The USS Nimitz UAP Incident refers to a November 2004 encounter off San Diego in which U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets from the VFA-41 “Black Aces” squadron, operating from USS Nimitz, engaged an anomalous Tic Tac-shaped object. The event was witnessed in multiple sensor modalities (radar, infrared, visual) across ships and aircraft.
The associated FLIR video was among those officially released by the Pentagon in 2020 and has become one of the most cited modern U.S. military UAP encounters. It remains a cornerstone example in aaro briefings and in congressional hearings on uap-disclosure.
Retired Navy Cdr. David Fravor, former VFA-41 skipper, has testified publicly about the incident.