Fravor witness statement

David Fravor Statement for the House Oversight Committee.
I first want to thank you for the invitation to speak to this committee on the UAP topic that has
been in the news for the past 6 years and seems to be continuing to gain momentum.
My name is David Fravor and I am a retired Commander in the U.S Navy. In Nov 2004, I was the
Commanding Officer of Strike Fighter Squadron Forty-One, the World Famous Black Aces! We
were attached to Carrier Airwing Eleven and stationed onboard the USS Nimitz (CVN-68). We
were at the beginning of our workup cycle that would prepare us for a combat deployment to
the Persian Gulf for operations supporting the ground forces in Iraq. The at-sea period was
scheduled to go from Early November to Late December. During this period, we train with the
other units in the Battle Group while integrating and honing our skills that we will rely on during
our deployment.
We had been at sea for roughly 2 weeks, and I was scheduled to lead a 2 V 2 Air to Air training
exercise. My flight of 2 F/A-18Fs was the Blue Air, the good guys, and we were being controlled
by the USS Princeton, CG-59. Keep in mind the F/A-18F’s are 2 seat aircraft with the pilot in the
front and the WSO (Weapons System Officer) in the back seat. The Red Air was being flown by
our Marine F/A-18 squadron VMFA-232.
As we launched off the USS Nimitz, we checked in with the air controller on the USS Princeton,
we were told that training was going to be suspended for real world tasking. My wingman
joined up and we proceeded towards a contact to the west of our CAP (Combat Air Patrol)
point. The CAP point is where we would hold prior to commencing our training runs, roughly
40 miles South of the ship.
As we proceeded to the west and as the air controller counted down the range, we had nothing
on our radars and were unaware of what we were going to see when we arrived. The air
controller on the ship also had no idea but had been observing these objects on their Aegis
combat system for the previous 2 weeks. They had been descending from above 80,000ft and
coming rapidly down to 20,000ft would stay for hours and then go straight back up.
When we arrived at the location at 20,000 ft, the controller called Merge Plot, which means
that our radar blip was now in the same radar resolution cell as the contact. As we looked
around, we noticed some white water off our right side. The weather on the day of the
incident was as close to a perfect day as you could ask, clear skies, light winds, calm seas (no
whitecaps from the waves) so the white water stood out in the large blue ocean. As all 4
looked down we saw a small white Tic Tac shaped object with the longitudinal axis pointing N/S
and moving very abruptly over the white water. There were no Rotors, No Rotor wash, or any
visible flight control surfaces like wings. As we started a clockwise turn to observe the object,
My WSO and I decided to go down to get closer and the other Aircraft stayed in High cover to
observe both us and the Tic Tac. We proceeded around the circle about 90 degrees from the
start of our descent and the object suddenly shifted it longitudinal axis, aligned it with my
aircraft and began to climb in a clockwise climbing turn. We continued down for another 270