Navy pilots encountered a 'Tic Tac' UFO that defied physics off San Diego in 2004 — Pentagon confirmed the footage

On a November afternoon in 2004, two Navy fighter pilots were conducting routine training exercises off the coast of San Diego when they encountered something their training had never prepared them for. Commander David Fravor and Lt. Commander Alex Dietrich watched as a white, Tic Tac-shaped object approximately 40 feet long performed aerial maneuvers that violated everything they knew about physics and engineering. What happened next would take sixteen years to be officially acknowledged by the Pentagon.

The object had no wings, no visible exhaust, and no apparent means of propulsion. Multiple radar operators aboard the USS Nimitz Strike Group had tracked it before the pilots ever laid eyes on it. Then came the maneuvers that made this encounter extraordinary: the object dropped from 80,000 feet to sea level in seconds, hovered motionless, and accelerated to speeds that would have been lethal to any human occupant. The pilots watched it defy the known laws of physics. When they reported what they had witnessed, the incident was officially recorded but largely disappeared from public view.

For years, the military and government officials offered little comment. When pressed, explanations ranged from advanced foreign technology to weather balloons and optical illusions. The pilots themselves were credible witnesses—they had thousands of hours of flight experience and were trained observers. Yet their accounts were treated with skepticism. The incident became a footnote in UFO folklore, discussed among enthusiasts but dismissed by mainstream institutions.

That changed in 2020 when the Pentagon officially released the FLIR1 infrared video footage captured during the encounter. This wasn't declassified material leaked to journalists or recovered from forgotten archives. The Department of Defense itself released it, along with an official statement confirming that the object remained unidentified. The video showed exactly what Fravor and Dietrich had described—an object performing maneuvers inconsistent with any known aircraft.