USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group

Female Fighter Pilot Who Saw the Tic Tac UFO

June 6, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Petula Dvorak May 24, 2021 (washingtonpost.com)

• Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich of Annapolis, Maryland is a retired US Navy fighter pilot, a mother of three, and a popular guest at the Pentagon and Capitol Hill being questioned about the day in 2004 that she saw the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO from the seat of her Super Hornet fighter jet in the skies near San Diego. “My life right now is very surreal,” said Dietrich, 41. Her testimony has been in high demand since the President signed into law a bill requesting the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense to provide a declassified report on everything the government knows about UFOs/UAPs. It is due to be released in June.

• On November 14, 2004, Dietrich was a newly winged pilot on a regular training flight with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group over the ocean off of San Diego when something moving fast and erratically came into view. Her boss, Commander Dave Fravor, told her to hang back and be his wingman while he flew closer in to check it out. The object began mirroring his movements and then just disappeared. A video recording from that day captured a white object shaped like a Tic Tac, along with the howls and exclamations of the pilots who were tracking it. The video was released by ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science’ in 2017, and the video gained a lot of traction after the Pentagon verified its authenticity.

• As soon as the pilots returned to their aircraft carrier that day, they reported everything they saw and how it happened. “We all collectively lost our minds,” said Dietrich. “There was no denying it, everybody had heard us on the radio.” Even the technicians back at the ship saw the object on their radar. In the days after the UFO sighting, Fravor and Dietrich’s colleagues were merciless. They looped alien-invader movies “Men in Black” and “Independence Day” to show on the ship’s channels. They left tinfoil hats all over the place. The daily newsletters had little green men cartoons. They had to laugh it off, saying that if she and her fellow pilots had been flying solo, “… we wouldn’t have said anything”.

• Dietrich has kept a low profile over the past 17 years, flying more than 200 combat missions and 57 mounted combat patrols and ground assault convoy missions over two deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, Dietrich has been teaching at George Washington University and at the U.S. Naval Academy. “People have found me throughout the years,” she said. “I just was an eyewitness to something in the course of my normal duties . . . that somehow makes me a portal.” She is a hero to the believers and she listens patiently to debunkers who found her private number and screamed at her over the phone.

• When asked why she has agreed to talk to reporters including her recent appearance in a UFO segment on CBS’ 60 Minutes, says, “I do feel a duty and obligation. I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer. Citizens have questions. It’s not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will. I don’t want to be someone who’s saying ‘no comment.’” Dietrich has decided to be open about it now because she knows other pilots have seen similar UFOs but have kept quiet – afraid of the conspiracy realm stigma.

• Dietrich is also keeping busy with her three kids, ages 2, 4 and 6. One of them was the hit of that day’s pre-K show-and-tell when he brought in the red-and-white helmet Dietrich was wearing that November day in 2004. Another was commanding her from the back seat during the telephone interview: “Window open!” followed by a chorus of squeals and shrieks from the back seat. “No, I [don’t] have time to think about it too much,” she sighed. “But I will pay someone to abduct me right now.”

She picked up the kids after finishing her last call at work — there was some whining

in the back seat — and raced to her home near Annapolis for family dinnertime. In between, she answered questions about the UFO.

“My life right now is very surreal,” said Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, who is a 41-year-old mother of three, a retired fighter pilot and one of the few people who gets regularly hauled into the Pentagon or before Congress for further questioning about the day in 2004 she saw a UFO — the Pentagon prefers to call them unidentified aerial phenomena — from the seat of her Super Hornet in the skies near San Diego.

Dietrich is pragmatic, forthright and has a swaggery, pilot’s sense of humor about this thing she’s been living with for nearly 17 years.

Thanks to a bizarro little line in last year’s coronavirus relief bill, the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense are ordered to generate a report on everything the government knows about UAPs — including Dietrich’s sighting. It’s coming next month, and it’s going to be D.C.’s hottest summer read.

And now that UFOs join the pandemic and insurrection on the congressional agenda (when it comes to the weird year contest, 2021 is telling 2020 to “hold my beer”), Dietrich’s callers have moved from mostly the fringe, stalkery UFO fanatics who just want to be near her, to mainstream media freaks like me. She patiently plays along.

“I do feel a duty and obligation,” Dietrich said, when I asked her why she took my call and why she agreed to talk to “60 Minutes,” her national media debut. “I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer,” she said. “Citizens have questions. It’s not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will. I don’t want to be someone who’s saying ‘no comment.’ ”

So, on to the events of Nov. 14, 2004.

She was a newly winged pilot on a regular training flight with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group that day when something moving fast and erratically came into view.

Dietrich’s boss, Cmdr. Dave Fravor, told her to hang back and be his wingman while he flew closer in to check it out. The object began mirroring his movements and then just disappeared.

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Admiral: UFO Encounters Occurred During ‘Finite Period’

August 25, 2019
ExoNews Editor

Listen to “E78 8-25-19 Admiral: UFO Encounters Occurred During ‘Finite Period’” on Spreaker.

Article by Alejandro Rojas August 16, 2019 (rdrnews.com)

• On July 19th, Politico’s defense editor, Bryan Bender, moderated a panel at the Aspen Institute’s annual Aspen Security Forum, in Aspen Colorado. Bender has been following the recent UFO developments at the nation’s capital, and he broke the story regarding the US Navy developing new guidelines for reporting UFOs.

• Four-Star Admiral Philip Davison (pictured above at the forum), the commander of the US Indio-Pacific Command, was also on the Aspen Security Forum panel. When an audience member asked Admiral Davidson about the recent UFO reports, Davidson replied that the UFO events occurred during “a finite period,” according to a tweet from Bryan Bender. This indicates that the Admiral is aware of issues surrounding the UFO activity beyond what has been reported in the news. What does he mean when he says that the encounters were during “a finite period?”

• Navy pilots have briefed lawmakers and military leadership on two separate encounters with UFOs: one that occurred over several days in November of 2004 off of the coast of San Diego when, after seeing odd objects on radar, the USS Nimitz carrier strike group scrambled its jets to engaged an object described as looking like a 40-foot long white ‘Tac Tac’. The second encounter was off of the East Coast during 2014 and 2015, when radar from the USS Roosevelt carrier strike group picked up odd readings, and Navy pilots described a ‘clear ball with a cube in it’ passing in-between two fighter jets. Navy radar also picked up similar readings over the Middle East.

• Is this span from 2004 to 2015 the finite period Admiral Davidson was talking about? Could there be even more Navy UFO cases that the public is not aware of? Bender thinks Davidson might have suggested that Navy pilots only spot UFOs occasionally, and it isn’t something that happens a lot. Tyler Rogoway of The Drive’s War Zone said that Davidson’s comment that UFO activity ceased after 2015 seemed accurate, noting that Navy pilot Ryan Graves never specifically says they encountered UFOs in the Middle East, only radar signatures.

• Rogoway also notes that in both of these instances, cutting edge radar sensor technologies were deployed, which “may point to the possibility that these events were tests of highly exotic and secret technology belonging to the US military or even deployed by its adversaries.” “[If Navy] aircraft… were testing new sensor technologies, the possibility would exist that someone else was testing how these sensors would react to their next-generation propulsion technology,” suggesting that the technology allowing craft to perform “flying maneuvers that shatter our perceptions of propulsion, flight controls, material science, and even physics” was developed right here on Earth.

• Last May at the McMenamins UFO-fest in McMinnville Oregon, the Navy pilot who encountered the “Tic Tac” UFO off of San Diego in 2004, David Fravor, told his audience that he thought he might have encountered secret advanced military technology. However, as the years went by and this technology never came to light, Fravor began to doubt that idea. He felt that he would have heard something about this new development if it indeed existed.

• When the subject of UFOs of extraterrestrial origin was broached at the Aspen conference, the defense reporters and industry insiders who made up the majority of the audience just laughed. It is obvious that the military community is not ready to take the topic of extraterrestrial UFOs seriously. Rogoway called this reaction from his colleagues “disgusting.” However, the conspiracy-minded could very well say that both Admiral Davidson and Tyler Rogoway are seeding doubt as part of the Navy’s UFO investigation strategy to steer the press and the public away from aliens as a genuine explanation for these UFO sightings.

During a panel at last month’s Aspen Institute’s Aspen Security Forum, an audience member asked Admiral Philip Davidson about reports of UFOs. Davidson replied that the Navy has new UFO reporting guidelines and that the UFO events occurred during “a finite period.”

This information comes via a tweet from Politico’s defense editor, Bryan Bender. Bender has been following recent UFO developments at the nation’s capital. He broke the story regarding the U.S. Navy developing new guidelines for reporting UFOs, and appeared on the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

Bender moderated a panel at the forum on Friday, July 19. However, on Thursday, he tweeted: @AspenSecurity asks @INDOPACOM commander about Navy reports of UFOs. Chuckles all around but Adm. Phil Davidson responds that there is now a reporting process for these unexplained sightings and says the encounters were during ‘a finite period.’”

Four-Star Admiral Philip Davison is the commander of the U.S. Indio-Pacific Command. What I find interesting is that he was aware of the UFO issue, and apparently more than just the recent news about new reporting guidelines. But, what did he mean when he said the encounters were during “a finite period?”

History’s Unidentified revealed that Navy pilots involved with two separate incidents briefed lawmakers and military leadership. The first encounters occurred over several days in November of 2004. The Nimitz carrier strike group caught odd objects on radar. The Nimitz scrambled jets and Wing Commander David Fravor engaged an object he described as looking like a 40-foot long white Tac Tac. After a short time, the object darted off at an incredible speed.

The second set of encounters covered on Unidentified were similar. In this case, it was the USS Roosevelt carrier strike group that encountered odd radar readings off the coast of Florida in 2014 and 2015. At one point, a UFO described as a clear ball with a cube in it passed in-between two jets. According to the show, the objects followed the USS Roosevelt to the middle east.

These encounters span from 2004 to 2015. Is that the finite period Davidson was talking about? Could there be even more Navy UFO cases that the public is not aware of?

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U.S. Navy Drafting New Guidelines for Reporting UFOs

April 25, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Brian Bender April 23, 2019 (politico.com)

• The U.S. Navy announced that it is drafting new formal guidelines for pilots and other Navy personnel to report UFO encounters to the ‘cognizant authorities’. This is in response to a series of sightings by Navy pilots of UFOs, particularly the ‘tic tac’ UFO incident involving the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group in 2004 when Navy fighter jets were outmaneuvered by an unidentified aircraft that flew in ways that defied the laws of known physics.

• The development comes amid growing interest from members of Congress following revelations by POLITICO and the New York Times in late 2017 that the Pentagon established a $25 million UFO research office, known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. That program ostensibly ended in 2012. A statement by the Navy explained, “In response to requests for information from Congressional members and staff, Navy officials have provided a series of briefings by senior Naval Intelligence officials as well as aviators who reported hazards to aviation safety.”

• The Navy isn’t endorsing the idea that its sailors have encountered alien spacecraft. But it is acknowledging there have been enough strange aerial sightings by credible and highly trained military personnel that they need to be recorded in the official record and studied — rather than dismissed as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction.

• Chris Mellon, a former Pentagon intelligence official and ex-staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said establishing a more formal means of reporting UAPs (Unexplained Aerial Phenomena) would be a “sea change.” “Right now, we have situation in which UFOs and UAPs are treated as anomalies to be ignored,” said Mellon. “[I]n a lot of cases [military personnel] don’t know what to do with that information… They will dump [the data] because that is not a traditional aircraft or missile.”

• Advocates for treating such UFO sightings as a potential national security threat have long criticized military leaders for giving the phenomenon relatively little attention, and for encouraging a culture in which personnel feel that speaking up about it could hurt their career.

The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with “unidentified aircraft,” a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings — and destigmatize them.

The previously unreported move is in response to a series of sightings of unknown, highly advanced aircraft intruding on Navy strike groups and other sensitive military formations and facilities, the service says.

“There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” the Navy said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO. “For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.

“As part of this effort,” it added, “the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft.”

To be clear, the Navy isn’t endorsing the idea that its sailors have encountered alien spacecraft. But it is acknowledging there have been enough strange aerial sightings by credible and highly trained military personnel that they need to be recorded in the official record and studied — rather than dismissed as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction.

Chris Mellon, a former Pentagon intelligence official and ex-staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said establishing a more formal means of reporting what the military now calls “unexplained aerial phenomena” — rather than “unidentified flying objects” — would be a “sea change.”

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Tag: USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group

Female Fighter Pilot Who Saw the Tic Tac UFO

Admiral: UFO Encounters Occurred During ‘Finite Period’

U.S. Navy Drafting New Guidelines for Reporting UFOs