Profile · United States
David Fravor
Witness Retired US Navy Commander Nimitz Tic Tac 🇺🇸 United States
In Brief
David Fravor is a retired commander in the United States Navy. He served eighteen years as an F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot, commanded Strike Fighter Squadron VFA-41, the Black Aces, off the USS Nimitz, and on 14 November 2004 off the coast of San Diego intercepted the object the world now knows as the Tic Tac. The encounter, recorded by his wingman Chad Underwood on the FLIR1 gun-camera tape, sat unacknowledged in the institutional record until the 16 December 2017 New York Times article that introduced AATIP to the public.
He testified under oath before the House Oversight Subcommittee on 26 July 2023 alongside David Grusch and Ryan Graves. The Department of Defense's April 2020 authentication of the FLIR1 tape and the June 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment have left his 2004 testimony as the most-corroborated first-hand pilot account in the institutional UAP record.
Notable Statement
"It was something I had never seen in my life. Its aerodynamic performance was something I'd never witnessed."
Where to Find Them
In the Archive
Editorial note. This profile is the short-card form for the Disclosure Network. The full life and career record lives on the gold-standard biography page. The Nimitz encounter itself has a dedicated case exhibition at /records/united-states/uss-nimitz/. If anything needs correcting, please get in touch.
