Former U.S. Navy pilot Alex Dietrich was flying a routine training mission off the coast of Southern California on November 14, 2004, when she and her commanding officer were sent to investigate strange radar contacts. Above a patch of churning seawater, she saw a smooth, white, oblong object roughly the size of an aircraft. It had no wings, no exhaust, no windows, and no markings. More than two decades later, Dietrich is still describing what she saw — and explaining why the lack of a formal investigation bothers her more than the object itself.
The Object Had No Wings, No Exhaust, and No Markings
Dietrich spoke about the encounter in an interview with Sky History UK, according to a report from SoapCentral published on November 11, 2026. She described a 40-foot, matte-white object shaped like a large Tic Tac mint. It hovered and moved in ways that did not match any known aircraft.
Her description was direct and specific.
“It wasn’t an aircraft. Didn’t have any wings. It doesn’t have any flight control surfaces. It doesn’t have any exhaust. It didn’t have any windows. It didn’t have any markings.”
The size comparison matters. Dietrich said the object was “about the size of an aircraft” — roughly the length of a fighter jet fuselage. David Fravor, her commanding officer at the time, has given the same estimate. He told CBS News in 2021 that the object was about the size of his F/A-18F, with no markings, no wings, and no exhaust plumes.
The encounter began with a strange radar picture. The cruiser USS Princeton had been tracking multiple aerial objects that appeared to drop from about 80,000 feet in an extremely short time, then disappear. Fravor and Dietrich were sent to check the location. When they arrived, they saw a disturbance in the water — a patch of white water churning below the surface — and a white object hovering above it.
Four crew members in two aircraft watched the object for roughly five minutes, according to Fravor’s account. Dietrich has described her own view as shorter, measured in seconds, and has said the difference comes from the two pilots being in different cockpits, at different angles, with different levels of experience. She was flying high cover while Fravor moved in closer.
The 2004 Nimitz Incident, Explained Simply
The event is widely known as the Nimitz Tic Tac incident. It took place about 100 miles southwest of San Diego during a training exercise with the USS Nimitz carrier strike group.
The timeline is straightforward. Radar operators had been seeing unusual contacts for several days. On the morning of November 14, another contact appeared while aircraft were already in the air. Fravor and Dietrich were redirected to investigate. They found the churning water and the white object above it.
Fravor has said the object seemed aware of the jets. When he moved closer, it accelerated rapidly and disappeared. Radar later picked it up about 60 miles away in less than a minute.
Another Navy aircraft, flown by Commander Chad Underwood, was sent to the area afterward. His aircraft recorded infrared footage of a similar object. That grainy video became one of the most widely shared UFO videos in the world after it surfaced publicly, and the Pentagon later acknowledged the footage as authentic.
The incident stayed largely unknown for years. It drew global attention in 2017 after The New York Times reported on previously undisclosed Pentagon programs that studied unidentified aerial phenomena, and published details of the encounter along with the video.
Why the Tic Tac Case Still Gets Attention
Many UFO reports are explained as balloons, drones, birds, or weather events. The Tic Tac case is different because of the witnesses and the data.
The encounter involved multiple trained military aviators. It involved radar tracking from a warship. It involved infrared video from a fighter jet. And the object’s described performance — no wings, no exhaust, no visible propulsion — did not match any known aircraft in the U.S. inventory or any known foreign aircraft.
Fravor told lawmakers in July 2023 that the technology he saw was far beyond anything available at the time.
“I think what we experienced was… well beyond the material science and the capabilities that we had at the time, that we have currently or that we’re going to have in the next 10 to 20 years.”
He repeated a version of that statement before the House Oversight Committee’s national security subcommittee in 2023, saying the object behaved in ways that violated known aerodynamic principles. The Pentagon has not said the object was extraterrestrial. U.S. officials have said many reported UAP sightings are eventually explained as ordinary objects or events, while some cases remain unresolved because of limited data.
The Tic Tac case remains unresolved in public. No definitive explanation has been confirmed by the U.S. government.
Dietrich Wants Pilots to Report What They See Without Fear
Dietrich has been careful about how she frames the experience. She does not call herself a whistleblower. She does not describe herself as a UFO enthusiast. She has used the phrase “aggressively neutral” to describe her position on what the object was.
Her concern is practical. When she and Fravor returned to the ship, they reported the incident through the chain of command and gave a debrief. They expected a formal investigation. Dietrich has said no investigation was launched.
That gap is one reason she keeps talking about the encounter. Pilots who see something unusual need a clear place to report it, she has argued, without worrying about their careers or being labeled “kooky.”
“Folks might be concerned about their careers or their church or something like that. They don’t want to be the kooky UFO person, so I guess I’m trying to normalize it by talking about it.”
Dietrich has also pushed back on sensationalism. Speaking to CBS News in February 2026, after President Donald Trump directed government agencies to identify and release files related to UFOs and aliens, she said transparency is the right instinct — but she urged patience.
“I’m not in the business of sensationalizing it, but I am in the business of being accurate.”
“What I hope that people understand is that releasing files is a process and not a revelation.”
She also suggested a reframing of the question. Instead of asking “Are there aliens?” she said, the better question is: “What’s operating in our restricted airspace that we can’t identify?” That question covers adversarial technology, unknown atmospheric phenomena, and anything else — and it connects directly to national security and flight safety.
A Pilot’s Path to the Cockpit
Dietrich’s background is part of why her account carries weight. She grew up in Chicago and attended the Illinois Math and Science Academy, a residential school for students focused on math and science. She studied engineering, earned a Navy ROTC scholarship, and went to flight school. Her first flight in an aircraft took place on the morning of September 11, 2001 — a coincidence that she has said changed her priorities.
She earned her wings in March 2003 and deployed in 2005 and 2007, flying close air support missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. By November 2004, she was an F/A-18 pilot in a carrier strike group operating off the U.S. West Coast.
On the day of the Tic Tac encounter, she has said, the mission felt like “a boring old day at the office” — until the USS Princeton redirected her section to investigate an unknown contact.
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The Files, the Videos, and the Public Record
The U.S. government has released several pieces of information connected to the case over the years.
- In 2020, the Department of Defense officially released three videos taken by Navy pilots: one from the 2004 Nimitz encounter and two from 2015 incidents known as “Gimbal” and “GoFast”.
- In 2023, Fravor testified before Congress about the 2004 encounter.
- In May 2026, the Pentagon released hundreds of previously classified UFO files following a directive from President Trump aimed at increasing transparency around UAP investigations.
Dietrich has said the released material should be analyzed carefully rather than treated as a single answer. She has also pointed out that it took more than a decade for the Tic Tac video itself to become public.
The object she saw in 2004 was never recovered. No official report has identified it. The case remains one of the most closely examined UAP encounters in modern aviation history because of the number of trained witnesses, the radar data, and the infrared footage — and because the simplest explanation has not been publicly confirmed.
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