David Fravor

Fravor was born and raised in West Toledo, Ohio, and graduated from Whitmer High School in 1982.⁠[1]

He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at 17 and transferred to the U.S. Naval Academy two years later; as a midshipman he trained aboard the USS Nimitz.⁠[2]

He then commanded Strike Fighter Squadron 41 aboard the USS Nimitz, was a TOPGUN graduate, and had more than 3,500 flight hours.⁠[1]

He states that the USS PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry diverted his flight of two F/A-18Fs to radar contacts, and the four crew members saw a wingless white “Tic Tac” shaped object above the water; as he closed in it accelerated away and reappeared about 60 miles off.⁠[3]

He also said another jet launched from the Nimitz around the same time had its radar jammed but picked up the object on an infrared channel, and the object then shot off the side of the screen.⁠[4]

He retired from the Navy in 2006 after 18 years as a Navy jet pilot and five deployments in Iraq, beginning with Desert Storm.⁠[2]

He says the incident was never investigated until Jay Stratton contacted him in 2009 for a program led by Lue Elizondo.⁠[3]

In December 2017, New York Times reporters Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean exposed the Defense Department’s secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, publishing alongside it videos of Navy encounters with unidentified objects.⁠[5]

That month he said on ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry News: “I think it was not from this world,” while also saying, “I don’t know if it was alien life.”⁠[4]

Fravor said he went public at the encouragement of Luis Elizondo.⁠[1]

On April 27, 2020, Defense Department spokesperson Susan Gough announced the authorized release of three unclassified Navy videos, one of them taken in November 2004; the department said the aerial phenomena in them remained characterized as “unidentified.”⁠[6]

On September 8, 2020, Fravor appeared on episode #122 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast; the outline lists topics including Top Gun, his Navy pilot career, carrier landings, the Tic Tac UFO story, a response to Mick West’s debunking, whether the Tic Tac was a secret military test, and advice for young people.⁠[7]

In a “60 Minutes” segment aired May 16, 2021, Fravor and Alex Dietrich, who had flown the other jet that day, described the encounter; Fravor said the object mimicked his maneuvers and that “It was aware we were there.”⁠[8]

Dietrich later said she did not know what it was and that “it could have been a natural phenomenon in human activity,” the point being that it was weird and unrecognizable.⁠[9]

On July 26, 2023, Fravor testified with Ryan Graves and David Grusch before the House Oversight Committee’s national security subcommittee, saying that “what we experienced was, like I said, well beyond the material science and the capabilities that we had at the time.”⁠[10]

Asked whether the objects posed a security threat, he said yes, adding: “The technology that we faced is far superior to anything we had.”⁠[11]

Witnesses at the hearing offered no evidence for their most controversial claims; the Pentagon denied ever running a program to possess or reverse-engineer extraterrestrial materials, and AARO had determined that year that nearly 200 of 366 recent sightings were “unremarkable,” possibly drones, balloons, or clutter.⁠[12]

United States Navy: Official website: https://www.navy.mil/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]