Then they noticed one of the objects flying about 50 feet above the water. The water was churning, with white waves breaking over what looked like a large object just under the surface. But they did observe what the lead pilot, Commander David Fravor, later referred to as a “disturbance” in the ocean. When they first arrived on the scene, the pilots didn’t see any flying objects. Two fighters were diverted to intercept one of the strange objects. “I just really wanted to intercept these things.”Īn MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter above the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, 2013. But after they determined that everything was operating as it should and they began detecting instances in which the AAVs dropped with astounding speed to lower, busier airspace, Day approached the Princeton’s commander about taking action. Initially, the Princeton’s radar team didn’t believe what they were seeing, chalking up the anomalies to an equipment malfunction. “Watching them on the display was like watching snow fall from the sky,” he says in his first-ever on-camera interview, for HISTORY’s “ Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation.”Īccording to Day, the AAVs appeared at an altitude greater than 80,000 feet, far higher than commercial or military jets typically fly. The Navy called them “anomalous aerial vehicles,” or AAVs-a term the military preferred to unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, which had been tainted by its association with flying saucers, little green men and countless crackpots.Īccording to Kevin Day, the Princeton’s senior radar operator at the time, his screen showed well over 100 AAVs over the course of the week. The Princeton’s highly advanced radar had been picking up mysterious objects for several days by then. More ominously, the officer asked if they were carrying live weapons. Already airborne, the pilots were told to stop their training maneuvers and proceed to new coordinates for a “real-world” task. The USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, which included the nuclear-powered carrier and the missile cruiser USS Princeton, were conducting a series of drills prior to deployment in the Persian Gulf.Īt about 2 p.m., two F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jets from the Nimitz received an unusual order from an operations officer aboard the Princeton. The date was November 14, 2004, and the location was the Pacific Ocean, about 100 miles southwest of San Diego, California. Witnesses included highly trained military personnel-among them several deeply experienced radar operators and fighter pilots-who at the time of the sightings were at the controls of arguably the most advanced flight technology ever created. But it would soon become one of the best-documented-and most baffling-UFO sightings of the 21st century. But learning this is going to take time so you put something you know on the front line.It began as a routine naval training exercise. All of that means she is going to have a different flight deck and flight ops routine than a Nimitz class. The refueling and re-arming arrangements are all different, designed to speed up operations and increase sorties. The Ford has a different flight deck arrangement, different elevator arrangement, only three elevators now but with elevators designed to take two aircraft at a time instead of one. Even then the Navy will want to keep it on a short leash for a while until they figure her out because she is a very different ship to operate than a Nimitz. The newest CVN, the Gerald Ford, is still working up in the Atlantic and really won't be fully operational for another year or so. She will depart Newport News Shipyard and after her shakedown will sail for Japan. Any other Nimitz in service will have fewer years left before they would have to head back to the US for either overhaul or decommissioning. She should be as close to a new ship as you can get after such an extensive overhaul and have 25 years left on her reactors. The George Washington is completing a complex overhaul including reactor refueling now. The ship sent to Japan has to have as many years as possible left before it too needs an overhaul so it can be kept in the Pacific. The Reagan has to return to the US and enter the shipyard for an overhaul. What kind of silliness is this? Shouldn't it be replaced with the next aircraft carrier built given China is the most comparable US adversary?
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