Dave Fravor on the Nimitz “Tic Tac” — Ward Carroll interview (12 Jun 2026)
Source: YouTube, “The SHOCKING Truth About the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO Incident”, Ward Carroll (“Mooch”) channel — long-form interview with retired US Navy Cdr. David “Sex” Fravor (the lead F/A-18F pilot in the 14 Nov 2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter) on the event and his current views on UAP/government secrecy. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=764DtInvj4M (46:53; uploaded 2026-06-12) Captured: 2026-06-12 via YouTube auto-captions (lowercase ASR; proper nouns/call-signs may be imperfect — e.g. “Fraver”/“Necrolo” are caption artifacts). What this is: Fravor’s firsthand retelling of the 2004 Nimitz encounter and his assessment of subsequent evidence and official handling. Analysis: fravor-nimitz-encounter-2004.
All right, welcome to a very special episode. Joining me is retired commander Dave Sex Fraver. Now, Sex, the first thing we do is tell the folks how you got your call sign. It’s actually started off as sexual.
It was uh I can tell you exactly. I was in VT21 and uh we would went on a weapons debt to El Centro and Captain Necrolo, US Marine, they were making call signs up for all the students. He said sexual favor and he just started laughing and it stuck. And then uh the commodor I was flying because back then the students could lead so I was leading divisions into the target area and uh Captain Evite was the commodore in Kingsville and he said sexual was too many syllabuses so it got shortened to sex and normally you know as you know you don’t get to keep those when you go to the fleet.
So I had sex and then they tried to change it and it just you can’t it was too original. So, I went to went and flew A6s, which is another long story we can get into because I actually had S3s at first. I went and flew A6S West and when I got done, I was going to VA45 and my buddy Vic Smith pygmy had got there first and they were doing the call sign reviews and they’re putting, you know, the standard call signs up on the board for me and and Vic goes, “Well, you know, his call sign right now is sex.” And as soon as he said it, they’re like, “We can’t change that.”
So, as you just hinted, you get your wings and I did not realize that you were originally slated for S3s. What happened there? >> So, I was the number one guy out of Kingsville and the community have been complaining about, you know, getting the guys towards the bottom of the class and I got quality spread. So, um this is this I’ll start with this is the leadership I’ve exposed to.
So, I wasn’t I went in the exo was an S3 guy when he told me my buddy Vic was standing next to He goes, “You know, hey, Mr. Smith, you got A6’s west.” And Vic’s like, “Yay.” And I was actually on duty that day in my khakis.
And uh he said, “Mr. Fraver, S3’s east.” And my jaw about hit the desk. And he said, “You don’t look happy.”
And I go, “Sir, to be honest, I’m not.” Literally about a month goes by and I’m just stashed doing FCFs in in Kingsville. I’m standing there and it was an AOM and I went in in the morning and uh uh Skipper Duth comes up to me and says, “Hey, sex, come here.” and we went uh Kingsville had these little kind of like looked like a airplane tower that stuck out the side of the hanger.
That’s where the duty desk was at. He took me up there and he goes, “Hey, uh how’s A6’s west?” And I looked at him. I said, “Are you joking?”
Cuz no one ever gets their orders changed out of the Treecom. I went up to Woodby Island. I got A6s. I did uh full set of workups and I did Rangers last ride.
So it was all Grumman Airwing. We had VF-1, VF2, VA 155, VA45, our Prowler guys, and we had H3 Hilos. >> Which A6 squadron were you in? >> I was in VA45, the swordsman.
We were coming back from cruise. They announced the A6 was going to go away. I was actually initially slated to go to Kingsville and they were doing the who’s going to get to go Hornets F-18s and this was this is the first group. We’re the first group to do that, but they kept me as an instructor when I transitioned.
Instead of going back to C, I was supposed to go back to C. So, I stayed as instructor for four years. And I really wanted to go to Top Gun after I you know I got exposed to you know Dude and Sparky and the guys that were at the rag with me. I had got assigned to KAG 14 strike ops and I turned over which you know these guys.
Killer Kill Klein was KAG and Harvey Mack HMAC was a DKAG. Mag White called me the detailer and said hey sex would you go to Japan? I said if I can go to 27 with Craze Mace I said I’ll go to Japan. The irony is I went over there and ended up being strike ops.
>> So which boat are we talking about at that time? I did the Indie Kitty swap. So I went and emergency deployed on Indie in 98. >> Brought it back, deployed, brought the Indie back to Hawaii, swapped it out with the Kitty, took the Kittyhawk, and went right back.
So we did 277 days in one year at sea. I went back to Lore. They ended up getting me orders to the fleet intro team down at 122. I did the VF2 transition and set up all the stuff as a squadron ocean were transitioning and next thing you know, the slate comes out and they’re like, “You’re going to VFA41.”
So, I did 13 months of shore duty after my department head went right over. I could I had to get frocked as an 05 to be an exo. >> Let’s focus on the part of your career that arguably you’ve become best known for. Um, right.
Um, for better or for worse, it is the fall of 2004. You’ve just taken over from our good friend Kenny Whitel, later the Airbus, who I was a rag instructor with. He’s been on the channel. In fact, his last interview as Airbus was at Hook that year with this this channel.
So, you you relieve him. Set the scene for us. >> I took over from Kenny on October 16th and we were set up for a twomonth at sea period from November to the end of December, right before Christmas. I think we went to the 21st.
Um, so we had went out um brand new, you know, still trying to figure it out, realizing that it is the first job you can truly be fired from. Your COXO tour was your first Super Hornet deployment. >> Yeah, this is the beginning of workups where we’re trying to put all the pieces of the battle group together um from the unit level training and try and create that cohesive unit that’s actually going to deploy to the Middle East. >> So again, we’re talking PFA 41 and you’re you’re aboard Nimttz.
>> Aboard USS Nimmits. Yes. I’m getting ready to launch on air. It’s one of the early goes and we’re going against the Marines.
So 232 had little hornets. So, for those who don’t know, little hornets have a lot less gas, about 30% less gas than the big hornets. And we’re going south of the ship. We’re between San Diego and Ensada, Mexico.
And our cap is 40 miles south of the ship. And the Red Air, which is the Marines, they’re going about 100 miles south of the ship. So, the Marines actually get off first. We don’t hear it.
They check in with Red Crown, which is the cruiser, just, hey, we’re getting all our checks for our IFFF and stuff. And they’re going to go south. And the Princeton is actually the controlling ship. They immediately came and said, “Hey, uh, dealer 111, we’re going to cancel training real world vector.”
And they start sending us out to the west. So somewhere like 260 270 out to the west, our current position. We’re south of the ship. So we’re going out and you figure the ship is probably what 60 70 miles.
It’s in the whiskey area off the coast. So we’re going further out to the west. So they start giving us the bra calls, which is the bearing range and altitude for this thing. And they’re, as they’re doing it, they’re talking to us to say, “We got this object.
We want you to check out. We’ve been tracking these things for two weeks. They’ve been coming down from space. They hung out for 20,000 feet for about three hours and they go back up.
So, we’re like, “Okay.” So, we go out. We’re doing this because we had APG73s. I got Alex.
I just tell her to move in. So, I pull her out a spread. She’s kind of hanging out on the left side and we’re driving out and they’re calling three, two, one. Then they get to merge plot.
So, we have joined now. The same lips have become one. We’re in the same radar resolution cell which of one of the best radars on the planet and they can’t see it. So, as we’re looking out, they call merge plot.
We start doing the Stevie Wonder. We’re looking around because we know it’s right by us. And as we look off the right side, we see white water. And this is literally, if you’ve been on the West Coast, this is the perfect day.
There’s not a there’s no white caps. It’s a clear blue sky, no clouds, no waves. So, we look down and we see this white water. So, the white water is it’s about the shape of a 737.
It’s about the size of a 737. And there’s something underneath the water that’s causing the waves to break like a seamount. So, that’s what we think. Well, as we’re looking down at the white water, because this is this is the only reason we looked.
We saw the white water and it was the only thing out there. We see this white tic tac. The tic tac’s pointing north south. So, it’s pointing towards 12:00 and it’s I’m going to do it like this.
And it’s going up and, you know, it’s going back and forth. So, it’s level along the water like this. I’m just doing it so you can see. It’s doing this.
It’ll go this. And it’s Think of it as So, the airplane’s kind of pointing to the east. So, you got that wing down to the south, you got a wing up to the north. So, just think of a cross, whatever you want to call it, but it’s it’s that shape.
So, it’s just kind of going up and down. It goes up over the fuselage, drops down over the wing, goes left and right over the wing, then pops and it’s there’s no inertia. So, the first thing you see when you see it as you would look, um, mooch, you go, it’s a helicopter. First, I’m thinking, all right, it’s a helicopter, but it’s pretty far away from everything.
And then it’s like, well, you can’t see the rotors. There’s no rotor washing. This thing’s right above the water. And we’re like, huh?
And I don’t see a tail boom. And we’re driving around. So, now we’re at six o’clock watching. And we’re just driving around.
We’re about 20,000 ft, about 300 knots, cuz that’s corner speed for the airplane, which means I have full maneuverability. And about 9:00, I said, “I’m going to go check that out.” And uh Con comes up. She’s the pilot the other airplane.
She says, “Hey, we’re just stay up high.” I said, “Cool. Great plan. Gives us a little bit of separation, and you can watch me go down there and figure out what this thing is because we don’t know what it is.”
So, I start descending at the 9:00 and it’s still pointing north and I get to the 12:00 position. So now I’m probably down I don’t know maybe 18,000 ft somewhere between 18 19. So it’s that nice easy descent because you know you just don’t want to be overly aggressive when you’re not paying attention over the water because you’ll be swimming. And as as I get to 12:00 the tic tac is still pointing north south and it just literally goes bam and it just starts coming up at me instantaneously starts matching me and I I told Noodin he was in the trunk and there’s I wish I had the commentary because it was pretty funny what’s going on.
And I said, “Well, it knows we’re here.” And I just started kind of circling down nice and easy. So, we go all the way around the circle and we get over to about the 8:00 position. So, now I’ve got about it’s probably around 12,000 ft and we’re right around 15.
So, that’s plenty of vertical turning room for a Hornet, you know. So, I literally just redefine the fight and I drop the nose and I start cutting across. I’m going over to 3:00 because now I just want to join on. I want to see what it is because we have no idea.
We don’t have anything just that can do that that hangs out over the water doing that and then just starts matching you at 300 knots coming up and it just literally is going right around the circle. So I cut across the circle and I’m right about pulling nose on and it’s inside my canopy bow and it’s between the canopy bow and the hood, you know, coming right up in the hood and you can kind of see it accelerate and it just disappears right in front of me. It’s literally gone. So I’m like, “All right, let’s just turn back.
Let’s check out. Let’s see what the white water was.” So we turn around. The white water’s gone.
The the ocean’s just blew and we’re right there. We’re right over the top of it. I’m like, “All right.” So, we start turning back this way.
So, we’ve done literally, you know, probably about 40 degree check turn and then we’re coming back this way. And as soon as we start coming back this way, the controller on the Princeton comes up and he says, “Hey, sir, you’re not going to believe this. But that thing is at your cap point about 60 miles away. It just reappeared just sitting there.
They didn’t track it there. It just reappeared.” So, we’re like, “Okay.” So, we go over there.
We don’t see it. We do like our run because, you know, I’m I got to get training. So, we get done. We come back to the ship.
We land and we’re taking off all our gear. And my next crew is getting ready to go for the next go. I think they were I don’t know if they were in a tank or what. Um but Paige was flying and and Chad Nuts was in the back and we were telling about it and Nuts goes, “Man, I’m going to find that thing.”
So Nuts goes out and in the ACS jets, you know, they got the hand controllers and it’s completely decoupled and so he’s got it. So as he goes out, you know, Paige has got the autopilot on. She’s looking out the window thinking, “I wish I wasn’t on the carrier because it’s so nice out.” and they’re driving towards our cat point and Nuts gets a hit on the radar just to the right of the nose and he castles it and APG73 will give you all kinds of jam logic.
You get strobes and it gives all of them. It gives velocity gate, range gate, gives a velocity vector, starts spinning around, does all kinds of crazy stuff as it does it. it. He immediately because we got the two radar displays, we got the Azmouth elevation and we’ve got the azmouth range on the right.
And he castles with his left controller, goes right to the targeting pod, which is looking down that same line of sight when the radar spits the lock. And that’s where he grabs the minute 30 seconds of the tic-tac video before it just zooms off the side. >> Tell us what we’re looking at here. >> So, what you’re looking at is this is the this is at fleer.
The uh big bar at the top with the little looks like a little airplane in the middle of it. That’s the your attitude. So when you’re looking at the fleer tells you what the airplane’s doing. The little dot below it is the tic tac.
Those two bars are the pixel lock. And then when it’s black, so when it’s black with a white tic tac, that’s infrared. This is EO. This is a black and white TV camera.
And then you can look at the bottom. Don’t worry about ALG. But you can see the 19. It says 20,000 with a flashing B.
And she has the autopilot selected. It says barrel down there. And one of the things. And then you can see at the top now he’s in a narrow field of view.
If you look real close, you can kind of see the little things sticking out of the bottom of it. He goes back to IR. He what he’s trying to do is test all the modes to see what comes up the best. He wanted to get as much video as he can.
If you look at right above on the right side, it says 99.9 range. It means it’s not ranging. There’s no ranging source to it. So, the radar is not seeing it.
The the radar is just it just literally jam the radar. It’s not seeing anything. And uh eventually it will it will zing off the side and the jet’s just sitting straight and level. What you don’t see on it is you don’t see any exhaust plume.
this were a jet, you’d see a plume coming out from the exhaust gases. Um, for really anything, you’d see hot spots and the whole thing is uniform. It has no wings. It has no tail, no flight control surfaces.
It’s just looks like a I said we call it the tic tac, but for a lot of people, if you’ve ever gone and filled up a propane bottle for your grill and they got the giant white tanks that are about 40 feet long, that’s what it looked like. I was driving down the road with my wife and I saw one. I said, “That’s it.” She goes, “What?”
I go, “That’s what the Tic Tac looked like. It’s you got to take the little top thing off, but just make it uniform all the way around. That’s what it looked like. >> My original impression was that was your fleer footage.
Uh but no, to be be absolutely clear, this was the sorty the event after you guys. And you you saw >> it was actually it was it was a sorty. It was it was there was one out there. It was after that.
So we were they were getting ready to launch and we were taking our gear off. So yes, it was about >> it wouldn’t be there sort right after you because they launched before you recover. It was probably an hour and a half after we saw it is when he took that. So the four of us, me, Nudes, uh, Cone, and Clean all watch that thing.
It’s about five minutes we were out there with it with our eyeballs from different altitudes against a blue sea background and no clouds in the sky. I said, “So I’ve heard, oh, it’s Yeah. Well, Tyson says it grass Tyson. Oh, it was a thing on their sensor.”
No. All four of our, you know, all eight of our eyeballs, all four of us, we didn’t, we didn’t hallucinate. It wasn’t like, you know, they were putting a false target someplace. No, no.
False targets don’t show up on Fleer. They don’t show IR. Um, no. That we four of us tracked it with our eyes.
Then Chad went out there and just luckily got it on the radar and tracked it because when he went into Civic to debrief it because, you know, we’re going to catch for this. >> Well, but when you went into Civic, right? So, they’re airborne. Yep.
>> Right. Did you go so as normal you would go right into Civic? >> Yeah, my backseat did. Noodle did.
>> Okay. Without any fleer footage and told them what you saw, right? Yes. >> What was their response?
>> They laughed. >> Okay. >> They they thought like Right. And then when Nuts walked in after when he got the video, the big joke, he walked in, he said, “Oh, VFA41, do you see any aliens?”
And he actually threw the UFO tape down the the video of the fleer and said, “Yeah, it’s right here.” And then they put it on the secret drive because we were exercising the BDA type thing to get ready for workups. That video got pulled off the secret drive on the carrier. Someone put it on a thumb drive and took it off.
So I told him when they did the in we’ll get to the investigation here in a minute. when they did the original investigation in 2009 when they finally wanted to pay attention. Um I said you should really be interested in how that thing got off a secret drive on a carrier because that’s the only way anyone got it because the original tapes got recorded over which were um Chad’s tapes because they were consumables but I had copied them onto an 8 mil and they were wrapped up in the safe with my name on it for CO only. >> So were these tapes like in the old airplane like physical tape or was it was it a digital?
No, it’s a it’s a H it’s a high eight tape that recorded a digital signal. So there’s no cameras. It’s a digital feed directly off the back of the displays. >> Okay.
But the format is >> is 8 millimeter. Same thing you bought in a camcorder. >> Yeah. Yeah.
Just so people are clear, we’re talking kind of legacy technology here. So it can be recorded over >> and will be recorded over in the subsequent sorties. The chronology of this is what’s as fascinating as the actual uh event which is you go to civic debrief. They’re like says you eye rolls then the following guys get back with the the the footage we just saw and now they’re like oh geez this is kind of serious but then immediately because you fast forwarded like years later but immediately what what happened because there’s some >> men in black things and other things.
Yeah. So let’s let’s get the truth out there about >> let’s let’s let’s get out. So you will hear the Men in Black showed up. You will hear they were told to give over the secret drives or top secret drives on different platforms.
I said so. Okay. >> And everybody sworn in secrecy. Don’t talk about this.
>> So it was it was visible. They saw it on the the the Princeton radar saw it. The E2 radar could see it. The Nimtts radar could see it.
So it was tracked by multiple radars. You know, it’s funny and I said this. I said, “So you know how it is. I’m an operational CO on a carrier.
So you got there’s eight squadrons. So there’s eight of me. Then you got the guys that the post command guys, there’s there’s another like besides the captain, the exo, the Deson, those guys. So there’s probably another eight there.
So there’s 16. And then you got the admiral and his staff. So there’s about you’re sitting, as you know it, as an operational CEO, you’re you’re sitting on probably the top 20 guys on that ship, right? And I’m the guy that did it and no one came to talk to me.
No one said a word. No one did an investigation, never signed a non-discloser. For the next two days, we were the airplane comic. >> Right.
>> So, just everybody knows, the airplane is the flight schedule for the entire airwing. Um, and there’s usually a cartoon on it. It’s like a far side with different captions a lot of times. >> The first one is I am Black Ace One.
I think it’s pretty funny. They’re pretty original on it. And then the next one is the the second day. And all the movies on the ship were Signs, Men in Black, Independence Day, Mars Attacks.
Literally, that was it. So, everyone’s like, “Oh, it’s this big secret.” I go, “There are 5,000 plus people on the Nimmits that knew that we just chased something that we have no idea what it was.” And I told Noodle as as after we knew that it had showed up in our cap and we’re heading back there to do training, I said, “Dude, you do know we’re going to catch maximum for this.”
And he goes, “Yeah, Skip, I I get it.” And I said, ‘Well, you know, is what it is, but it’s literally the weirdest five minutes of my life. >> But again, this is like it’s an airplane cartoon that’s kind of like at once acknowledging but laughing it off or making some sort of satire and then everybody moves on. >> We just started workups.
We’re at a twomonth at sea. I got a bunch of new pilots. I got readiness to make. After two days, after actually after the next day, I’m like, I got I gotta run a squadron.
I can’t sit and worry about this. There were a few people that were obsessed. One of the Marines used to come in the in the ward room and he’d be like, “Is anyone sitting here?” I go, “You want to talk about that tic tac thing, don’t you?”
He’d be like, “Yeah, you don’t mind, do you?” But yeah, that was it. >> Again, you weren’t obsessing on it. You had a job to do.
>> I didn’t even tell my wife. My No one knew. And I how it really came out. And you might know these guys.
So, do you know did you know Matt Sturgis Chig? He’s A6 transition. Him and Paco Cherichi, they were both on Ranger with me. A6 guys.
>> I know Paco very well. Paco’s been on the channel talking about speed. >> Yeah. So Paco, we all went through Paco was the class ahead of us.
And then Matt and I I did my first night trap with Matt. We went to the same A6 squadron. Squadron goes away. He goes out to 213 with uh you know Paco.
Matt had got out and he was he was working for Apple and we used to joke Steve Jobs is taking us to dinner. We were at Donovan Steakhouse in San Diego. Me, Matt, and his engineer. And this is about 2008 because I was working for Northrup Grumman.
And he said, he goes, “Hey, Sex, you flew a lot more than me. What’s the coolest thing you ever saw?” And I’m like, “Oh, dude, I chased a UFO.” And people that know you, I mean, this is a guy that did night track, so he knows I’m not nuts.
And he goes, “Oh, get out of here.” So, I tell him the story. Well, Paco’s obsessed with this stuff. He kept bugging me because he’s got that fighter sweep blog that he has, and he’s like, “Hey, I want to write about the tic tac.”
I let him read the unofficial official report. It was actually 2009 that he did the Flighter Sweet blog because I let them read the unofficial official report. That’s really how it got out there for people to really know that it happened besides the video that most people don’t know unless you know what it is cuz it got out. Oh, this is a UFO video taken from a hornet on the Nimits.
That’s what it said on YouTube. But you don’t have all the details. And if you don’t know what you’re looking at on an AT flare, it looks like a little dot. It’s boring.
And then all of a sudden it goes the gates change and the thing goes and zings off the side. >> So it’s just laying there. this this what turned out to be a big deal and we’ll talk about the two seminal events that happened circa 2016 this is when it when I first came to my awareness was you know about that time and uh I’m like well this happened in ’ 04 >> right like what so what happened in between that we’re not like >> like really drilling down on this >> I’ll tell you so I at work I met someone who’s kind of in the no and uh I’ll call her M. And I was talking to her and I said, “Hey, I had this incident.
Can you find anything out about it?” And she said, “I don’t know. Send it to me.” So, I sent it to her AOL account.
I didn’t send it to any work emails. I just sent it to her. And I didn’t think anything of it. At the same time, right after I talked to her, Cheeks Kurt had gotten a job at Bigalow Aerospace.
So, if you know Biglo Aerospace, Bigalow owned Skinwalker Ranch that they did a bunch of stuff up there. It’s the whole series. He doesn’t own it anymore. He sold it, but he owned that ranch to do the initial stuff with some of the government people went up and did a lot of analysis on the weird that just happens up there.
Cheeks was there. He called me up and he said, “Hey, sex.” He goes, “We got a customer that can investigate stuff. Can I use the Tic Tac?”
And I said, “Yeah, by all means, you know, give it to him.” So, I don’t think any of it because I’ve talked to M and I’ve talked to Cheeks. And about I don’t know, it was probably a couple weeks later I was at work. I get a call says, “Hi, I’m my name is Jay.
I’m the deputy director of Office of Naval Intelligence.” is Jay Stratton who’s got a book coming out on October 13th called From the Shadows. Jay is the man for the Pentagon program. He’s got more in his head than he he’ll ever be able to tell in his lifetime for the stuff that he’s seen.
But he will tell you we’re not alone because he said he’ll tell you in the documentary of Age of Disclosure, I’ve seen the bodies. I’ve seen the craft. Jay’s not lying. He’s totally legit.
You can’t erase his existence at the government. He’s a real real deal. Jay calls me. Hey, we’re going to investigate this thing.
I said, “Okay.” So, I talked to Jay. give him a bunch of details. He goes out and does his thing and he sends me a report.
He sends it to me. It was not classified, but little did I know it was foyer exempt. And when he sent it to me, he said, “Dave, this is for you. This is the report.
It’s not classified, but please don’t give it out.” That’s what he said to me. I let Paco read it to do his fighter sweep thing. But I had it.
And uh the report you can find on it’s all over the net now. It’s all unredacted. has all the names, everything that they searched, but it’s about 10 pages long and I call it the unofficial official report. It was actually done by the ATIP program that there was no money, but they were still doing it at the Pentagon and and then it parlays out and I don’t think anything of it.
So not and after that report in 2009, I hear nothing. >> Okay. So in ’ 04, you’ve got intelligence officers, a whole navy of them on limits. Did they do any report?
No, no, nothing. They did the standard civic report that says it’s like the basic that some some is, you know, ISSN seaman wrote. It’s really it’s not even correct because those guys are just write, you know, they take it and they jot notes and then they got to make it up and do because I’ve read it because you can find that on foyer. No, there was no investigation.
>> So there’s no evidence trail from 04 to when picks it up >> in ’ 09. That’s correct. They were aware of it. If you talk to Jay, they were aware of the incident, but they hadn’t done the full investigation because it’s so far removed.
You know, all the data from the radar tapes are not there. Now, people will tell you they came and got all the radar tapes off the Princeton, but I can tell you right now, no one seems to know where they’re at. And the guy that would have known where the Men in Black were going to get it, who ran all the programs, had no idea. He he’ll tell you right now, they didn’t they didn’t have it.
>> So, I guess I’m I’m confused. How did they write this report then? >> Oh, they went and talked to everybody. It was all They went and talked first person.
They talked to the admiral. They talked to all the air crew, all six of us, literally. They talked to the guys on the Princeton. They talked to guys in E2 Squadron.
They tal They literally figured out who’s who and who was on the flight. They talked to everybody uh before they wrote the report. So, it’s a pretty it’s a it’s a it’s it’s five years later, it’s about as thorough as you’re going to get, but they did a really nice job um Jay and his team uh when they did it. >> So, that’s time zero.
That report is time zero for this this the resurrection of this event >> in my opinion. Yes, it is. It is it is the cornerstone report that starts it all. >> Okay.
So, what happens next? So, we’re talking about now it’s 2009. >> After 2009 report, I don’t hear anything. In 2016, Alex Conn, who was the pilot in the other jet, was a professional military instructor teaching leadership and law at the Naval Academy.
>> Alex Dietrich. >> Yes. She calls me up in 2016 and says, “Hey,” she actually I get a text from her, “Are you still up the net?” I said, ‘Yeah, what’s up?
She goes, “We need to talk.” So I go, “What?” She goes, “Hey.” I call her.
She goes, “Hey, have you been talked to about the Tic Tac?” I said, “No, not since 2009.” She goes, “Well, I’ve been to the Pentagon a half dozen times. I’ve been anywhere from Starbucks to a vault inside of a vault looking at videos, you know, some of the high-res classified videos.
It doesn’t look like this.” And then her response is, “That’s not a tic tac. A tic tac looks like a tic tac. That’s a flying saucer.”
stuff like that. So she says, “Hey, I’m dealing with this guy Lou. He he keeps bringing me.” So I end up I said, “Have him call me.”
So Lou Alzando calls me who is at the Pentagon working with Jay. He calls me up and says, “Hey, we want to we’re going to come to Boston.” Because I was up working for for my current company. Uh I won’t say it.
I don’t let that out. >> It’s not Palunteer. >> It’s No, I’m not. No, I’m not Palunteer.
So I was working and uh uh they they come up. Well, he’s he’s going to come up. So, right after that, uh, Jeremy Corbell, who had called me after Paco did the fighter sweep article on it, and I started talking to Jeremy, who’s a big UFO. He’s released a lot of the the government videos.
The guy sent them to him all the time, but he’s one of the investigative journalists that does a lot of this, kind of getting it out to the front, so, you know, get the transparency gone. So, Jeremy um, sends me this link that Lou has now left the Pentagon and is working for to the stars with Tom Dong from Blink182. So Lou says, “I’m coming to Boston. Tom and I are coming.”
So it was cool for me because of the 03 cruise during Iraqi Freedom. Blink came and played on the Nimits in the hangar bay for the troops and it was 120 degrees. Travis Barker had to get like two IVs put in after they played because he was so dehydrated. It was that hot.
So I’m kind of cool to meet Tom to tell him thank you. And Tom’s like he as soon as we meet, he’s like, “Dude, you were on Nitz.” I said, “Yeah, dude. I I just got to thank you.”
He goes, “Oh my god.” Well, his brother is a chief. I think he does fast boats with the the teams. And uh Tom’s like, “Hey, I just wanted to help the Navy out.”
So, the fact that Blink, you know, and and you got to remember that’s that’s really as they’re peaking. I mean, they’re still huge, but I mean, that’s where Blink was just giant, you know, and uh to come out to the Nimmit. So, and it was really a lot of his curiosity, a lot of this disclosure stuff, believe it or not, there was a team, but he through his through the band, he managed to meet a lot of people um and really start to influence, you know, and get this thing to come out. And it was that group once I started talking to them, which led to Lou asking me to do the 2017 New York Times article, which I kept saying no because, you know, we don’t trust the press.
I mean, you don’t control it. So I went to dinner with Lou, Leslie Keane, and Helen Cooper. So Leslie is an author, very, very well known. She’s written a lot of books on UFOs.
She’s a, you know, a journalist. And um Helen Cooper is the New York Times lead journalist at the Pentagon. Absolutely wonderful. I love love them both to death.
Helen really when she wrote the story, her and Leslie worked on it, but Helen was kind of the lead uh for that. Um, at least I think because she’s the one that called me all the time and asked questions because I told him, “Don’t get this wrong.” Um, we had all went to dinner. Um, Lou had to leave for something.
So, it was just the three of us sitting there and they got the story and Helen actually called me up and just to make sure the articles right, like, “Hey, is this right?” She fact checked a lot of stuff. uh they did a very thorough job and uh and then they ended up publishing it and I obviously underestimated the impact of a New York Times article because I was at work and my phone would just not stop. I it was everybody in their mother calling me from New York and they’ll find your number.
You could have an unlisted number. The news people will find your number and they will track you down. I guarantee they have I don’t know what they pay for these programs but oh my god they can find anybody at any time. So they published the article in 2017 and the world of UFOs starts to change, especially in Washington DC.
I did some TV. I said no to probably 70% 80% of the people that were calling. Um, so I did New York Times, I did Washington Post, I did Aaron Bernett on CNN. I actually have an IMDb page that I didn’t create.
I don’t know how it got created, but there’s a lot of stuff. Stuff that I actually talked to. A lot of it I never talked to. They pull file footage from Fox News like Tucker Carlson and stuff.
Then we got called for the 60 Minutes piece which last I heard is the most watched episode of 60 Minutes in the history of 60 Minutes which is pretty impressive. That changed it. I talked to well I’ll say it Senator Kelly had called me to ask some questions and he was a A6 guy uh Japan I think he was in 115. He had called me and said hey you know he was giving the funny.
He goes, “Dave, you know, we used to say if you said UFOs in Capitol Hill, you were just your political career was done.” He goes, “The 2017 changed.” He goes, “But the 60 Minutes,” he goes, “I was sitting on the couch with my brother, his twin brother, who’s an astronaut.” And he said, he goes, “And you came on and we’re like, oh my god, someone incredible talking about UFOs.”
And he goes, “And it really changed.” And I’ve talked to a multitude of senators. Alex and I testified to a group of senators in 2018. It was it was it was in a vault, so it wasn’t out in the public, but it was the first real hearing on UFOs directly to Congress.
So, we talked to them and then uh I ended up doing the 2023 open hearing in public that I got asked to do with Dave Grush and Ryan Graves, which was the first public testimony that I I underestimated that, too. I figured, hey, I’ll just go in and get it done. I came around the corner looking for the office that I had to go to and the entire the hallway was looked like Disneyland and there was hundreds of people and I’m just kind of walking and then you’re you’re yelling your name because they all knew who you are. I got stopped on the street.
I actually had a SUV pull up on the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue like and almost blocked me. I thought I was getting abducted by like the Secret Service or something and it was just these guys that wanted to talk to me. So, it’s it’s been a it’s been a kind of a crazy experience. Uh that and and it’s it’s literally changed the game.
>> Well, it’s changed your life, right? You didn’t choose UAPs. UAPs chose you. >> That’s correct.
>> Um as the Kelly brothers uh said, “Oh my gosh, we’ve got one of us. Uh you know, not a guy given to tinfoil hat conspiracies that is saying these things matterof factly based on things he saw in a tactical airplane. So suddenly you’re like this deserves a a relook right and all of us wind up going look we know sex he’s a regular guy you got to take him at face value right and the other thing that I find that that I think is it adds to the the the cred is this didn’t define you on the backside of it during your Navy career like you said you you were CEO you didn’t think anything of it you got you know you got to write sign flight schedules you got to get, you know, up jets, you got to take care of the troops. You had a a job to do because I think the general stereotype about the event is that you became because you saw it, then it defined you and that’s everything you were all about from that point forward.
That’s absolutely not the circumstance. Right. You’re exactly right. Go by, >> right?
Exactly right. Resurrected in a very unconventional way. >> I asked Lou when he kept bugging me. I literally told him no like a half dozen times.
And I said, “Why me?” And he said, “You know, why do you want us to do this?” And he said, “Because we’re doing the article, the auras and UFOs.” That was the front page of the New York Times.
We were on page two, my article. And Jim did it with me. It was they can’t discredit you. They can’t erase your existence.
They can’t You’re literally a train observer. I had at the time I had probably 36 3,700 hours flying, you know, a lot in Hornets and A6s, you know, tactical. You got my career. It was all pointy nose gray jets and >> well A6 isn’t >> it flew backwards.
The point’s in the back. I’m not like a big UFO guy. I don’t I track people send me stuff all the time and I was watching there’s a it’s a Leslie Keane was in it. It’s I was in the documentary.
I I did it for her because she’s a good friend now. Um and I respect her a great deal. But I was watching it and they were talking about the 2007 hearing at the United Press Club that they got all these people. They got the guy from Tyrron out of the Iranian Air Force.
They had all these people that had all this UFO. These are big rollers in the UFO world and they did this and they were all excited about it. And she says in a thing, she goes and we thought, “Hey, this is it. We’re gonna finally break through.”
And nothing happened. And I was watching it and I said, and after nine years after the New York Times article, I finally got it. And I actually said, “Now I know why Lou kept bugging me to do the article.” Because we actually did change the game because of that article.
You could talk about UFOs. I mean, come on. They’re doing public hearings now. They Dave Grush was just on yesterday talking about stuff at the public hearing.
There’s so much going on. And um and why all this, you know, we got the new Spielberg movie coming out and I’m going to give them I went to the premiere on Sunday. I got invited to the premiere although I did not get to meet him. I really wanted to because he came out at South by Southwest and they asked him why after 50 years are you making a new alien UFO movie?
And he said, ‘Well, he goes, you know, I was actually uh inspired by the 2017 New York Times article in the Navy pilot who chased a tic tac UFO and the 2023 congressional hearings. He said that multiple times and he actually came out the last one that someone sent me. It is he actually names Fraver, Gush, and and Graves who did the 2023 congressional hearing. And then we were talking about it this weekend because I was there with Dan Farah who did Age of Disclosure, the documentary, and I was there with Jay Stratton and Ryan Graves.
And we were all sitting around talking and they said, “What do you think this will do?” I said, “Well, it’s not going to it’s not going to like peique the interest more of the UFO community. They’re already into it. You don’t have to convince them.”
But what it does is it will do like Close Encounters did back in the 70s is it will peique the interest of the nonUFO people to go, I wonder if that’s real. because people haven’t it’s now with Google. There’s so much information and there’s so much stuff coming out. You know, we’re the government’s just on two massive disclosures that I know you want to talk about of of pictures coming out um and videos and there’s going to be more and we know there’s classified stuff that they’re trying to get declassified that are really really clear images.
There’s just so much more information coming out and there’s so many senior people that are very credible that are pushing this. I think it’s only a matter of time until it just here’s the ship and here’s the body. That’s really all you got left. That’s all that’s left.
You mentioned the sort of the the seinal points, you know, again, starting with the the report that ATIP wrote in ‘09, then you fast forward to like 2016 and New York Times story 60 minutes. But another thing you didn’t mention, which was huge, right? Right. So, you were on Joe Rogan.
>> Yes. And he’s >> I told him no. Like six times, too. >> Yeah.
Yeah. So, um again, everybody saw this, right? It’s got what >> I think it’s actually at about nine >> nine million. Okay.
>> Yeah. >> Um so that’s impact. The 2023 hearing which I watched live lawmakers like Nancy Mace and some others were like hey we got to tear down the wall here. We need absolute disclosure open kimono so forth and so on.
The promise of that has taken the form of this. And let me bring this up. This is the Department of Wars website. It’s war.govfo.
Um, so you can see on this page they talk about that they just released the second trench of records. >> First trench was released on May 8th of this year. Second trench released on May 22nd. But basically this this, you know, has mission statements.
You can see here’s release one, release two, but it’s everything is here for the analysis, right? You can click on it. It brings it up. As you said, it has images.
It’s it’s basically mimographs of in some cases decades old documents. So, highly encourage folks to do the homework and start to connect the dots here. When we were talking before we came on air, you mentioned that um there are actually sites that have already done that. If you go to Enigma, the nonprofit, they’ve actually categorized all those videos and you can actually see like the like the screenshot clip of it, like the thumbnails, so you kind of know what you’re getting into and it’ll give a description.
So, I’ll put that in the episode description, uh, what that site is. Um, but here’s again, it’s Tack Air, guys. This is the F-16 over Lake Huron 2023, and this was the spy balloon era. This was part of this trench of releases uh that had not been publicly released before this time.
You can see everything’s redacted in terms of the HUD symbology. The winder, the Sidewinder A9 takes it out. It hit the water and sank. And that they didn’t recover any of the pieces.
And so there’s stuff like this in these releases, volumes and volumes of it. >> Yeah. For me, it was the the most telling and and it was in tranch one is the Apollo 17 stuff when Jean Sern’s on the moon and he’s got stuff flying above him and and people don’t realize in 1972 we were the only country that could get anything to the moon. No one had got out there yet and these things are just hanging out above the site where the two astronauts are walking around on the moon.
They got objects above them that was never never ever released to the public. This has been undercover for decades, you know, half a century, >> right? And and so >> now it’s out there. So where are we w with this?
What what what is is imminent? What what is to be discovered? What’s your belief uh of where this whole UAP phenomenon, public sentiment, etc. is is going to go in the near term?
I think it’s only a matter of time and I we have bets that there someone’s got like a half million dollars bet on it that’ll come out by the end of the year and the reason I say that is um there’s so much momentum the genie is not getting back in the bottle. I will say this there are people inside the government that do not want this out and they’ll hide under its national security. Telling us telling the world that we’re not alone is not national security. telling the world that we’ve retrieved crash objects.
Just show us, Roswell, that thing crashed. Just show us. Yes, we are not the only people on the whole in the universe. And you’ve been out in the middle of the ocean looking up on night vision goggles.
There’s a lot of stars and planets out there. It’s way more than most people will ever see, especially when you have no ambient light and you’re on uh amplifiers. I said it’s it’s just literally statistically impossible that we’re the only planet that has life on it. It’s just not true.
Now, people will argue, well, they can’t get here. It’s too many light years away. It’s this. It’s that.
I go, then we have this hubris about us that we only believe in what we can prove and understand. But yet, you have to admit that there’s stuff that we don’t understand. There’s stuff that when Einstein came up, they didn’t believe him and it all got proven real. There’s stuff that we’re still discovering now.
Remember, it used to be when we were in grade school, smallest particle was the atom. You had the electron, neutron, proton, but now you got all the quirks and the subatomic particles that are talking about. Then you tie into things like quantum entanglement and how all those things tie together. And I think there’s so much that we’ve learned, but we don’t know.
And if you look at just human evolution, just look at the last 130 years from 1900 all the way up to now. So 126 years. Look at how fast we have evolved from prior to that. I mean, it’s out of control.
If you if you took one of these and you took it back then and said, “Oh, this is everything. This is a this has got more computing power than what we sent people to the moon on.” and you go, you know, where’d that come from? Visionary, did we de develop it all?
Who knows? But I just think it’s a matter of time. And this is why I’ll go back to the new Disclosure Day from Spielberg. Really good movie.
What it’s going to do is it’s going to revitalize those who just aren’t into the topic. People are going to see the movie. It’s going to stream eventually on Netflix just like everything else. And it’s going to go crazy.
It’s just like you’ve experienced this, Mooch. When Top Gun came out, people ask you questions. When Maverick came out, people ask you questions. You used to do that.
Wow. Look at all this. People get pumped up that aren’t into that. And when you’ve got a movie, especially from a director like him, I think this is going to be that piece that really starts pushing not just the UFO people that are pushing it.
It’s going to push a lot more people in the public to go, “Hey, there’s a lot more.” Because they’re going to Google. They’re going to start seeing what’s out there. This thing’s just going to grow.
And I think it’s just a matter of time until the government comes out. And I don’t want them to go, look, we’ve got this thing we reverse engineering or whatever. I don’t need you don’t need to disrupt national security. Just be honest and say, look, we’ve known for the last 80 plus years that we’re not alone.
We recovered stuff at Roswell. That’s that’s all. I think people deserve that. I think the world deserves that.
There’s over 8 billion people on the world. And you would think that if we’re not alone, it shouldn’t be held by the few. it shouldn’t be held by these subgroups because we know that other countries we know that China and Russia take this serious. George Knap, who’s a reporter in Vegas, um actually went over there when the when the Soviet Union came apart and they gave him just stacks and stacks and staff and he said what was nice is over there they only like stamp classified you know top secret or secret on the top page like we have it on every page header and footer they only take so if you took the top off threw it out it was just a bunch of white paper with a bunch of words on it so he he brought a bunch of them back there in Russian he’s got a bunch of them translated and stuff like that so we know for a fact they had an active You know, we know that they had a plane shoot at one and it shot back, took the plane down, and they had standing orders to never shoot at him again.
We know the stuff in Tyrron. The pilot chased it in the F4 and tried to shoot it with a AIM uh nine and his system just shut down inside. We’ve got eyewitnesses of stuff at the nuclear sites. We’ve got stuff going on at Vandenberg.
We’ve got all the East Coast stuff that multiple multiple people were tracking. Um, I think only a couple saw things, the one that almost hit the orb, but the rest of it, you got you got the APG79 out there, which is one of the best radars in a fighter right now that’s picking these things up. You know, you’ve got Fleer video with the Go Fast and the Gimbal. You know, you’ve got some of the cell phone picks, and then you’ve got these tanches that the government’s releasing, and we know for a fact there’s better videos, that there’s high-res videos.
But then again, what we’re not going to do is turn something over to the public that gives away, oh my god, the America has this super satellite that can get these. We’re not going to give that away. That would break our security stuff. Or we’ve got a targeting pod that can see 200 miles on an airplane.
I’m just making stuff up. But they’re not going to give that up. You’re just not going to see. If anything, they’re going to declass.
But, you know, there’s other smart people that are against us that are, you know, uh, you know, our adversaries that, you know, they can figure stuff out going, “Well, that had to come from something like this. We don’t have that technology. Where’d they get that?” You know, so I mean, I’m all for protecting national security, but for God’s sake, enough is enough.
I mean, if you look at the last, oh my god, just in our lifetime, so I’m 61, almost 62. So when you look at it, you go, “Oh my god, they said this, then they lied.” Like Roswell, it was a UFO. No, it wasn’t.
Then the guy’s on his deathbed goes, “Yeah, it was. They told me to lie.” You know, uh, what is it? Heck, who ran he was the lead scientist in Project Blue Book.
Oh, yeah. It’s this and that. But he came out before he died said, “Yeah, it was there was a lot of stuff that was real. We couldn’t explain it.
Just be honest.” You know, I’m not saying reveal anything. I’m not saying give away classified information. just say, “Look, just just be honest with the world.
We’re not alone.” Someone asked me, “Hey, when you chased it, when you went after it, did if you’d had weapons, would you have shot it?” And I said, I had no reason to shoot it. It never threatened me ever.
It was just kind of hanging out. And then it came up and said, “Hey, I’m just going to follow you. I’m going to get on the other side of the circle.” When I cut across, if anything, I was may way more aggressive to the tic tac than the tic tac was to me, you know, and maybe that’s why it left.
Maybe I should have got on bearing line and joined up a little bit slower and been less aggressive. Someone said, “What’d you do?” I said, “Well, I went two circle with the UFO and then I aggressively redefined, went nose low, cut across a circle, and it bugged.” You know, that’s that’s literally the entire thing.
I went two circle, went across, redefined, and it bugged. There’s There’s the whole tic tac thing. >> I love it. I love it.
You’re speaking our language. Well, Commander Dave Sex Fraver, it’s been an amazing journey. Thanks for spending some time with us today, and I look forward to seeing you in real life before too long. Take care, Mooch.
Good talking to you. >> All right, that’ll do it for this episode. If you’re not already a subscriber, become one so you don’t miss anything. And in the meantime, I look forward to talking to you again very soon.