The USS Nimitz Tic Tac UFO - Balloons? Again!

It's been two years since I last made a post here. It was my reality check mostly about the few Pentagon UFO incidents, and some people who tried to make money out of them.

I noted back then that what was then called "three of the most unusual videos" had already been debunked. And they still are that just as much. The fact that they are still being hotly debated can only mean it's been a long streak of slow news days on the UFO front. That, lack of new information, and lack of time, have been major reasons for my silence here. But the primary reason, that originally restored my interest towards this topic and led to this blog, has also been the primary reason for my fading interest in it. Yep, it's the Nimitz UFO incident.

So how about the one remaining actually interesting part of the story then?

That was the sentence I used in my last post to introduce the visual encounter part of the incident. And these excerpts show how I saw the overall situation.

If and when the remaining Nimitz encounter is explained, it's pretty much certain it will be done by a skeptic/debunker, as they are basically the only people who even try to do that. "Just believing" has never advanced our understanding about anything, quite to the contrary, especially since it so commonly means refusal to accept negative results and hostility towards such progress. An unsolved mystery may be a good story, but a solved one is one more step towards the truth, whatever it may be. I'll choose the latter over the former any time.

There's a strong correlation between the lifetime of a UFO case and availability of information. Thanks to the rarely available combination of video footage and distance information, the Go Fast footage lost all of its mystery on the very day it was released, whereas on the other end of the spectrum the still unexplained visual part of the Nimitz encounter has no footage and some possibly decisive information is unavailable due to the secrecy surrounding radar systems and submarine operations. As well as for the reluctance of some of the participants to be interviewed, and the lack of properly conducted interviews that would concentrate on gathering detailed data, instead of aiming to reinforce certain beliefs.

What this story needs badly is additional information, and it seems that can only come from the four people who had the visual encounter, or from someone who knows what that sub was doing.

So what has changed now? Yep, one of those four started talking and a few days ago had an impromptu interview with a debunker, who did the right thing and dug deeper into the details. That led to some major insights, especially on understanding the event timeline from the witness perspective. It also sort of gave new justification for the hypothesis that's being discussed here.

Too obvious and preposterous

That's an odd combo, isn't it? But it reflects my feelings on the general hypothesis that the "tic-tac" was actually a submarine launched balloon whose movements were misinterpreted mostly due to the parallax illusion. That's what I and many others have believed, or at least considered as the leading candidate, for a few years now. But many of us have been hesitant to really push those ideas forward.

You can see my hesitancy in how I described the prospects of that hypothesis on that last post.

Could it be something so simple? Maybe. The point is that currently available information and factoring in common estimation errors and discrepancies between the sources seems to leave enough room for something like that.

While illustrating that possibility, I didn't show an image of some realistic candidate for that very balloon. I chose a manned airship emerging from a shady hangar. Reasons being, I haven't found the right balloon, and I liked the symbology relating to an emerging explanation.

I believe the way Mick West described the idea to Alex Dietrich (the pilot of that high cover jet, "Source" in TTSA pilot report) in the aforementioned interview illustrates the point I'm trying to make:

It's difficult to convince people that what has been said to be a hypersonic physics defying tic-tac could have been just a balloon. It's easy to guess what the response is like. For many that's just preposterous. Everything's a balloon to us.

Now go and propose the same thing to an actual eyewitness who described some extreme maneuvers. Mick just did, and you can see how he seemed to be walking on eggshells, asking if that speculative idea sounds completely crazy and so on. As the old saying almost goes, don't bite the only hand that can give you crucial information.

To my great delight Alex, as someone who actually was there, didn't rule it out at all. In my mind that's a bit of a game changer. The idea can't be considered preposterous or insulting anymore. So now we can concentrate on that "too obvious" part.

Let me disappoint you

Let's get this right of the bat. I'm not going to propose a new theory here, or even present any significant new evidence for it. I'm pretty much doing the opposite. I'm arguing that the general theory I and others have been supporting for years is good enough to drive the conversation forward. In fact, I'm making the case that it can account for more or less everything in this event.

Truth to be told, I have actually had a couple of unfinished draft posts about subs and balloons from roughly since I last posted here, waiting there in hopes of finding concrete evidence or at least some more information first. And I have also had some private conversations with other researchers on the subject of subs and balloons since 2018. While I certainly acknowledge the possibility that this turns out to be something else, the main questions in my mind have really been "What kind of a balloon was it?" and "Where can I find evidence for it?"

That also explains my fading interest. I have called the Nimitz incident the best UFO case I have seen, and it really piqued my interest. I believe many have a completely wrong picture why some skeptics and debunkers spend their time on something they don't just believe. Many of us desperately want to be proven wrong. And since we don't know what to expect from real aliens, the only way to do it is to rule out all other more mundane and hence more likely possibilities. And who else does that if we don't do it ourselves? What is being presented here soon became a likely possibility I couldn't rule out.

If that, or some other option, can be proven with evidence at some point, I will be of course happy that we have resolved a mystery and learned something. But deep down, the feeling really is, "damn, not again!"

Connected incidents

This introduction would be badly lacking if I didn't mention Tyler Rogoway's highly significant and informative proposal that both the Nimitz incident and later 2014-2015 "cube in a sphere" UFO sightings could be explained by "radar reflector-toting balloons." Before that he coauthored another article that pointed out a significant similarity. The events happened during trainings after upgrades to radar data sharing technology.

Some excerpts from that article.

If anything else, a submarine-launched balloon system designed to catalyze clandestine electronic intelligence gathering is a remarkably creative, but obscure concept that existed nearly 60 years ago. Does it explain every aspect of every detail of every incident Navy personnel have described over the last 15 years? No. But nothing else does without jumping to some extremely reality-warping conclusions.

And yes, I do realize that even implying that what people describe as unexplained objects could be 'balloons' is highly inconvenient considering the stigma surrounding that explanation. But in this case, that doesn't make it any less worthy of examination considering we aren't talking about some garden variety weather balloons here and there would be a real reason for any military power to keep such a capability secret. The fact that there is an actual precedent for employing a similar concept secretly during the Cold War also adds significant weight to the possibility.

So it seems there's a good chance that if evidence for such a system is uncovered, it may settle more than one incident at once. Rogoway also stated:

Obviously, this doesn't explain the Tic Tac encounter with Super Hornet pilots in any way

I think he could have left that one out.

My best guess hypothesis

I was trying to think the best way to present my thoughts and decided to write it as a story depicting my best guess version of what actually happened.

Due to lack of time, I will post just the story for now, but I'm planning to add some details why I believe it happened this way later as time permits.

The story

The story begin approximately on 10 November 2004. The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group (CSG 11) was out on a training mission, which in total lasted 23 days at sea, with some brand new radar tech, many brand new jets and some brand new ATFLIR pods, and many somewhat brand new pilots as well.

With it was also the protagonist of this story, USS Louisville, a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine, pictured below with its small "wings" probably large enough to create an aircraft shaped whitewater region when just under the surface in otherwise calm waters.

It was mostly doing its own thing somewhere within the area and its tasks included playing the enemy and testing the defenses and detection capabilities of the strike group.

Another component of the CSG was USS Princeton, an AEGIS cruiser with a new radar upgrade, which began seeing unexpected radar returns. Some were false targets, others balloons in groups of 5-10, designed to test the upgraded radar and its operators. They were launched (probably from land or some ship) near the southernmost point of the Southern California Range Complex (SOCAL) navy training area, near Catalina Island, and floated south with the 100 knot winds at 28,000ft thanks to being altitude controlled, all the way near the southernmost point of that training area, near Guadalupe island. There they self-destructed/deflated as planned. [More about those radar returns]

But some balloons had a different origin and heading. On November 14, Princeton's radar picked up an intermittent target, some 60nm southwest from their location, at an altitude of 15,000-20,000ft. Velocity wasn't known due to the faint signal.

While that happened, a couple of Super Hornets from VFA-41 Black Aces were just about to begin their scheduled air defense exercise on operation area MISR-1, some 40nm south from USS Nimitz. Their CAP or holding point was blue air CAP shown below, while their red team enemies flew 40nm further to the other CAP (The ATFLIR flight and their enemies discussed later used the same CAPs).

The many UFOs in that picture I copied from my earlier post refer to the many conflicting locations given for the visual tic-tac encounter. I believe the closest one to the truth is the one towards west from the blue air CAP, as indicated by David Fravor.

David Fravor and Alex Dietrich were the VFA-41 pilots, with their WSOs on the back seats. Douglas Kurth from VMFA-232 also happened to be in the air to conduct a post maintenance check flight.

Princeton decided to use the opportunity and investigate what the radar returns were, as they didn't recognize them, and they hadn't been told that their capabilities were being tested that way. They gave coordinates to an airborne E-2C AWACS plane, but its radar couldn't find it. They vectored the jets towards the target they had seen, but none of them ever found it (yay, a minor plot twist).

It was a balloon launched covertly by USS Louisville, designed to be more difficult to track as the next level test target. It floated almost unnoticed to the east, again roughly with 100 knot winds, until it self-destructed before risking going to Mexico.

The E-2C however managed to find another faint target, so close near the water they first thought it was a wave. It wasn't, it was USS Louisville, or some small part of it, possibly a canister used for launching the next balloon from just under the surface.

Meanwhile all the three planes had also reached the area, and two of them, those flown by Fravor and Kurth, had noticed a patch of whitewater that looked disturbed, like there was a submarine. That's because there was.

Fravor wanted to take a closer look and began a slow turn around that area. He had an ongoing discussion with his WSO, who had noticed it at the same time. They however didn't notify their inexperienced wingman, who just kept following them, unaware of the disturbed water.

While looking at the water, Fravor noticed what he described as a white tic-tac, which, as everyone no doubt already knows, is a candy mint shaped like an oblong balloon. It was the next radar testing balloon, still tethered to the sub while being filled and let to rise to the release altitude. Since there was little low level wind, it didn't push the balloon to any particular direction. Instead it just randomly floated, not fast, but slowly to some direction until caught by the tethering, which made it bounce back (immediately without apparent inertia) to where it came from, and pick a new direction. The movements were relatively minor, but the disturbed water created a reference point against which such movements were nevertheless easy to see even from high altitude.

While Fravor circled and descended, the balloon was released and began to rise. It rose pretty rapidly thanks to having low weight with little payload and being filled with hydrogen. To him it looked like as if it had just reacted to his presence. And he believed it wasn't rising straight up but began circling like he did, as thanks to the parallax effect, it looked like that.

Finally, after Fravor had been looking at the balloon for several minutes, Dietrich also noticed the disturbed water. The balloon was already relatively high up, but horizontally still close to the position where it left from. It ended up between her and the disturbed water, and again thanks to the parallax effect, looked as if it was zooming low over the whitewater on a straight line due to Dietrich's own velocity. In reality it was already high enough that the winds were picking up, making it wobble due to the oblong shape. It looked erratic to her.

She assumed it to be something like her own jet, or a missile, which should sort of point and tilt towards the direction they are going or turning in a consistent way. But thanks to the wind and parallax illusion, the angles were all wrong and random on this one, in essence, nonsensical. And all that was powered with nothing else than illusions and invisible hydrogen, without any kind of visible engines or control surfaces.

Within seconds, Fravor had just come to the conclusion that he needs to do an aggressive maneuver to get closer to the object as it still seemed to mirror his movements, making him think it stayed twice as far as it was. So he decided to dive and cut through the circle where he anticipated the object would continue to circle while he was doing that. It wasn't circling, and it was twice as close, so he ended up flying past it. To him it seemed to accelerate away in an instant when he didn't expect it.

For Dietrich it was more of an emotional roller coaster where everything happened very fast. What was supposed to be a normal training mission suddenly became a possible drug runner or plane hijacking intercept, without weapons. Then a possible rescue mission of a downed airliner, which almost immediately morphed into the alarming possibility of being just above a submarine that just launched a missile. And just as suddenly the other pilot seems to be going into a dogfight, unarmed, with what she just thought to be a possible weapon.

All those transitions happened within seconds and she had very little time to think, let alone concentrate just on observing details on what the other jet and balloon were doing. She had a different and constantly changing viewpoint in her jet, so she interpreted the action that happened in the air somewhat differently. 

Eventually she also lost sight of the balloon. It may have even burst or deflated when Fravor got close to it, possibly due to the pressure wave created by the Hornet triggering a pressure fail-safe.

Meanwhile, USS Louisville had already dived as they had sent all the balloons they wanted. As a result, the whitewater area was already gone when the jets were leaving the area. It had released at least two balloons, maybe more, as there's indication one of the earlier ones had already flown far enough east to cause some radar returns near their earlier cap point as it flew by. There may have been other occasional faint radar returns as well, but the one near the cap was more likely to catch their attention due to the location.

The event wasn't significant enough to cause other official actions. Even Fravor and Dietrich returned back to their cap point, without noticing any more balloons, to have one run of the previously planned exercise before returning back to Nimitz.

There Fravor briefed the next flight from his squadron, who were scheduled to have another red team vs. blue team air defense exercise on the same area and cap points as Fravor just had. He also asked them to take the ATFLIR pod with them in case they saw something interesting.

The red team, consisting of two F/A-18E single-seaters from VFA-14 "Tophatters", took of first, as their cap point was 40nm further to south. Then the blue team followed, having given the others some 30-40nm head start. At some point they got a faint radar contact of one of those planes, indicating a 30-40nm range, but that Super Hornet with its reduced radar cross section was too far for gaining a radar lock. They however managed to point their ATFLIR at it, which took a contrast lock.

Predisposed by Fravor, they were bound to interpret any blob they saw as a tic-tac, and too inexperienced with the ATFLIR to know what a distant plane can look like on it and its various modes. They tried to change the zoom modes, which eventually led to losing the contrast lock. The pod stopped its steady rotation, which to them looked as if the target had suddenly accelerated away. It never did. [More about that video]

It should be noted that all participants were aware of those other jets being somewhere around there. They just didn't realize they happened to point their pod at them, and that a normal plane can look like that. There was no reason for communicating and informing them where exactly their exercise enemies were. They just took some footage on their way to the exercise, and brought it back.

Back on the ship, all of them were predisposed to connect the dots in ways dots shouldn't have been connected. Unrelated events fused into one, and the more attention grabbing interpretations grabbed most attention, and the story grew, as it tends to happen. Large part of that was driven by the fact that the person who was most excited about it was their high ranking squadron leader.

On the official side of thing not much else happened. Debrief was done as usual and a few paragraphs were written down in midst of other exercise details. No silence was requested, and no data was confiscated, and there wasn't much to confiscate anyway.

The lost years

Few knew about those events during the next few years. Then in 2007, the video and event log were leaked on a popular UFO forum. It didn't cause a sonic boom there. One of the first commenters described it as "totally uninspiring video of a dot". The event was soon widely judged as a fake, much thanks to the person who leaked it having just posted another obviously fake version of it the day before, for whatever reason.

A few years later, in 2009, some senators with interest in the paranormal had previously channeled some public money to an effort to investigate such things. That work was mostly done by a company called BAASS, who literally were the kind of people who chase poltergeists on a haunted ranch. They in turn had employed Douglas Kurth, no doubt because of his connection to this event. He was tasked to investigate it, and so he contacted his former buddies and some other people, and produced what is commonly known as the Executive report or an "unofficial official report".

By the looks of it, it was more of a storytelling effort than a serious investigation. Which is hardly a surprise, as it was contracted by a program desperate to find justification and money to support its existence, and tasked by a company who hired the investigator because of his connection to that event, who in turn didn't even disclose that in his report.

Kurth, or those he talked with, for example chose to mention only the more extreme and likely false radar readings, while omitting the more credible balloon like 100 knot movements. He speculated on the object cloaking itself, instead of considering it could have been just too small and far away, probably because he himself failed to see it. He didn't ask the right questions, like Mick did, and so didn't realize that actually only one plane had a longer view of it, making some 97% (5 minutes vs. 10 seconds) of the important part of the event two witness event only, of which only one has talked publicly.

He did go to talk to the captain of USS Louisville, and one other officer, but what ended up in the report were some tantalizing looking but frustratingly vague hints of its possible role. Since the report was done years after the events, and it seems to have badly misidentified the location of the UFO as well, we can only speculate if the interviewer and interviewee had a common understanding where to look and for what, whether some logs were consulted, or just faded memories, and whether either participant even wanted to provide full and accurate information.

That report was kept under wraps for many years to come, as the people who made and had it were not interested in disclosure as long as they were happy with their pay checks.

Fast forward six more memory fading years, and the report ended up to Fravor's buddy Paco Chierici, who wrote an article about it on a military aviation site. It remained almost unnoticed, as if it was just below the surface. Add a few more years, and the story finally ballooned due to all the media attention on "Pentagon UFO videos", and one entertainment company using them as marketing tools while trying to collect millions from those who just want to believe.

Concluding remarks

Despite all that media attention, and even many witness interviews, it was only a few days ago that we got some badly needed clarity to some fundamental contradictions between the accounts. Many remain, and I hope they will also get some clarity and also allow me to evaluate and tweak this story.

But as of now, I believe this theory can account for all the relevant details given the available data and apparent uncertainties. It obviously hinges on the existence and use of submarine launched balloons. But at least the concept makes sense and there's historical precedent.

That being said, there are other versions of the general balloon theory, some of which do not assume the existence or launching role for a submarine. They could of course eventually turn out to be closer to the truth. But in my opinion the submarine can explain a lot of the details easily and deserves a central role in my best guess.