The Tic Tac Encounter

November 14, 2004: Commander David Fravor broke off an intercept on something that shouldn't have been able to leave.

Why this tee

Fit: Wears like a flight-line crew shirt that earned its shape — slim through the body, mid-weight, holds structure through a long day without feeling stiff.

Print: Chest-sized FLIR-frame graphic in museum-grade ink, the kind of image that reads as sensor data before it reads as art.

Vibe: For Nimitz strike group veterans who know what the intercept logs actually said, infrared footage analysts who've watched the gimbal roll on loop, and anyone who clocked that the DoD released the videos in April 2020 and called them "historical."

The lore

On November 14, 2004, roughly 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, Commander David Fravor of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 descended toward a disturbance on the ocean surface — a churning oval of white water with no visible cause. Above it hovered a white, oblong object approximately 40 feet long: no wings, no exhaust, no apparent propulsion.

Fravor banked toward it. The object mirrored his approach, then accelerated away and vanished. Seconds later, radar operators aboard the USS Princeton reacquired it more than 60 miles away. It had traveled there in the time it takes to process that something has gone.

The footage, shot on an infrared targeting pod by Lieutenant Chad Underwood on a separate intercept later that day, became the FLIR1 video. It circulated internally until December 2017, when the New York Times published it alongside the disclosure of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program — a $22 million initiative run under the cover of the Defense Intelligence Agency, funded largely at the request of Senator Harry Reid.

The Department of Defense formally released the video on April 27, 2020, confirming it as authentic U.S. Navy imagery. The object's behavior, as described by Fravor under oath before the House Oversight Committee in July 2023, remained aerodynamically unexplained.

Primary source

The Department of Defense confirmed the authenticity of the Nimitz encounter footage in the official DoD statement on the release of historical Navy videos, April 27, 2020.

Sizing & styling

Slim fit through the chest and waist — if you're between sizes or prefer a relaxed cut, size up one. Wears on its own with dark utility pants and work boots, or under a zip-up flight jacket with the graphic just visible at the collar.

Fabric & care

100% compact-yarn combed cotton, 210gsm mid-weight, pre-shrunk, bio-polished, single-needle stitched neckline, ribbed cotton-poly collar, tear-away label. Heather Gray is 90% cotton / 10% viscose. Machine wash cold, tumble dry low, do not iron the print.