San Diego

Off San Diego and the Tic Tac

On 14 November 2004 the Nimitz carrier group, a hundred-odd kilometres south-west of San Diego, spent several days tracking returns that dropped from twenty-five kilometres to sea level in seconds. A pair of F/A-18s was sent to look; the squadron commander, David Fravor, reported a white object with no wings and no exhaust, shaped like a breath mint, moving over the water in sharp jumps. The second aircraft filmed it on an infrared camera. That recording, known as FLIR1, was published in 2017 and confirmed by the Pentagon in 2020 as genuine and unidentified. It is the first case on this map where the defence ministry itself vouched for the document.