UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RECORDPERSONNEL FILE
David Fravor
Commander, U.S. Navy (ret.)
David Fravor is a retired U.S. Navy commander. According to his congressional biography, he joined the military at 17 and served 24 years, 18 of them as a Navy pilot, with five tours to the Persian Gulf. In November 2004 he was commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41, the ‘Black Aces’, flying F/A-18F Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. He retired in 2006.
On November 14, 2004, during a training exercise off Southern California, Fravor’s two-jet flight was sent by the cruiser USS Princeton to investigate radar contacts. He says all four aircrew saw a ‘small white Tic Tac shaped object’ moving abruptly above a patch of disturbed water, with no rotors or visible wings. He says it turned to align with his jet as he descended toward it, then rapidly accelerated and disappeared.
A different crew from the ship later recorded a roughly 90-second infrared video, known as ‘FLIR1’, which became public in 2017 when The New York Times reported on a Pentagon UAP program. In a 2021 CBS ‘60 Minutes’ interview, Fravor said ‘there’s something out there that was better than our airplane.’ He has described the encounter in many other interviews, including a 2019 episode of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’.
On July 26, 2023, Fravor testified under oath before a House Oversight subcommittee alongside Ryan Graves and David Grusch, saying ‘the technology that we faced was far superior than anything that we had.’ In his written statement he said the incident ‘was never investigated’ at the time and that his crew were never questioned. He called for congressional oversight of any government programs that might hold such technology, rather than full public disclosure.
No official explanation of the 2004 event has been published; as of 2020 the Defense Department characterized the phenomena in the Navy videos as ‘unidentified’. Skeptics, including science writer Mick West, have argued that such footage may show ordinary aircraft or balloons distorted by infrared glare.
Cmdr. David Fravor testifying, July 26, 2023. Photo: U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (cropped) · Public domain · source
