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Joe Rogan Experience #1361 - Cmdr. David Fravor & Jeremy Corbell

Commander David Fravor is a retired US Navy pilot, who has a close encounter in 2004 with the so-called Tic Tac UFO, and Jeremy Corbell is a contemporary artist and documentary filmmaker.

Joe RoganhostJeremy CorbellguestCmdr. David Fravorguest
Oct 5, 20191h 54mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:02 – 2:33

    Cmdr. David Fravor’s background and why this case matters

    1. JR

      And here we go. Uh, first of all, gentlemen, thanks for being here. Jeremy, thanks for coming back again.

    2. JC

      Thanks, Joe.

    3. JR

      And, uh, thanks to you, sir. It's very excited to be here, very exciting for me to be here to be able to talk to you about your story.

    4. CF

      Uh, thank you. I'm glad to be here.

    5. JR

      Uh, David, tell everybody who you are, and tell everybody your background, please.

    6. CF

      Okay. My name is David Fravor. Uh, I served 24 years in the military, enlisted Marine for a couple years. They sent me to the Naval Academy. And I flew for 18 years for the Navy. Um, had, literally flew A-6s, Hornets, and then Super Hornets. Had every qualification you could get in the airplane, everything, even the stuff they're not doing anymore, so I had NVG high and low, went to Top Gun. And at the time of the incident that we're gonna talk about, I was a commanding officer of VF-A-41, the Black Aces.

    7. JR

      I'm, uh, I've gone through a, a journey with this whole UFO stuff, from being a full-on true believer, to being incredibly skeptical, to trying to be open-minded, to, uh, uh, being more of a believer now than I think I've ever been before. And one of the things that I've always said is, the people that I believe, the, th- there's a lot of loony people out there, but the people that I put my trust in are high-level military people, like yourself. So, when I hear someone like you, who has a story that defies logic or defies conventional understanding of how aircrafts work, that's when, that's when I sit back and I go, "Okay, this, this is a different thing." Because, you, you know, there's always people that are telling you they're psychic, or they can s- you know, they sense things, or they're in communication with Bigfoot. There's always loony people out there. But when someone is in the military, someone who's trained to fly these incred- I mean, how, how expensive are those jets?

    8. CF

      Uh, when we had them, they were about $70 million apiece.

    9. JR

      Yeah, they don't give those to morons.

    10. CF

      Mm, typically not.

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. CF

      (laughs) Some people in my family would probably argue that point.

    13. JR

      (laughs)

    14. CF

      But, uh, hey, better lucky than good.

    15. JR

      It just seems to me that this is, uh, for rational people, uh, that want to look at this whole UFO phenomenon objectively, you're the type of person that I wanna talk to. So, I was very excited to have you in here. So, what year was your incident? And you, you have a very, very famous incident that's corrob- corroborated by actual evidence, which is one of the rarer ones. What year was it, and where did it take place?

  2. 2:33 – 4:57

    Nimitz workups and the USS Princeton’s unexplained radar tracks (two-week lead-up)

    1. CF

      So, it was 2004, November 14th, off the, it's really, if you draw San Diego to Ensenada, Mexico, we're about 60 miles off the coast in between the two. We're doing workups, so when we get ready to deploy, this was for the 2005 deployment. Uh, we were going at sea for November and December of 2004. So, we had been out, I had just taken over the squadron mid-October, so I'd been the CO for a month. So, we go out, uh, and we're putting the battle group pieces together, so it's not just the, the air wing, but we were, you know, we're, uh, we're on the carrier. We've got the cruiser. We've got all the support ships out there. And we're gonna integrate all the defenses and train as one unit. So, the exercise that we're gonna do is an air defense exercise, where there's good guys, bad guys. They're all from internal from the air wing. So, the bad guys today are gonna be the Marines, uh, VMFA-232, the Red Devils. So, they're gonna launch and they're gonna go about 100 miles south of the ship, and we're the good guys. And it's, we call it a 2v2, so it's two of us against two of them. And we're gonna work with the USS Princeton, which is gonna be the controller, and they're gonna control the blue forces. And then the red guys are gonna give us a presentation that, you know, they're gonna try and intercept so we can stop them from getting up towards the carrier. So, that's kind of the training set that we're all good. So, the Marines take off first, and they start heading to the south. Now, we have no idea that for two weeks, this, the two weeks we've been at sea, they've been tracking these things coming out of the sky. And when I talked to the Princeton controller, he's like, "Up to about a dozen of them." They would come down from above 80,000 feet. They'd drop down to about 20,000 feet, they'd hang out, and then they'd go straight back up after about three or four hours.

    2. JR

      Now, when you say, "They've been tracking them," who specifically?

    3. CF

      This is the USS, the Princeton was tracking them. They saw them on the Nimitz radar, and the E-2 could see them. Um, so, 'cause they're out there, you know, that radar is on all the time. And, uh, the SPY-1 system on an Aegis cruiser is, you know, the state-of-the-art. It's probably the most, one of the most sophisticated systems in the world.

    4. JR

      So, typically, when something like this happens and there is some unexplained phenomenon, what do they do?

    5. CF

      Uh, in this case, they, you know, t- if it was a, if we were in a threat environment, they would tell us. But we were off the coast of San Diego, it's, it doesn't come to the air wing. So, we have no idea that these things are out there at all.

    6. JR

      So, they observe these things, and they never bother telling any of you guys?

    7. CF

      That's correct.

    8. JR

      So, they just knew that these things had been visiting this area?

    9. CF

      Yes.

    10. JR

      But they just allowed this training exercise to take place anyway?

    11. CF

      Yeah, th- m- talking to them, the previous, for the two weeks they would show up, but it was when we weren't flying.

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

  3. 4:57 – 8:29

    Real-world vector: training canceled and Fravor’s unarmed intercept

    1. CF

      So, the typical carrier schedule is, you know, for us it was about noon to midnight. It's a 12-hour day. There's reasons for that. You can go a lot longer than can... but for training, we just do the 12-hour day thing. And it's cyclic up, so you got guys taking off and landing periodically. So, we were on one of the first goes. You know, it's, you know, noon, 1:00, somewhere around there, and we take off. The Marines take off first. And my buddy, Cheeks, who was the CO of the Marine squadron, was the one, he was leading the red air. They had, when he launched off the carrier, first they called him up and said, "Hey, what do you got on board?" Well, the small, the original legacy F-18s don't have as much gas as the Super Hornets. The Super Hornet's about 30% bigger. So, they start talking to him about fuel, and based on how long we're gonna be airborne and everything else, they go, "Hey, why don't you just go ahead and proceed to your, your cap point," uh, 'cause we had just taken off. And that's when the controller had come up and said, "Hey," yeah, I forget, our call sign was probably, like, Dealer, is usually what we went. So, they'd be like, "Dealer 11, uh, this is, uh, Princeton control. What do you got on," you know, say your load out. (laughs) And I kind of chuckled, and he said, I said, "Well, I've got a CATM-9," which is, uh, it's, uh, basically just a blue metal tube with a seeker head for an AIM-9 IR missile. It's a training. It doesn't come off the airplane. You can beat it with a sledgehammer. That's the only way you're gonna get it off, or you gotta unlock the lugs with a key.So, I'm like, kind of chuckling. He goes, "Well, hey, we're gonna cancel the training." So we're like, "Okay." He says, "We got real-world vector, and they're gonna send us out to the west." So, picture if it's a, you know, if you've got a clock, the Nimitz is in the middle. Uh, we're a little bit, uh, south of that, about 40 miles south, and then the Marines are about 100 miles south of the ship. About 60 miles between the two of us. So, as th- this is all happening, my wingman is joining up. All right, and these are F-18Fs, so there's two people in each jet. So, it's me and my WSO, which is weapon systems operator, and I've got the other pilot and the weapon systems operator in the other jet. So, they tell us all this, "Hey, we're gonna have real-world vector," and they send us out 270 about 60 miles away from where we're going. So, now we're going out even further out to sea. We have no idea what we're intercepting, and this is when the- the controller starts talking to us. He says, "Hey, sir, we've seen these objects. They've been, for two weeks, they've been coming down." And he's giving us the whole story. He says, "We need you to go investigate. We wanna know what these are." So-

    2. JR

      But they're asking you to investigate in a jet that's unarmed.

    3. CF

      That's correct.

    4. JR

      Okay.

    5. CF

      Yeah, we have no... I- and there's reasons for that, that we don't fly... We typically don't fly with live ordinance unless we're actually going into like, a combat zone-

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. CF

      ... or we're on a training range and we're gonna shoot something. And the reason is, you can go through (laughs) history of the Navy or Air Force, if you put live missiles on airplanes and then you start doing training where you're squeezing the trigger, someone always messes the switchology up and someone gets shot down. It's happened multiple times. So, we don't do it. You know, there's times that we do, but it's rare. So, we start flying out to the west. Now, I want you to think, because the other pilot has, uh, s- you know, when you talk to, it's- it's- it's out there, it was a female. When you talk to her, it's, uh, she, it- here's the kind of goes through the mindset of, okay, we're off the coast of Mexico, real-world vector, we have no idea what we're going to look at. Probably a drug runner-

    8. JR

      Hm.

    9. CF

      ... because you get the drug runners coming up the coast. So, we're like, "Okay." So, we drive out and the r- they're calling down ranges. So, they're telling us, "Hey, it's 270 at 30 miles at 20,000 feet." And it's, you know, and then he just counted down the range as we're, and we're talking back and forth the whole time. So, they got to a point where they say, "Hey, merge plot," which means radars have resolution cells, you know, range and azimuth of what the radar can actually see. Once you're inside that box, you can't tell the difference between me and the object I'm going at. We're just become one big blob.

    10. JR

      Mm-hmm.

  4. 8:29 – 11:00

    Visual contact: the ‘white water’ disturbance and the Tic Tac’s erratic motion

    1. CF

      So, they call a merge plot, and so the other jet is on my left-hand side, um, and we're gonna, and I'm gonna go to a clock code to make it simple. So, the object we're gonna end up looking for is in, right in the middle of the clock, and we are at the six o'clock position, and my wingman is off to my left side, so it's sh- she's further down with her WSO. So, as we're looking around, we- we look to the right, and there's a, i- it was pretty... Yesterday was a perfect example out here. The water is perfectly calm, no whitecaps. I mean, it's literally a perfect San Diego, California day. And we see white water. Somethin' like if you see a seamount, you know, a rock underwater when you're standing on the shore and the waves are breaking over it, and you're like, "What is that?" It's usually 'cause there's a rock under the water. So, it looks like that, but it's about the size of a 737. It actually kind of has a shape of like, a cross, and it's pointing to the east. So, you've got the long part going east-west, and you got l- couple of things going north and south. So, as we're looking at it, 'cause that kind of draws our eyes. We're like, "Oh, that's kind of odd." We look down and, uh, the WSO in the other airplane comes up and says, "Hey, skipper, do you," and that's about what he gets out of his mouth. And I'm kind of looking at the same thing and I go, "Dude, do you see that? What is that thing?" And what we see is this white, Tic Tac-looking object just above the surface of the water, pointing north-south, and it's going north-south, east-west. It's just radically moving forward, back, left, right, at will. And it's moving around the disturbance, the- the white water that we see.

    2. JR

      How big is this thing?

    3. CF

      So, uh, over time, it's about 40 feet long. And the way I estimate that is, I mean, I got a lot of time fighting other airplanes. So, it's about, about the size of a Hornet fuselage, so that's why I say 40 feet. And this thing's just going left. So, the first thing you see when you look down, you go... And this is with our eyes, it's not sensors, right? So, we're looking down at this thing, and first thing you think is helicopter, right? They're, uh, they, they, the helicopters typically stay below 200 feet when we're out there and they're just driving around. We're- we're pretty far away from the ship for a helicopter, for one of ours. So, what is it? So, the first thing you look for is rotor wash. You know, if you've watched any TV show that starts kicking the water up and you can see that. It's really easy to see from the air. So, we're like, "Huh, no rotor wash." Matter of fact, don't see any rotors. Don't see any tail rotor, don't see any, you know, the main rotors. We're like, "That's kind of weird." So, as we're driving around, we're looking at this thing. We get to about the nine o'clock position.

    4. JR

      How far away are you from this thing?

    5. CF

      I'm at 20,000 feet and it's right down on the surface, uh, to right off our right side, so I'm probably maybe a couple miles lateral and 20,000 feet, and we're just watching it move around. And-

    6. JR

      So, it's very small in your eyes?

    7. CF

      Um, not overly small. I mean, an airplane down that low, it's 40 feet, you can see pretty well.

    8. JR

      You can see it?

  5. 11:00 – 12:34

    Close-in engagement: mirrored motion, cut-across, and instant disappearance

    1. CF

      Uh, with, it was pretty clear. So, I'm like, "Okay." So, I said, "I'm gonna go check it out." That's what we're trained to do. The other pilot says, "Hey, I'm gonna stay up here." And I'm like, "That's perfect." So, now we'll, we'll get some separation. We'll get it from different views. And the other airplane will have kind of a god's-eye view of everything that's going on as I go down to check this thing out. So, I start driving around, and it's still doing its forward, back, left, right. It's still pointing north-south. We get to about the 12 o'clock position. I'm just in a nice, easy descent. And the reason, you know, is because I've been asked, "Oh, could you go more aggressive?" You can, but when you're out over water, the water looks the same at 20,000 feet as it does at 2,000 feet. You don't, you know, so you can easily put yourself in a non-recoverable position if you're not paying attention and you go into the water. So, I got this nice, easy descent. I get to about 12 o'clock, and as I'm coming down, you know, I'm, yeah, I could guess probably about, you know, 18,000 feet now, a couple thousand feet below the other airplane. The Tic Tac just kind of rapidly goes up and turns, so now it's kind of pointing east-west, and now it mirrors us. So, it's above the surface. We're up high. We're coming down and it starts coming up. I'm like, "Well, this is getting interesting." (laughs) So, we kind of drive all the way around in a circle. I'm descending, it's coming up, and I get over to about the eight o'clock position of the...... on a clock, and it's over at about the two o'clock position. Well, the quickest way, as we know as kids, to get someone, you know, you can keep going around the circle, nothing's gonna happen. You cut across the circle. So, I'm about, I don't know, probably 2 to 3,000 feet above it, and I just kind of drop my nose aggressively and I cut across the circle. And it's coming this way. It's 'cause I'm trying to fly to where it's gonna be-

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. CF

      ... because I wanna join on it. I wanna see how close I can get to it.

    4. JR

      Right.

  6. 12:34 – 14:04

    Return to the disturbance and the ‘cap point’ jump on radar

    1. CF

      And as I'm pulling up, it's kind of starting to cross my nose and it starts to accelerate, and within about less than a second, as I start to pull nose onto it and it crosses right in front of me, it just goes poof, and it's gone. So, I call the other airplane and I said, "Hey, do you guys, (laughs) do you guys see that thing?" And they're like, "Sir, it's gone. We don't, we don't see it at all." So, I'm like, "Okay. That's kinda weird." So, we, we don't see it. We're looking. At the same time, I say, "Hey, let's turn around and let's go back to see what was in the water," you know, there's, was there's something there. So, we turn around. We're right there. W- we haven't gone anywhere. It's gone. Water's perfectly ... there's no white water, nothing. It's just blue. I'm like, "Okay." So, we turn back around. Now, we're heading back out towards the east and I tell the controller, I said, "Well," I said, uh, you know, I first said, "I'm kinda weirded out," and I told my, my backseater that. And we start heading back, and the, the controller on the Princeton comes up and he says, "Sir, you're not gonna believe this, but that thing is back at your cap point." That was our original point where we were gonna hold 40 miles south of the ship. So, this thing just went from wherever we were at to, you know, about 60 miles in, you know, maybe 30, 40 seconds. It's already over there. And it just ... and they didn't track it. It just appeared. He just, uh, shows back up on the radar and they go, "It's here." So, we're like, "Okay." So, we fly back. We don't see it. We don't see it on our radar. We don't see it on any of our sensors. We do, like, two runs and we come back to the ship and land. So, as we're in our ... it's, we call it the PR shop.

  7. 14:04 – 24:06

    The FLIR video is captured: radar jamming and the origin of the ‘Tic Tac’ clip

    1. CF

      We're taking off our flight gear. One of my crews is getting ready to go out-

    2. JR

      Okay.

    3. CF

      ... and I think they were gonna be on a tanker mission, but they had a, a targeting pod onboard. So, they launch off, and we're telling them about this before, and I ... and, uh, the backseater, uh, Chad says, he, he's really determined. He said he's gonna find this thing. So, he tells the pilot, "Hey, we're gonna find this thing." So, they're just out driving around and in the back seat of a Super Hornet, uh, there's no stick, but there's side stick controllers, and they're to control the sensors, because that's what the weapon systems guys do. And they can change displays really fast by just hitting a button, and it'll flip from the radar to the targeting pod. And the way the system actually works is, when you see something on the radar and you designate it as your primary target, all the other sensors will look at that point. So, it's everything is kind of synced together. So, he picks up a hit on his radar and he goes to lock it up, 'cause I watched all the tapes. He goes to lock it up, and immediately the radar can tell, it gets signals back that it's being jammed. So ... and technically jamming is an act of war. It starts jamming the radar. Goes into a jam extrapolate, a bunch of stuff happens on the scope. Well, he's smart enough to castle to his targeting pod and he takes a passive track, and that's the video that you see of the Tic Tac, where it's just sitting in the middle of the screen real quiet. Um, so he does that, and he, and he goes through ... if you watch the video, if we had it I'd go through it with you, but, uh, they go through all the different modes. So, he goes, it's an IR and EO. EO is TV. It's a black and white TV camera.

    4. JR

      We do, we can get the video, right, online?

    5. CF

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, oh, yeah.

    6. JR

      Yeah, let's, let's get the video, Jamie. Where would you ... uh, can't show it to anybody.

    7. JC

      Not on here, no.

    8. JR

      We can't, we can't show it on YouTube, but you can see it and people will be able to go to it. You know what we'll do? Go to the video and we'll tell people when we're starting, and we'll tell people what the title of the video that you get to is, and they can sync it up themselves if they're watching it.

    9. JC

      It's publicly owned. Sorry.

    10. JR

      Yeah.

    11. JC

      It's, it's publicly owned. It's, you know, American government released it.

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. JC

      So, it is actually something in the public domain.

    14. JR

      So, you think we could play it on YouTube and not get pulled?

    15. JC

      I-

    16. CF

      Yeah.

    17. JC

      100%.

    18. JR

      You think so, Jamie?

    19. CF

      I-

    20. JC

      It's a government-

    21. NA

      Those things, I would say yes, we should be able to, but sometimes those things get messy. So, I just-

    22. JR

      Let's take a chance.

    23. NA

      ... I can't. Okay, all right, all right, all right.

    24. JR

      Let's take a chance with this one.

    25. NA

      All right.

    26. CF

      I know if you go ... if, if you're on a New York Times article, there's a link to it.

    27. JC

      It's, uh, Pentagon released-

    28. JR

      This, YouTube is crazy with copyright stuff, and we, we've always been, like, two steps away from getting pulled off of YouTube completely. It's a real disaster. It's a re- ... I, I understand from their perspective, there's a, a lot of legal issues they have to deal with, but-

    29. JC

      I have it on a private server. I could s- maybe send Jamie.

    30. JR

      The issue I'd believe though is the actual copyright of the video itself.

  8. 24:06 – 34:20

    On-screen breakdown of the Tic Tac FLIR: IR/TV modes, no plume, and ‘99.9’ ranging issue

    1. JR

      Okay.Here we go. Now t- explain what it, what is, what are we seeing and why are we seeing it in this, uh, this particular shade?

    2. CF

      Okay. So, we'll just kind of go around. And so, if you look at the, uh, how OPRs operate, on the top-left corner. NAR is narrow field of view, which is zoomed in. Uh, IR at the top middle, it means it's in infrared mode. So, instead of seeing color, you're seeing temperature variations.

    3. JR

      Okay.

    4. CF

      And these things are extremely sensitive to when, like, tenths of degrees, they will tell you the difference d- due to color. So, it'll go from black to white. So, in this case, white is hot. So, if you look down in the bottom-left corner, it says, "WHT." Um-

    5. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. CF

      ... that's white. It means white is hot. So, the object that you're looking at is hotter than the sky around it. But what you also notice is, there's no plumes. Now, if you're looking at an airplane, when you get closer, you'll actually see the exhaust coming out and there will be a, a really glowing plume. That's important as, as we look at the video. And then most of the stuff on here you really don't need to know. What you can look at is, uh, the bottom-right corner where it says, "19,990" and a B, that's the altitude. And, um, if you look up in the little words where it says, "HDG" and then, "BALT," B- it's autopilot. So, uh, it's on altitude hold. It's just flying, uh, for that. So, you can go ahead and play the video. And so, those two bars next to the white object, that's a, that's a, that's a passive track. So, what he's done is he's commanded the FLIR to track that. So, what the system does is it uses, uh, it's actually tracking, it can track pixels, and it's just basically blocked those hot pixels, those white pixels from the black ones. And then you're gonna see now, pause it real quick, so it, up at the top, see it went to a white screen with a black object? This is a black and white TV mode. And if you look at the top, it says, "TV." So, narrow in TV mode is actually, you can get closer than narrow in IR. It, it, it's literally narrow in IR is about medium in TV mode, so there, you can get closer with the TV mode. So, as you look at it now, in this case, you would actually start to see, um, stuff going on, and even in TV mode, because you get exhaust, you know, the black exhaust that comes out, you'll usually be able to see kind of some of that coming out of the back, and you don't see anything. This thing is just sitting there. And if you look at the, uh, the top where it says, "3 right," that's the pod is looking three degrees right of the nose of the airplane, all right? So, he's just flying along. The bottom numbers, don't worry, those are time. So, it's 41:56. So, go ahead and hit play. And what, what he's doing is he's going, Chad's going through all the different modes because he's like, "Oh, I got it." And he's gonna try and see the best video that he can get. Now, there's rumors that this video is like 10 minutes long. No, what you're looking at is the entire video. Now, notice where it says, "99.9"?

    7. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. CF

      So, hit pause real quick. What that means is the, while he's got the pod, the targeting pod, because that's his primary sensor right now, the radar is still trying to look at this object and trying to range it, and the radar can't get ranging on it. So, the object is doing something to say, "I'm not giving you back," because it's just a doppler radar, just like a police radar is a doppler. It's trying to get a ranging on you and it can't do it. So, when it says, "99.9," it, the radar cannot see this object right now.

    9. JR

      Hmm.

    10. CF

      It's not allowing it to get ranging.

    11. JC

      And, and I think that's super important, Dave, the way he explained it, to me. Active jamming compared to passive jamming. This is a technology that is actively jamming this system.

    12. JR

      Rather than something like stealth aircraft, which is the-

    13. JC

      Well, the-

    14. JR

      ... shape and the texture-

    15. JC

      He should explain.

    16. JR

      ... of the...

    17. CF

      Yeah, it's ... Because everyone thinks stealth is invisible. It's not. It's, it's just, it's a technology to, to basically make it harder for radars to see you. You know, and that's the whole thing, you know, if you look at, uh, you know, airplanes that are nose on, uh, are harder to see than airplanes that are sides. Kind of like, think of a barn door. If you're looking at the whole barn door-

    18. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    19. CF

      ... it's really easy to see. If I turn the barn door sideways where it's really thin, it's gonna be a lot harder for you to see it.

    20. JR

      Got it.

    21. CF

      So, that's it, that's the easiest, most basic way to look at this. So, keep going, you can play again. And you can look, the, the airplane is still sitting at 20,000 feet. It's doing 250 knots. He's gonna go through different modes and try and lock it, and, uh, it's just kind of sitting. Then all of a sudden, a- as the video goes on, I think it's a minute and a half long, see, it's gonna try and reacquire, it recenters the pod. So, it's, it's slowly drifting to the left. The, the, the Hornet is still going the same heading, it's just kind of hanging out and they're just filming this thing. And then when they get close, it's gonna zing off the left-hand side. When you see it on a full ... Because this ... You know, you think digital, you'd be able to get a one-for-one copy, unlike, you know, when you copy your album to a cassette, you know, you lose a little quality. Well, you still do in digital world.

    22. JR

      Yeah.

    23. CF

      And there, off it goes to the left. And that's pretty fast to leave that field of view. On the f- when we, we have big monitors that we look at these when they come back, so we're looking at the original tapes. So-

    24. JR

      Play the end of that again, please, Jamie. So, when it's taking off, how fast ... When, when it just, it sort of like leaves the field of view and takes off to the left, how fast is that going?

    25. CF

      Uh, I would say pretty fast. It's an estimate. I- if we had ranging, you know, you could obviously do the triangle and go, "Hey," because we know how big the field of view is. But for something to leave the field of view that fast with the pod just staring, it is pretty fast. I mean, it, it just, it's like out of here.

    26. JR

      Like nothing that we have?

    27. CF

      No, because we can't ... I don't care what airplane you saw, let's just use an F22 Raptor, that's probably one of the... It's, it's probably the best airplane in the world right now, performance-wise. Um, it can't take off like that e- especially if it's a hover. I mean, you're, you're talking something that's just sitting in space in the wind and then it just all of a sudden accelerates. Airplanes don't work that way.

    28. JR

      And it's not leaving any exhaust plume?

    29. CF

      No. Notice there's none. And when you go back to the IR-

    30. JR

      Play it again, Jamie, at the end?

  9. 34:20 – 54:38

    East Coast UAP wave: Go Fast, Gimbal, ‘fleet’ contacts, and near-miss hazards

    1. CF

      I've talked to the guys, couple of guys from the East Coast event, the Gimbal video.

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. CF

      Um, one of them I talk to daily. Um, he's a pretty good friend of mine. Um, totally different now. Keep in mind, ours is 2004, um, the Gimbal video is 2015. The funny part about the Gimbal video and the East Coast stuff that was going on, 'cause that's off the vacate, so, uh, off the coast of the United States, they're, they're called warning areas, and all they are is they're... If you look on a aviation map, they're these big areas that are blocked off by blue, and they say like, "Whiskey 291" or "Whiskey 243." And-

    4. JR

      Is the Gimbal video available in the same way that that video's available?

    5. CF

      Yes.

    6. JR

      Okay.

    7. NA

      Yeah. Government-owned.

    8. CF

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      Okay.

    10. CF

      Find that jam. So, and I was talking to him about it 'cause I, and I actually have a buddy of mine, he just retired. He was the, the, he b- led the fighter wing on the East Coast, and I called him up 'cause we start finding out that these things were so prevalent out off the East Coast of the United States, and there's a couple of them. So, there's the... Yeah, we're gonna talk. What they started seeing originally was these things, and one of them almost hit, the airplane almost hit one of these things, but it looks like a cube inside of a clear beach ball. So, they don't know if it's actually, like, a surrounding or it's, you don't know if it's a force field. And you see kind of in the Gimbal veal... video, it's got, like, an aura around it, where ours didn't. I always laugh, I go, "Ours was a Tic Tac. These are not." That means there's different stuff out there-

    11. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    12. CF

      ... that we don't know. But they had two airplanes flying, and we fly, when we go out to, to train, uh, we usually, we have a distance, you know? We'll just say we're, you know, a mile apart. As we're flying, so they're flying out, and they're, you know, the airplanes are deployed. We call it combat spread. And, uh, one of the airplanes almost hits one of these ghosts close down, like, 50 feet down the side, and almost hits one of these floating cubes inside of the beach ball. And someone goes, "Oh, like, it's a, it's a balloon." It's not a balloon. I mean, these things are literally sitting still. They're, they're... No effect from the wind. So, if you got 90 knots of wind and they talk about it, these things are just sitting there. So-60 or 70 people had seen it because the radars, the, the newer radar in the Super Hornets is extremely, extremely capable. Okay? And at first when they started seeing stuff they were like, "Ah, it's just like, maybe it's the radar just giving me a false target." Uh, that radar really doesn't give false targets. And then someone did exactly what Chad did, is they threw their targeting flare out there, and all of a sudden when you see a heat signature or there's a return, there's obviously something out where that blip is at.

    13. JR

      Wha- what is a targeting flare?

    14. CF

      Uh, that's a, a, we call it the AT flare. It's, it's an advanced targeting flare. It sits on the left side of the airplane and it's, uh-

    15. JR

      So you launch it like a flare?

    16. CF

      No, no. It's a, it's a FLIR, forward-looking infrared receiver.

    17. JR

      Oh.

    18. CF

      So, it's when you see the bombs blowing up on TV, and it's that looks like a black and white-

    19. JR

      Yes.

    20. CF

      ... and you see it flat? That's the targeting pod.

    21. JR

      Okay.

    22. CF

      It's got a laser in it. It's got an IR marker in it. It's, it's a very capable system that syncs up to the s- to the, the Hornets so everything kind of marries up.

    23. JR

      So, so this is the Gimbal video?

    24. CF

      So this is the Go Fast. No, this is Go Fast.

    25. NA

      It's not it?

    26. CF

      No, it's the other one.

    27. JR

      Okay.

    28. JC

      No, it's the one that looks like-

    29. JR

      What is this one?

    30. JC

      ... the ...

  10. 54:38 – 1:05:45

    Underwater connections and ‘transmedium’ speculation (plus a helo pilot’s torpedo story)

    1. JC

      A- are you able to tell, um, the story you told me about what was underwater with your, your other buddy-

    2. JR

      (laughs)

    3. JC

      ... because... Is that okay?

    4. CF

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's amaze- uh, you know, people come out of the woodwork when they figure out you've had this-

    5. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. CF

      ... 'cause now they're, they don't feel alone. (smacks lips) So, I was working. I did, I worked, I s- I still do it, but I was doing oil and gas at the time, uh, on a, on a contract and one of the guys, this story came out, and, uh, he was a Navy helicopter pilot. And he comes and he g- he comes in and he goes, "Do, hey, can I talk to you, man?" I go, "What about?" He goes, "Dude, I got, I got to talk to you." And I said, "What do you want to talk to me about?" He says, "Dude, you know your UFO?" He said, "Yeah." He goes, "I had a similar experience." I said, "What's that?" He said... Uh, he was flying, uh, CH-53s, which is a big lift, heavy lift that the Marine Corps uses and the Navy uses it for certain things. And when they go off of... For the East Coast, they do a lot of shooting off of, at the time, it was off of Puerto Rico. We had Roosevelt Roads that they ended up closing. Um, but he was flying out of there and, you know, you got super clear Caribbean water and they have these things, they're called BQMs, they fly around and then when they're all done, 'cause they'll fly towards the ships and the ship can... (microphone thumps) Oh, sorry about that. They can track with the radar, and then they also do when the, like, the ships or submarine shoot torpedoes, they're, they're called telemetry rounds. So, they have, they gather all the data on what the torpedo or, is doing underwater and then they blow ballast and this thing will come to the surface and float, and then they go pick them up and then they can extract all the data out of them. So, they do it for both. So, he said the first time they're out and they're gonna pick up this BQM, and those things, when they're flying, they're done, a parachute comes out and they got to go, they hook it up, the helo drops the swimmer in the water. He goes and hooks this whole thing up and then they hoist the whole thing up and fly back and then they extract the data. So, he says he's sitting in the front, you know, in helicopters there's, you know, uh, CH-53, you can actually see down by your feet, you know, just like typical, like, you go to Hawaiian rides so you, 'cause you can see when you're touching down. So, you got really good visibility out of those things and you can stick your head out the window too because you're just kind of hanging out. He says he's going on there and they're getting this thing hooked up and as he's looking down, you know, because they're, I don't know what, 50 feet above the water, he sees kind of this dark mass coming up from the depths. And they started to hoist the, the diver up and he's got, they've got the BQM and as they hoist it up, he says, and he's looking at this thing going, "What the hell is that?" And then it just goes back down underwater. It just, like, uh, once they pull the kid and the, the BQM out of the water, this object descends back into the depths. So, he thinks, "Well, that was pretty weird." So, he goes out, he says, n- not too long later, you know, a few months later, he's out and he's picking up a torpedo. So, he says, they got the, they hook the diver up on the winch and they're lowering him in and as he's looking down, he sees this big, massive... He goes, "It's not a submarine." He's seen submarines before. Once you see a submarine, you, you can't confuse it with something else. This big object, you know, kind of circular, he says, "It's coming up from the depths." And he starts screaming to, through the intercom system to tell them to pull the diver up. And the diver's like few feet from the water. So, they reverse the winch and the diver's thinking, "What the hell is going on?" And then he's getting pulled up and all of a sudden, uh, he said the torpedo just got sucked down underwater and the object just descended back down into the depths, and they never recovered the, the torpedo.

    7. JR

      Jesus.

    8. CF

      And this happened in the late 90s. Late, mid to late 90s, I think it is. I could probably get in touch with him and ask him. When he told me this story and I'm like, "How-"

    9. JC

      How do you report that? (laughs)

    10. CF

      You come in and go, "Well, where'd the torpedo go?" Uh, just got sucked down. It just went down, you know, and then you get the people that attribute it as, "Ah, something happened when it blew ballast and it just took on water and sank." And he's like, "It didn't sink." He goes, "It literally looked like it got sucked down." (smacks lips) The only reason they didn't... They talked to him. When they did the New York Times stuff they talked to him, but because the incident was from the 90s, they didn't wanna... They wanted something, you know, newer.

    11. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    12. CF

      Um, so they did not include it, but I know they talked to him about it.

    13. JR

      Now, what was the other footage that we were looking at? There was the first footage that Jamie pulled up that wasn't the gimbal footage.

    14. CF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. JR

      That was-

    16. CF

      Oh, the go fast.

    17. JC

      Go fast.

    18. JR

      The go fast. What is that?

    19. CF

      That's a, uh, it actually looks more like a Tic Tac, but it's... They saw it, uh, going across the water and they're, they're, they're just grabbing a lock. So, they're, they're seeing this with their eyes and he gets the FLIR to lock on it, and that's when you hear the kid go, "Oh, I got it," 'cause he gets the auto track, and it's just something screaming across the surface of the water. So, yeah.

    20. JR

      And this is in the same area?

    21. CF

      This is East Coast, yeah. This is the same timeframe as the gimbal video.

    22. JC

      So, the idea that these are birds or the idea that this is a radar glitch, or somebody said pilot error, like, on a clear blue day, Commander Fravor has nerves. I mean, that kind of thing that people have said on your show to you, that, you know, this, th- these are explanations that make sense.

    23. JR

      Who said that?

    24. JC

      Um, I didn't wanna say their names.

    25. JR

      Oh, Mick West?

    26. JC

      Yeah, sure. In-

    27. JR

      Mick, Mick believes everything. Like, every single thing that's ever happened has a rational explanation for it.

    28. JC

      Yeah, it's... So, so, you know, the probability that, you know, all the radars went off at the wrong time, Commander Fravor, you know, had nerves, that all the other pilots up there with him, that, you know, this thing shot off like a, like a can, like a gun instantly, like, that that was somehow c- perfectly coordinated, that's a conspiracy, th- that's a fabrication. Probably, Occam's razor is the events happened exactly like we're being told.

    29. CF

      Yeah, for us it was... You know, and I'll go back to the beginning of the story of, you know, the other pilot who was brand new. Uh, she had been in the squadron for four months, five months, so she's pretty junior. She was still working on her initial qual on the airplane. And, uh, you know, so she gets the, you know, we get the real world vector and it's like, "Okay, real world vector. Cool, I'm gonna get to do something real exciting." Then you see the, uh, the water and you think, "Oh, something's sinking," 'cause it's kind of that shape of an airplane, you know, that cross type. So, now it's, oh, crap, now it's search and rescue. We got to go down and see, you know, 'cause there's people, you know, and we are sympathetic. And to the Tic Tac, and as soon it's a Tic Tac, it's like, you know, "Holy shit, what is that?" You know, and when you get... Uh, you know, some people get very emotional when you talk about it, um, because for me, it was like, "Eh, you know, I, you know..." For her, when you talk to her, uh-... she has a disdain for some of the leadership that didn't tell us that these things were out there. You know, that here now we're getting vectored because we were the first time th- the manned airplanes had been airborne when one of these things showed up. That no one even gave us a brief that, "Hey, we're seeing these objects out here for the last two weeks. They're just kinda sh- ... You might wanna know they're out there." And they never told us. No one knew these things existed besides the radar operators, and the radar operators didn't know what they were. They just knew they were seeing blips, you know? So, and there's a lotta stuff that, you know, that it flew around, and it came around me, and it didn't do any of that stuff. It's (laughs) -

    30. JR

      Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 1:54:25

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