Op-Ed: Why the Sudden UFO Hype?
On Nov. 14, 2004, two F/A-18F pilots from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, on a routine training mission over the Pacific about 100 miles west of San Diego, were asked to investigate a strange radar signal.
The account of what the pilots saw was featured in a story published Dec. 16, 2017, by The New York Times, along with disclosure of a secret Pentagon program that investigated UFO sightings between 2007 and 2012.
The story was picked up by mainstream media around the world, which, for the first time, appeared to take UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial life seriously. That touched off widespread speculation over whether the existence of ETs is finally about to be confirmed.
The main source for the article was Luis Elizondo, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who ran the secret program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, from the 5th floor of the C Ring at the Pentagon.
$22 million to fund the program was inserted into Defense Department budgets at the request of retired Sen. Harry Reid, most of which, The New York Times reported, was paid to Bigelow Aerospace, to which the Pentagon outsourced its UFO research.
The company is owned by Robert Bigelow, a billionaire friend and supporter of Reid. Bigelow also owned Skinwalker Ranch, the alleged site of numerous paranormal events, and is a longtime believer in the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Here’s the short version of what’s been dubbed the USS Nimitz UFO Incident: According to F/A-18 pilot Cmdr. David Fravor, the radio operator on the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton said they’d been tracking strange radar signals for a couple of weeks. Objects appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, then dropped to 20,000 feet where they stopped and hovered. “Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up.”
Fravor and his wingman, Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight, found an oval-shaped object about 40 feet long hovering about 50 feet above the ocean, directly over something just below the surface of the water. The pilots couldn’t see the submerged object, but it was big enough that waves broke over it, causing the sea to “churn.”
As Cmdr. Fravor descended for a closer look, the mysterious craft began to climb, almost as if to meet him. Fravor turned toward it — and then it took off. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he told The New York Times.
After communicating with the operations officer on the Princeton, Fravor and Slaight agreed to meet at a rendezvous about 60 miles away, called the cap point. Then the Princeton’s radio operator called back: “Sir, you won’t believe it, but that thing is at your cap point.”
According to Fravor, the F-18s were still at least 40 miles away. The object had covered the distance in less than a minute. Even if the travel time is rounded up to exactly one minute, that’s a speed of 3,600 miles per hour — more than three times faster than the maximum speed of the F/A-18F Super Hornets flown by Fravor and Slaight.
Also puzzling is how the thing knew to go to the cap point. By the time the pilots arrived there a few minutes later, the object was gone.
Oddly, the thing never showed up on either pilot’s onboard radar.
A second flight of four Super Hornets from their squadron, VFA-41 “Black Aces,” was directed to where Fravor and Slaight had encountered the object. These planes were equipped with Forward Looking Infrared sensors, which enabled one of the crews to record video of the mysterious object. That’s the video clip that was posted by The New York Times.
Whatever the thing was, the incident wasn’t a hoax. The object was seen or detected by the crews of six Navy F/A-18s, a Marine Corps F/A-18, an E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, and the radar crew on the USS Princeton.
So, what was it? And what was in the ocean directly beneath the thing? Fravor estimated the area of churning water at between 50 and 100 meters (about 160 to 320 feet) in diameter!
To this day, no one knows. There are a few things to consider, however.
First, the incident wasn’t exactly a secret before The New York Times published its story at the end of 2017. In February of 2007, a user at the conspiracy forum Above Top Secret posted a transcript of what appears to be a genuine event summary from Carrier Air Wing 11.
Then in March of 2014, the encounter was written up for a website called Fighter Sweep. Paco Chierci, a fellow fighter pilot, wrote that he’d heard the story directly from Cmdr. Fravor sometime around 2007, by which time the video from the F/A-18’s infrared sensor had been leaked to YouTube.
Curiously, by the time Chierci wrote his article, the video was no longer online. He reported that Cmdr. Fravor and everyone else involved in the Nimitz incident had been visited by representatives of a three-letter agency who “exhaustively interviewed all parties involved.”
A three-letter agency? DIA? CIA? NSA?
Let’s ask some obvious questions: Since video of the Nimitz incident had been floating around the internet for 10 years before it was posted by The New York Times, why did it suddenly get attention from the mainstream media? What’s changed?
Remember, when watching or reading news, the timing of a story’s release is often more important than the story itself.
We’ll discuss that in our next article.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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