Retired Cmdr. David Fravor spent 18 years as a Navy pilot, but nothing prepared him for what he witnessed during a routine training mission on Nov. 14, 2004.
"I can tell you, I think it was not from this world," Fravor told ABC News. "I'm not crazy, haven't been drinking. It was — after 18 years of flying, I've seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close."
Obtained by ABC News
Fravor's stunning retelling of his encounter off the California coast with what appeared to be a 40-foot-long wingless object that flew at incredible speeds in an erratic pattern comes as the Pentagon revealed the existence of a secret program to investigate sightings of UFOs.
The program was shut down in 2012 because of other budget priorities, according to the Pentagon.
"I have never seen anything in my life, in my history of flying that has the performance, the acceleration — keep in mind this thing had no wings," Fravor said.
He recalled flying his F/A-18 fighter on a training mission on a beautiful Southern California day 13 years ago when things started to get strange.
Controllers on one of the Navy ships on the water below reported objects that were dropping out of the sky from 80,000 feet and going "straight back up," Fravor said.
Obtained by ABC News
"So we're thinking, OK, this is going to be interesting," he said.
As they were looking around for the object that appeared on the radar, another aviator spotted something. "I was like, 'Dude, do you see that?'" Fravor recalled saying.
“We look down, we see a white disturbance in the water, like something's under the surface, and the waves are breaking over, but we see next to it, and it's flying around, and it's this little white Tic Tac, and it's moving around — left, right, forward, back, just random," he said.
The object didn't display the rotor wash typical of a helicopter or jet wash from a plane, he said.
The planes flew lower to investigate the object, which started to mirror their movements before disappearing, Fravor said. "As we start to cut across, it rapidly accelerates, climbs past our altitude and disappears," Fravor recalled.
"When it started to near us, as we started to descend towards it coming up, it was flying in the elongated way, so it's [like] a Tic Tac, with the roundish end going in the forward direction ... I don't know what it is. I don't know what I saw. I just know it was really impressive, really fast, and I would like to fly it," he said.
The disturbance in the water also vanished with object, he remembered.
"So we turned around — we couldn't have been more than about a couple miles away — and there's no white water at all in the ocean," Fravor said. "It's just blue."
At that point, they decided to return to complete the training exercise when they were told the object or something similar reappeared.
"And the controller comes up and says, 'Sir, you're not going to believe this. That thing is at your half point,' which is our hold point," Fravor added. "And I'm like, 'Oh, great.'"
Another plane that launched from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz around the same time had its radar jammed and was able to pick up the object on an infrared channel.
"He gets close enough to see a couple of objects come out of the bottom, and then all of a sudden it takes off and goes right off the side of the screen and, like, takes off," Fravor said.
He recalled that the speed of the object, which he said had no exhaust trail in infrared scanning, was stunning.
"No aircraft that we know of can fly at those speeds, maneuver like that and looks like that," ABC News contributor and former Marine Col. Stephen Ganyard said.
Fravor said there is no rational explanation for what they saw that day.
"I don't know if it was alien life, but I will say that in an infinite universe, with multiple galaxies that we know of, that if we're the only planet with life, it's a pretty lonely universe."
There was no further investigation into the incident, he said.
"You know, you see a lot of interesting things," Fravor said. "But to show up on something that's a 40-foot-long white Tic Tac with no wings that can move, really, in any random direction that it wants and go from hovering over the ocean to mirroring us to accelerating to the point where it just disappears — like, poof, then it was gone."
Story highlights Elizondo said he stepped down from the Department of Defense in October
He said some aircraft they looked into were "seemingly defying the laws of aerodynamics"
(CNN) A former Pentagon official who led a recently revealed government program to research potential UFOs said Monday evening that he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.
"My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone," Luis Elizondo said in an interview on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."
A pair of news reports in The New York Times and Politico over the weekend said the effort, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, was begun largely at the behest of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, who helped shore up funding for it after speaking to a friend and political donor who owns an aerospace company and has said he believes in the existence of aliens.
JUST WATCHED Secretive program tracked UFOs for 5 years Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Secretive program tracked UFOs for 5 years 03:24
Elizondo told The New York Times he resigned from the Department of Defense in October in protest over what he called excessive secrecy surrounding the program and internal opposition to it after funding for the effort ended in 2012.
Elizondo said Monday that he could not speak on behalf of the government, but he strongly implied there was evidence that stopped him from ruling out the possibility that alien aircraft visited Earth.
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US fighter jets were sent to investigate a mysterious flying object as it hovered off the coast of San Diego, previously classified footage has revealed.
A video released by the US Department of Defence (DoD) shows Navy pilots reacting with astonishment as they tracked the whitish oval as it glided above the Pacific Ocean.
The footage was studied by a secret multimillion dollar programme tasked with investigating reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
The Pentagon has admitted the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Programme (AATIP) ran from 2007 to 2012 with $22m (£15m) in annual funding, buried in DoD budgets.
The recently released footage shows a 2014 encounter between an apparent object, roughly the size of a commercial plane, and two Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets, from the aircraft carrier Nimitz.
Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Jim Slaight were on a routine training mission 100 miles out into the Pacific when they were asked to investigate the object.
The object had been detected appearing suddenly at 80,000ft by the USS Princeton, a Naval cruiser, which had been tracking mysterious aircraft for two weeks.
“Look at that thing, dude,” one of the pilots is heard exclaiming in the clip. “It’s rotating.”
Commander Fravor told The New York Times the object was about 40ft long, had no plumes, wings or rotors, and outpaced their F-18s. It was big enough to churn the sea 50ft below it, he said.
“I have no idea what I saw... It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he added, admitting he was “pretty weirded out”.
The pilots’ Navy superiors did not investigate any further and it remains unclear what the object was. Experts say there is usually a worldly explanation for apparent UFO sightings and caution that an absence of an explanation is not proof of extraterrestrial life.
Revealed: eerie UFO sightings recorded in MoD files
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The Pentagon said the AATIP closed five years ago when defence officials shifted attention and funding to other priorities.
But it was less clear about whether officials continue to investigate claimed UFO sightings. According to its backers, the programme remains in existence in some form.
The programme’s initial funding came largely at the request of former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, known for his enthusiasm for space phenomena.
“The AATIP ended in the 2012 timeframe,” Pentagon spokesperson Laura Ochoa said.
“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” she added.
Asked if the department continued to investigate sightings, she said: “The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed.”
