovering over the ocean to mirroring us to accelerating to the point where it just disappears—like, poof, then it was gone.”
In an interview with The Washington Post, Fravor said he is certain about one thing, “It was a real object, it exists, and I saw it.” Asked what he believes it was, he responded that it was “something not from this Earth.”
Commander Fravor is now calling on British space expert Stephen Hawking to view the video and give his take on it.
Commander Fravor would seem to be an extremely credible witness. I can’t imagine why he would intentionally lie about this, and it appears he is clear about what he saw. So…?
Keep searching…the truth is out there.
“Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” – Arthur C. Clarke
Note: Portions of this blog were taken from an article by Hugo Daniels and Emily Saul for the New York Post and from an article by Eli Rosenberg for The Washington Post.
Mr. Erickson Rules! 