Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the printed transcript of a July 26, 2023 hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability's Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, chaired by Rep. Glenn Grothman. Ryan Graves, David Grusch and retired Navy Commander David Fravor testified on unidentified anomalous phenomena. Members pressed for transparency, whistleblower protection and better pilot reporting. Graves described a near mid-air collision with a dark cube inside a clear sphere off the Eastern Seaboard.
13 STATEMENT OF DAVID FRAVOR (RET.) FORMER COMMANDING OFFICER UNITED STATES NAVY Commander FRAVOR. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressmen and Congresswomen. I want to first thank you for the invitation to speak to the Com- mittee on the UAP topic. This has been in the news for the past 6 years and seems to be continuing to gain momentum. As you know, my name is David Fravor. I am a retired Com- mander in the United States Navy. In 2004, I was a commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41, the world-famous Black Aces. We were tasked to Carrier Airwing 11 stationed on board the USS Nimitz and had begun a 2-month workup cycle off the coast of Cali- fornia. On this day we were scheduled for a 2 V 2 air to air training with the USS Princeton as our control. When we launched off, Nimitz, my wingman, was joining up. We were told that the train- ing was going to be suspended and we are going to proceed with real-world tasking. As we proceeded to the west, the air controller was counting down the range to an object that we were going to, and we were unaware of what we were going to see when we arrived. There the controller told us that these objects had been observed for over 2 weeks coming down from over 80,000 feet, rapidly descending to 20,000 feet, hanging out for hours and then going straight back up. For those that do not realize, above 80,000 feet is space. We arrived at the location at approximately 20,000 feet and the controller called merge plot, which means that our radar blip was now in the same resolution cell as the contact. As we looked around, we noticed that we saw some whitewater off our right side. It is important to note that the weather on this day was as close to perfect as you could ask for off the coast of San Diego. Clear skies, light winds, calm seas, no whitecaps from waves. So, the whitewater stood out in a large blue ocean. All four of us, because we were an F–18F so we had pilots and WSO in the backseat, looked down and saw a white Tic Tac object with a longitudinal axis pointing north south and moving very abruptly over the water like a ping pong ball. There were no rotors, no rotor wash, or any sign of visible control surfaces like wings. As we started clockwise toward the object my WSO and I decided to go down and take a closer look with the other aircraft staying 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 its longitudinal axis, aligned it with my aircraft, and began to climb. We continued down another 270 degrees, nose low, where the Tic Tac would have been. Our altitude at this point was about 15,000 feet and a Tic Tac was about 12,000. As we pulled nose onto the object within about a half mile of it, it rapidly accelerated in front of us and dis- appeared. Our wingman, roughly 8,000 feet above us, lost contact also. We immediately turned back to see where the whitewater was at, and it was gone also. So, as we started to turn back toward the
Hearing transcript, from the hearings collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 54 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.