The Pentagon recently revealed it operated a now-defunct secret program to investigate UFO sightings, and stories like retired Cmdr. David Fravor's might lead some to ask if the program shouldn't be restarted.
Fravor spent 18 years as a Navy pilot and during a November 2004 training mission, he says he saw something that he’d never seen before. And he had no idea what it was.
"I can tell you, I think it was not from this world," Fravor told ABC News. "I'm not crazy, haven't been drinking. It was — after 18 years of flying, I've seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close."
Fravor’s recounted a stunning encounter off the California coast in which he says something flying that appeared to be some 40 feet long and wingless, and flying at incredibly high rates of speed.
He was flying his F/A-18 fighter on a training mission off the Southern California coast when he recalls things started to get a little strange. He recalled Navy controllers on one of the ships below him on the water reporting that there were objects dropping from the sky from 80,000 feet and then going "straight back up," Fravor told ABC News.
>> Related: Two weeks before deadly train derailment, local mayor had chilling warning
Fravor and others began looking around for this fast-darting object when another pilot spotted something unusual. Fravor recalled saying, “I was like, ‘Dude, do you see that?'”
He remembered what happened next like this: “We look down, we see a white disturbance in the water, like something’s under the surface, and the waves are breaking over, but we see next to it, and it’s flying around, and it’s this little white Tic Tac, and it’s moving around — left, right, forward, back, just random,” Fravor said.
He said its flying pattern did not mimic that of an airplane or a helicopter.
“When it started to [get] near us, as we started to descend towards it coming up, it was flying in the elongated way, so it’s [like] a Tic Tac, with the roundish end going in the forward direction … I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what I saw. I just know it was really impressive, really fast, and I would like to fly it,” Fravor said.
When the object vanished, Farvor and other pilots decided to return to the training exercise. Another pilot spotted the object on an infrared channel before it zoomed off the screen. The incident was never investigated further, said Farvor, who to this day has no rational explanation for what he witnessed.
>> Related: Billie Lourde shares photo of mom Carrie Fisher, honoring 'Star Wars'
"I don't know if it was alien life, but I will say that in an infinite universe, with multiple galaxies that we know of, that if we're the only planet with life, it's a pretty lonely universe," Farvor said.
About the Author
