In this new edition of the Extraordinary Beliefs podcast, Jeremy Corbell keeps digging into the 2004 Nimitz ‘Tic-Tac’ UFO case. This time he goes to the horse’s mouth as it were, by interviewing the man who actually came into close proximity with an object that, according to his opinion as a Navy officer and a jet fighter for 18 years, possessed capabilities that defied anything we currently have on this planet: Commander David Fravor.
This is not the first time Corbell and Fravor have spoken to each other, and that is because Jeremy has been looking into the Nimitz case long before it went ballistic on December of last year.
Here are the things I found interesting from the interview:
- The F-18s that were sent to intercept the object didn’t carry any ‘live’ weapons. We have to remember that at the time the USS Princeton and the USS Nimitz were conducting war games off the coast of San Diego, and during such exercises it is not accostumed to utilize real ammunition. In other words, Fravor and his squadron (the Black Aces) were sent only to investigate the unidentified targets which the Princeton had been tracking for a a number of days, with no intention to take it down.
- Fravor describes the object as performing movements without any type of inertia, meaning it was capable of changing course instantaneously, and to him it almost looked like a ping pong ball moving forth and back and left to right very rapidly. Given the size of the object –approximately 40-feet long according to Fravor’s estimates– that is quite an impressive feat. Even if we could hypothesize this object was lighter than air (like some sort of dirigible) that doesn’t mean it would be devoid of a significant amount of mass; think of this: even an average hot-air balloon weighs 2 1/2 tonnes .
- Fravor explains that at no point he felt any fear of the object or sensed any type of hostility from it. He was both following his orders and acting out of a pure sense of curiosity. Corbell asked him whether it was true or not that the UFO had ‘jammed’ his radar, and Fravor clarified this happened on a different UFO/Military encounter –the FLIR-1 video which was the second video released by To the Stars (or the 1st one, if you count how the Nimitz video had already been released on the Internet before DeLonge’s organization went public). Fravor didn’t want to go into too many details about what an ‘active jamming’ entails, but he acknowledged it is considered an hostile action during a combat situation –i.e. in that particular case the actions of the UFO were considered to be ‘aggressive.’
- The closest he got from the ‘Tic Tac’ object was half a mile, which in avionic terms is very close.
- The most important detail disclosed by Fravor: He further confirmed there was a high-res video taken by the cameras aboard his jet –something we’ve already covered on a previous post— which may never be released to the public (“good luck finding it!”).
- However, Fravor’s statement doesn’t seem to corroborate what ‘Trevor’ –an anonymous source interviewed by Corbell who claims to have been a radar operator stationed at the Nimitz– has said about this purported ‘clearer’ video. Whereas Trevor maintains the object looked to him in the video he saw as a ‘classic’ flying saucer (with a dome on top and a flat bottom) Fravor does not deviate from the ‘Tic Tac’ description which has been disseminated by the mainstream media. He did add that on a zoomed close-up of the camera on EO (television) mode, there appeared to be two little ‘L’ shaped appendages on the bottom of the object, which to him looked like some sort of antennae.
- The IR (infrared) version of the footage showed the object had a uniform temperature, meaning there didn’t seem to be any kind of ‘exhaust’ or points of excess heat caused by a discernible propulsion system.
- Fravor claims that he was never asked to sign any non-disclosure agreements forbidding him from disclosing this case.
- Fravor concedes that, despite a few minor errors, the executive report of the Nimitz incident presented by George Knapp (which you can read here) is the most accurate summary of the event to date.
- Although he won’t give any names, Fravor admits he has been given briefings to government individuals who were very interested about the case after it went public in December –but why not before it went public, though?
- And finally, Fravor seems to show a certain amount of contempt for what he dubs ‘Internet experts’, who have rushed into trying to debunk his encounter using conventional explanations. “I saw one [of these things] and I don’t consider myself an expert,” he rightly points out. Although the disdain is understandable, since skeptics tend to go to such lengths into trying to discredit the testimony of trained observers such as him –to the point that according to them all humans are bubbling idiots who can barely tell apart a tree from a lamp post!– I do feel nevertheless there’s an important role ‘Internet experts’ can perform in the world of UFO research; it was after all these kind of amateur enthusiasts the ones who managed to crack cases like the infamous Roswell mummy. And if armchair researchers are wasting countless hours deconstructing videos and asking uncomfortable questions, it is precisely because the people promoting these cases (To the Stars) have been less than forthcoming with the information so far –when are they going to acknowledge these claims of a higher-resolution video obtained during the Nimitz case, for starters?– and their background in the Intelligence world throws into doubt their intentions about coming forward with it.
I doubt that a year ago I would have bothered to devout so much time into one single UFO sighting. I for one do not believe in ‘silver bullets’ –cases that are considered to be so amazing they can single-handedly prove the reality of UFOs once and for all to any doubting Thomas out there (Rosell anyone?). Instead I believe it is in the cummulative effect of case after case which keeps getting reported by average witnesses all over the world, that which should force us into reconsidering our current paradigm and admit there is something out there that evades our comprehension, as gracefully and mischeviously as that polished white object evaded Commander Fravor’s fighter jet 14 years ago.
Still… in 2018 this is now the most visible tip of the iceberg that is the UFO phenomenon. And perhaps the iceberg is getting bigger for a reason.
