San Diego, California, USA
San Diego is a major coastal city in southern California, home to one of the largest U.S. Navy installations in the world and the base of operations for the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. In UAP research, San Diego is most closely associated with the 2004 Nimitz UAP Encounter (Tic Tac) — the most documented and officially acknowledged modern UAP case in United States military history.
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The 2004 Nimitz Tic Tac Encounter
On November 14, 2004, U.S. Navy FA-18F Super Hornet pilots from the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, operating off the coast of San Diego, encountered a white, oblong, Tic Tac-shaped unidentified craft approximately 40 feet in length. Commander David Fravor, then the commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41 Black Aces), was among the pilots who observed the object. The craft was hovering above an area of roiling ocean whitewater — which subsequent analysis suggested may have indicated a larger submerged object below the surface acting as a transmedium vehicle — before accelerating away at a speed no known aircraft could match. Fravor also noted that objects plural appeared to have jammed the radar and sensory equipment of the Navy jets during the engagement.
The encounter was recorded on the now-famous FLIR1 gun-camera video, which the U.S. Department of Defense officially released in April 2020. Fravor's account describes the craft as having no visible wings, engines, or exhaust, and demonstrating instantaneous directional changes inconsistent with any known aerodynamic platform. The active radar jamming reported by Fravor connects the Nimitz encounter to a broader pattern UAP Gerb identified across multiple military UAP cases, including the 1979 Manises UFO Incident and the 1976 Tehran UFO Incident, in which anomalous craft employed sophisticated electronic countermeasures against military aircraft.
Debate Over the Object's Origin
The 2004 Nimitz encounter has become a focal point in the ongoing debate between the non-human technology hypothesis and the human-made advanced aircraft hypothesis. UAP Gerb has examined both possibilities:
- Non-human hypothesis: The craft's observed capabilities — including extreme speed, no visible propulsion signature, and apparent response to the approaching aircraft — are consistent with the characteristics of non-human origin craft described across multiple independent witness and whistleblower accounts.
- Lockheed Skunk Works hypothesis: Ross Coulthart stated categorically that the Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin technology. Steven Greer similarly claimed the Nimitz Tic Tac originated from Lockheed Skunk Works. UAP Gerb has theorized that the Tic Tac may have been testing the reaction times, speeds, and methods of unknowing U.S. military pilots during the Nimitz exercises — what UAP Gerb describes as "unwitting testing on military personnel."
UAP Gerb has also noted that both human-made and non-human Tic Tac craft may exist simultaneously — a distinction the channel labels the "Human-made vs. Non-human Tic Tacs" debate.
Navy Connection
San Diego's status as the home port of the USS Nimitz and hub of U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet operations makes it a central node in the UAP legacy program research landscape. The US Navy has been identified by UAP Gerb as a key institution in alleged UAP retrieval and reverse engineering programs, with the Office of Naval Intelligence and the classified National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO) playing central roles. The geographic proximity of San Diego to Lockheed Martin's operations in Southern California and to classified research facilities in the broader region reinforces its significance in this research context.