PURSUE Record — Tic Tac — USS Nimitz 2004 incident (full narrative): U.S. Navy (Nimitz Carrier Strike Group) · Pacific Ocean, off Baja California — USS Nimitz C

This record — catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page as part of PURSUE Release 01 — is an official historical narrative file (type: HIST) released by the U.S. Navy's Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. It covers the full documented account of the November 10–14, 2004 encounter in the Pacific Ocean off Baja California, one of the most frequently cited military UAP cases in the public record. The record entered the public domain partially in 2017 through investigative journalism and was formally acknowledged by the Pentagon in 2020.

What this record contains

Filed as a single-part HIST document, this record draws directly from U.S. Navy operational data spanning five days, from November 10 to November 14, 2004, in the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group's Pacific training area. According to the official description included in PURSUE Release 01, USS Princeton's SPY-1 radar tracked dozens of unidentified objects descending from above 60,000 feet to sea level in seconds over the course of those days. The full-narrative format suggests this record aggregates sensor logs, pilot accounts, and operational context into a single chronological account rather than presenting raw sensor data alone.

The documented climax came on November 14, when Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, both F/A-18F Super Hornet pilots, were vectored toward the contacts. Per the official description, they visually observed a white, oblong, featureless object — described as resembling a "Tic Tac mint" — hovering over an apparent disturbance in the ocean surface below it. The object then accelerated and disappeared. A second intercept occurred later the same day, flown by a different crew, and produced the FLIR infrared video that has since become widely known. The release documents four independent sensor modalities: SPY-1 radar, AN/APG-73 airborne radar, FLIR thermal camera, and direct visual observation by two experienced aviators.

Sensor & operational context

FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) sensors do not capture visible light — they detect differential thermal radiation emitted or reflected by objects. What appears bright or dark in FLIR imagery is a function of relative heat signature against background temperature, not conventional color or reflectivity. This matters for interpretation: an object appearing bright in FLIR indicates it is warmer than its surroundings or reflecting infrared differently than expected. Sensor lock breaks and tracking discontinuities visible in FLIR UAP footage often reflect the aircraft targeting pod's gimbal limits and auto-track algorithms as much as any property of the object itself.

The SPY-1 is a phased-array radar designed for fleet air defense, capable of tracking multiple targets simultaneously across large volumes of airspace. Radar contacts descending from above 60,000 feet to sea level in seconds — as the official description states — would represent accelerations well outside the performance envelope of any publicly acknowledged aircraft. The AN/APG-73, the F/A-18's own fire-control radar, provides an independent airborne data point. If it corroborated the Princeton's tracks, that significantly reduces the likelihood of a single-sensor artifact as a complete explanation.

What this does and does not prove

The documented facts in this record are: radar contacts existed and were tracked by multiple independent systems; two experienced naval aviators reported a consistent visual observation of an unidentified object; an infrared recording was made during a second intercept the same day; and an unusual disturbance was observed on the ocean surface beneath the object. What the record does not establish — and what remains unresolved in the PURSUE Release 01 catalogue — is any explanation for what the objects were. "Unresolved" in the PURSUE classification means the case has not been explained, not that any specific hypothesis has been confirmed. Proposed explanations ranging from atmospheric optical effects to sensor artifacts to classified foreign technology have circulated in the public literature, but none has been formally validated against the full sensor record. This HIST file contributes primary documentation; it does not supply a conclusion.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

Among the 162 documents in the May 8, 2026 Department of War release — spanning 28 videos, 14 images, and 120 PDFs — this record represents the Department of War's contemporary military mission-reporting strand, distinct from the FBI archival series stretching back to 1947 or the NASA archive imagery components. The Nimitz case is the most publicly familiar entry in the entire release, which makes it a useful orientation point: it provides a known baseline of multi-sensor military documentation against which the less familiar records can be assessed. For context on how it sits alongside the broader set, see the full PURSUE Release 01 coverage on the SkyLens blog.

Editorial note: This analysis is independent commentary on a publicly released document. The original record, source links, and full release metadata are catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page alongside every other case in the PURSUE Release 01 set.