60 Minutes: Navy pilots recall “unsettling” 2004 UAP sighting (Fravor and Dietrich, 16 May 2021)

0:01 bill whitaker on unidentified aerial phenomena this week on 60 minutes we reported on unidentified aerial phenomena uap more commonly known as ufos the pentagon says this night vision video was taken by navy personnel and is being investigated unusual sightings like this one continue to occur and be captured on video last august the pentagon set up the uap task force to collect and analyze evidence gathered by service members who are now being encouraged to report these strange encounters we met two former navy pilots lieutenant commander alex dietrich and commander dave fraver in 2004 they witnessed something shocking inexplicable and seemingly out of this world did the thought of ufo enter your mind it was unidentified and that's why it was so unsettling to us because we weren't expecting it

1:04 because we couldn't classify it but what i want to be really careful of here is that we don't jump to conclusions right that we don't sensationalize this or little green men yeah little green men or extraterrestrial you're seeing something that defies explanation right very much yes it was november 2004 and the uss nimitz carrier strike group was training about 100 miles southwest of san diego the advanced new radar on a nearby ship the uss princeton had detected what operators called multiple anomalous aerial vehicles over the horizon descending 80 thousand feet in less than a second fraver and dietrich each with a weapon system officer in the back seat were ordered to investigate and found an area of white water in an otherwise calm blue sea it appeared to them

2:05 that an object about the size of a 737 was just under the water so as we're looking at this her backseater says hey skipper do you and about that got out i said dude do you do you see that thing down there and we saw this little white tic tac looking object and it's just kind of moving above the white water area do you ever drop your phone and it sort of bounces off the counter top and then bounces off something else and it's sort of like no no predictable movement no predictable trajectory i guess it was just it was just like a ping pong ball no acceleration very very random acceleration as dietrich circled above fravor went in for a closer look so you're sort of spiraling down the tic tacs still pointing north-south it goes and just turns abruptly and starts mirroring me so as i'm coming down it starts coming up so it's it's mimicking your moves yeah it wasn't where we were there we want to see how close i can get so i go like this and it's climbing still when it gets right in front of me it just disappears disappears

3:10 disappears like gone and you saw no visible propulsion no no wings or anything to make it fly in our atmosphere no actually when it turned and started coming up it was kind of like okay because we have nothing that goes that fast and just starts climbing it well seconds later the princeton reacquired the target 60 miles away so in a matter of like that yeah it just appeared there in in seconds it was 60 miles away later another flight crew encountered what they believed to be the same object and briefly locked onto it with a targeting camera before it zipped off again they didn't get a visual on it but they did get this flare footage the forward-looking infrared so you've got the infrared image right yes and your eyesight yes and the princeton the radar all saying there is something out there yes the princeton had been tracking the anomalous objects for days dietrich says they were unarmed

4:16 you know i felt the vulnerability of not having anything to defend ourselves to not having any rounds anything on the rails if this was in fact a hostile threat and we were engaged i felt vulnerable and then i felt confused when it disappeared dietrich says she briefed superiors about what they all saw in no time the story of their encounter spread quickly rumors like that spread within seconds i would say with less than 30 minutes the entire ship made this happen and what was the reception like i actually thought it was kind of funny and started giving us a lot of grief ridicule yeah ridicule yeah yeah they made cartoons and on the ship's tv they played men in black and independence day and signs they made fun of it oh yeah did anybody take it seriously yeah i believe the admiral staff made a few phone calls but that was the extent of it the story will continue after this

5:22 christopher millen served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for presidents clinton and george w bush and was on the staff of the senate intelligence committee he had access to top secret government programs he says what dietrich and fravor witnessed demonstrated technological capabilities beyond those of the u.s military's most advanced aircraft in the case of the nimitz they seem to these vehicles seem to have unlimited loiter time which we don't have we're limited in terms of of altitude it's hard to design something that functions well at ground level that can go you know to 60 000 or 80 000 feet and then drop and then yeah and then drop down to the deck or drop to 20 000 feet and you know it's like a straight vertical line in seconds yeah in seconds and this has been captured on radar yeah i've talked to some of the radar operators who observe that then the acceleration is beyond any far beyond anything that we that we're capable of what's the fastest one of

6:25 our jets can go probably for a very brief period of time 1500 or 2000 miles an hour nothing near the degree of acceleration that has been observed in some of these cases there's nothing we could build that would be strong enough to endure that amount of force and acceleration