Summary
A NewsNation profile of alexandro-wiggins’s February 15, 2023 encounter aboard the uss-jackson in the Whiskey-291 warning area off Southern California. Wiggins, a 23-year Navy radar specialist, observed four tic-tac-uap-shaped objects — the first detected on radar and confirmed visually at ~19:15 PST, then joined by three more in coordinated formation approximately eight nautical miles away. The ship’s Star SAFIRE multi-spectral imaging system captured thermal footage of two of the objects; Wiggins deliberately recorded a comparison clip of a known conventional aircraft as a “Checkmate” counter to skeptical colleagues. A former unnamed DoD analyst reviewed the thermal footage and concluded no known aircraft matched what the sensor captured. All four craft accelerated and vanished from radar simultaneously. No formal DoD incident report was filed and no government agency debriefed the crew. Footage was first released by filmmaker jeremy-corbell on his “Weaponized” podcast before Wiggins testified at the September 9, 2025 House hearing (see src-uap-transparency-hearing-2026-04). Situates the encounter as a geographic echo of the 2004 uss-nimitz-uap-incident.
Key Claims
- Date/location: February 15, 2023, ~19:15 PST, Whiskey-291 warning area off Southern California (alexandro-wiggins).
- Object first appeared on radar; Wiggins sought visual confirmation before concluding it was “too fast” and unlike anything he had seen.
- Object appeared to “surface out of the water” before three additional craft joined in coordinated formation ~8 nautical miles away.
- All four objects described as tic-tac-uap-shaped; no thermal exhaust plumes, control surface articulation, acoustic signatures, or sonic booms.
- USS Jackson’s Star SAFIRE multi-spectral imaging system captured thermal footage of two of the four objects.
- Wiggins recorded a comparison clip of a known aircraft showing “air signature and wings” as a deliberate “Checkmate” counter to skepticism.
- Former DoD analyst reviewed the footage and found “absolutely no aircraft within that line of sight that match up with what we see in the video.”
- All four craft vanished from radar simultaneously after briefly synchronizing.
- No formal DoD incident report was filed; no government agency debriefed the crew afterward.
- Footage first released by jeremy-corbell on “Weaponized” podcast before the September 9, 2025 House Oversight hearing.
Notable Quotes
“To my surprise, which is something I’ve never witnessed, was a light I noticed on the horizon, it looked as if it were surfacing out of the water and going up.” — alexandro-wiggins
“That’s definitely: A. too fast and B. not something I’ve seen before.” — alexandro-wiggins
“You see the air signature coming off the back. You see the wings perfectly…It was kind of like ‘Checkmate.‘” — alexandro-wiggins (on the comparison footage)
“Absolutely no aircraft within that line of sight that match up with what we see in the video.” — Former DoD analyst (unnamed)