Navy Pilot Describes UFO Encounter

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A Navy pilot whose aircraft captured video of a UFO in 2004 has told New York Magazine the object he saw did “impossible” things. Chad Underwood was on a routine flight off the coast of California when he came across what pilots in his unit called “the Tic Tac,” an oblong object similar in shape to the breath mint that could do things that were “not possible.” As he watched through his head up display, the object lost 50,000 feet of altitude in seconds and performed other “erratic” maneuvers. “If it was obeying physics like a normal object that you would encounter in the sky—an aircraft, or a cruise missile, or some sort of special project that the government didn’t tell you about—that would have made more sense to me,” he told the magazine. “The part that drew our attention was how it wasn’t behaving within the normal laws of physics.”

The Defense Department released the video captured by Underwood’s aircraft earlier this year but this is the first time he’s talked about what he saw. He said he has no explanation for it. “It is just what we call a UFO. I couldn’t identify it. It was flying. And it was an object. It’s as simple as that,” Underwood said.

Russ Niles
Russ Niles is Editor-in-Chief of AVweb. He has been a pilot for 30 years and joined AVweb 22 years ago. He and his wife Marni live in southern British Columbia where they also operate a small winery.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. Dennis … go back and re-read the New York Times magazine article:
    “Well, (1) the video that you see is my video. And no, I’ve never said that this is what I think it was or speculate as to what I think it was. That’s not my job. But I saw something. And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well.” It was also seen on multiple days by the radar operators aboard CG-59 USS Princeton, a state-of-the-art Guided Missile cruiser. And after the incident, a NORAD ‘someone’ phoned the ship to speak with the officer. AATIP didn’t get invented because someone needed a job. Somethin’ is going on …

    Another thing many folks don’t know about. In the short distance between Los Angeles and Santa Catalina Island, there’s a five mile deep ocean trench out there. Over many years, sightings of all sorts of unexplainable events have occurred there and in the vicinity of San Clemente Island. Back in the early 2000’s, a sighting of what appeared to be a missile launch occurred that never has been adequately explained, for example. There were other incidents offshore in that area that THIS article doesn’t talk about.

    As for the ATFLIR being able to track the object … I’m here to tell you that once you lock onto something within the tracking field of view of the system, it’s locked on regardless of the tracking aircraft’s heading. That’s why in the video there are two vertical bars next to the object … this signifies to the pilot on his HUD that the object has been locked onto. On a system I worked back in the 80’s, a targeting pod could look backwards 135 degrees … in other words … behind the airplane. Recall the target pipper in the first gulf war where they’d lock the laser onto a target and it appeared stationary. That’s because the system stayed locked but the airplane was doing other things.

      • Yes, I understand the turret ball on a flir can track independently of the aircraft. Key word here is track. I don’t remember ever seeing tracking bars that don’t jitter and hunt to stay centered on the target. It’s inherent in their algorithms. In this case the entire camera frame is rigidly locked to the target, not just the tracking bars. Turret ball servos have to hunt to stay centered too. Maybe the alien tech you are looking for is in the fabulous locking abilities of the new avionics.
        All of that aside, let’s stipulate that everybody “saw something”, radar, eyes, cameras, everything. So, something in the air WE don’t control or understand. The leap to “alien” spaceships is so enormous we would have to conclude that some vastly powerful civilization has the motive, time, resources and vast amounts of energy required to come and play hide and seek with us. For what?

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