Somewhere in the Skies - I Chased the Tic Tac UFO (w/ Alex Dietrich)

Episode Date: July 12, 2025

With the recent conversations circling back to the Tic Tac, we thought it would be a good time to re-release our interview with former Naval Officer and Strike Fighter Pilot, Alex Dietrich. Dietrich joins us to describe the event from her perspective, gives her thoughts on how we can move forward with the scientific study of UFOs. Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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slash somewhere skies. Or by clicking the subscribe button at the top of your Apple feed. Thank you for your continued support. and keep looking up. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Hey guys, Ryan Sprague here from Somewhere in the Skies. And I hope you enjoy this very fascinating interview we had with Navy pilot Alex Dietrich. However, I do have to make a disclaimer for this interview.

And I don't have to do this often. But my audio during this interview was really bad, as they're going to hear. It's very clear that my microphone was not working at the time, and Alex was a trooper. She sounds great. She's the one that truly matters in the interview. So, yeah, I just wanted to let you know that and warn you ahead of time of how and why my audio was so bad. We tried to clean it up. It was impossible.

But, yeah, it's going to sound a little different than it does right now, which probably sounds much better. So yeah, just wanted to let you know that ahead of time. But first and foremost, I hope you enjoy the interview. It was a true honor to speak with Alex. And as always, I just want to say, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. Enjoy. I should let my audience know. We're here with Alex Dietrich, the Navy pilot, who's part of the famous Ticktack UFO event.

So first of all, Alex, I have to thank you for doing this. that means a lot, I think, to our community that you're willing to have these conversations and try to understand what these things are, try to understand what it was that you saw and that many other people around the world are seeing as well. So I have to thank you for that first and foremost. Oh, thanks. Yeah. No, I certainly can't take credit. I have found myself unwittingly thrust into this situation. You know, I think it's interesting that so many people say, oh, thank you for coming forward and thank you for, I have never identified as a whistleblower or, you know, in my narrative, I didn't come forward.

I was just worn down by all of the inquiries and requests for interviews and engagement. You know, it started, gosh, you know, a decade ago when there was a leak. and my name got out there associated with the Nimitz encounter. And I was active duty. And I was also having kids and pregnant and not really feeling camera running and just felt vulnerable in several ways. And so declined interviews. And it wasn't until 60 minutes approached me right at the tipping point in my career when I was retiring.

in that spring of 2021, I was retiring. I was moving cross-country. I was having all these other transitions. And I thought, well, maybe I can just do one and be done. You know, an interview on a major platform. And it's reputable, you know, respective show and journalists. And they do their due diligence and research. And they have a team of lawyers that look at it to make sure everything's, you know, just right.

And that was certainly naive of me to think that I could just do the whole interview and be done. Yeah. But yeah, I don't identify as a UFO person and I don't, you know, you feel any ownership about the Nimitz encounter. You know, I was an eyewitness to what happened there that day. But I really, after that, you know, the few days of excitement that followed, I forgot about it. But, you know, it wasn't on my mind. I certainly wasn't trying to figure it out or anything until, you know, several years later when the Office of Naval Intelligence folks contacted me and they were doing their investigation and their follow-up. So, you know, every time I would get the call from the Pentagon or, you know, to go to Congress or, you know, eventually the reporters and media that interest.

I was surprised. You know, they'd sort of start word blasting and talking as if I had been having this conversation all these years. And it would take me a minute to say, what are you talking about? Oh, oh, yes, okay, yeah, the UFO thing. And so, of course, in the last year and a half, it's been more of a frenzy. And in the last two weeks, it's been downright absurd. Right. Well, and that's really interesting.

I'm happy you answered that because quite a few of our listeners wanted to know, like, does this weigh on your mind? Was this something like me? I had nightmares about my UFO encounter for like years after. But like a lot of people wanted to know, did this become a big part of your life? Did you think about it a lot? So that is really interesting to hear you say. that. Yeah, not at all. Yeah. I certainly, I do have a series of recurring nightmares that have nothing to do with this. You know, I did deployments, flying deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan,

close air support for the troops on the ground there. And then I went back in 2010 as a provincial reconstruction team engineer for a year boots on ground. You know, my skipper was a Navy SEAL. my senior enlisted was a seal. The Opso was an army helo guy. I mean, it was a very different team than a carrier-based squadron where you come back to sort of the comforts of the aircraft carrier and the safety. We were sleeping. We were camping with guns, you know, in and among the folks there.

And it was a much more dynamic experience. I felt much more vulnerable. and was very glad to come back with all my bits and pieces. And then the subsequent fallout, right? So trying to get our Afghan interpreters, our linguists and cultural advisors evacuated. They were at high risk after working with us so closely. We managed to get a few of them, but there are still families and others that we care about who are stuck in the aftermath of our abrupt pullout of that summer of

2021, which that has been an ongoing nightmare. So, you know, there are other things that weigh on my mind. I don't know if you can see in the background. I'm sitting in the construction zone at a personal sob story. We had a whole house flood, Christmas Eve. With that big bomb cyclone storm that rolled through, we turned up our thermostat and we opened our faucets with the sprinkler lines and the ceiling froze and burst. And then I had breast cancer last year. So it's a good news story that caught it early, but I had a full mastectomy, which was a series of procedures and, you know, a lot of appointments to take care of that.

So to answer your question, you know, the, you know, the event that happened in November of 2004 was exciting at the moment. But in the arc of my life, it was just a small blip. Yeah. Yeah. And, well, thank you for sharing all of that. I can't even imagine the challenges you've gone through. and the resilience it takes to make it through things like that. So it does make perfect sense.

No, that's funny. That's like. But, you know, life goes on. Absolutely. I was a lieutenant junior grade. I wasn't even a full lieutenant at the time that that happened. And, you know, we were, the exercise that we were doing off the coast of San Diego was in preparation of our deployment. And so, you know, we were flying these maneuvers.

integrating with the ship, the squadrons, the air wing, working with the aircraft carrier to make sure that everything is running smoothly. And then we deployed. We went out on a Westpac deployment. So headed out, and we had all these portcalls and these exotic places that I had never been to before, and that was great. Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Bahrain, Shania, India, Australia, Guam. you know, Hawaii, not, you know, exotic in its own way, but still U.S.

But so, you know, November 2004, then 2005 was, you know, already very busy and rich with experiences and things that had a bigger impression in my mind in terms of, you know, what are we doing here? what's the purpose and mission that we're focused on in this post-9-11 Navy, you know, to deter aggression and when deterrence fails, to fight and win our nation's wars. And then how do I contribute to that? How do I contribute in a meaningful way? And then exposure to this world and all these cultures and languages and people that, you know, I had read about and heard about, but it had never really been immersed in before.

So, yeah, ever since then, you know, I've had, like I said, multiple deployments. I've traveled, went to grad school, had three children, you know. Wow. Lots of life in the interim. I'm not sitting around thinking about the Tic Tac and my dreams. That is fair enough. Life goes on. I love that. It's, and we're all about kind of the human, human nature to a lot of this. And for many people, like you said, either it changes their life and it becomes a huge part,

or some people are just like, no, that is, that is a thing that happened moving on. So I totally, I totally understand that. Well, I got to ask you, you mentioned, you know, what's currently going on in the past few weeks. I love to get your perspective on that as a pilot and seeing what's going on in the United States right now. I know this had a lot to do with the article that you wrote at the debrief as well. It seemed like perfect timing for an article like yours to come out right now in the U.S. where we're shooting things down for the first time in U.S. history in terms of what NORAD is done and whatnot. And all that. So, yeah, I guess that's kind of my convoluted way of asking, what do you make of everything going on right now with these pilots shooting these things down?

We're not able to recover this wreckage of these objects. what is your kind of, I guess, overall perspective of what's going on right now, Alex? That's a big question. It is. And I hope that I addressed it in the op-ed that I wrote and the debrief so kindly published, which is that, you know, we need to be systematic and methodical and approaching, and we shouldn't be lumping all of these objects together. We should say this is an object or an interesting radar hit.

Let's collect as much information as we can and deal with it in context. Okay, next object, next object, next object. So I wouldn't, and it would be irresponsible to suggest that they're all of the same origin or that they are all of the same technology. But if we zoom out and widen the aperture, then we can say, okay, we need to have a systematic method of reporting. We need to have a way for someone in Montana who's outminding their business and notices something that they can't categorize, they can't classify.

We need to have a way for them to. snap photo or just record their observation and give them some of, again, a template or a structure to say, you know, what was the color, what was the shape, what was the time of day, what were the weather conditions? Did you have somebody with you? Is there another witness who can corroborate this? Or maybe has a different angle, a different perspective. And then what do you do with that? So where do we hold that information? And until we have a system where we can collect and then analyze, you know, I don't think that we're going to be able to make sense of any of it. Ideally, we would have, you know, a 1-800 number, an app, a website where everybody

can report these objects, and that that system, in much the same way that chat GPT and these other AI, natural language processing, machine learning systems do, they can filter out the pranks or the chaff, the stuff that isn't relevant in order to say, hey, there's something here, there's something there, and even get to the point where we can predict, where we might say, based off,

of all of these other hits that we're getting, we might expect to see something over here. And so let's get our sensors ready. Let's get folks out there with their binoculars. And they're not just their iPhone or smartphone cameras, but some really high-resolution, big lens. You know, that's one of the complaints I always get is, why don't we have better pictures?

why don't we have better images or video of this stuff? And I said, well, if you're driving on the highway, 60 miles an hour, and you look over and you see Bigfoot, you know, it takes you a minute to get your phone out and your battery's dead and you have to do your turn and you go back, you know, and then you end up with the blurry picture or no picture at all, but you're pretty sure you saw a Sasquatch on the side of the road. So, you know, people don't, you never expect to encounter a UFO. Right.

It happens when you at least expect it. And so if we could collect the information in a way where we might have some predictive modeling, where we could get sensors and folks out and ready, then maybe we might have the images that we're looking for. And there's other, you know, besides visual, eyewitness testimony and photos and video. You know, we have radar sensors, we have Fleer, we have other means to collect information on these unidentified events.

But again, it's all about the collection. It's all about the gathering of information. Right. Right. And I think that's kind of the reactionary. What would you even call it? Announcements by the president that we saw recently, too, that they're going to establish an interagency

to kind of look at these things from both a sort of policy-making approach and also data collecting, like you mentioned. They established an office within the Department of Defense to do just that. So it couldn't, again, come at a best. better time than for an organization like Arrow, this new group established, to be like, hey. They were established before the last. Right. Yeah. So the Arrow DoD. And then there was, you know, the president announced that there is going to be this interagency task force, but there were already efforts in the fall. I was fortunate to attend the first meeting of the next.

NASA independent study. So it was hosted by NASA. Okay. Provided the conference room. And then all the folks that were invited and showed up represented DOD and BFAA and these academics, not just from NASA, but from institutions across the, not only the country, but across the globe, as well as private industry. So they had folks there to talk about, you know, these are the. satellite capabilities that we have. This is the way that we can analyze the big data.

There was a brief from a gentleman from, I think it was Fermilab or CERN, you know, the large particle colliders. Yeah, yeah. Hey, this is how we found with the Higgs bosun particle, the God particle. You know, we were smashing atoms and doing the physics. but it ended up with this avalanche of data. And so here's how we found the needle in the haystack. Here's how we took that information and made it not just manageable,

but relevant to the question that we were asking. And so I was really heartened to see, and there was a two-day conference, full days, and the head of NASA Senator Nelson, came in in the evening and sort of gave us a pet talk about, you know, the commitment and the relevance of the topic. And I was really glad to see all of these, you know, high-ranking, respected individuals from their respective institutions coming together and asking the philosophical questions. of why, why do we care? Why is this important?

You know, sort of moving beyond the question of, are you AP is a thing, our UFO's a thing? And that's part of why I was there is to say, hey, we saw something weird. Couldn't explain it. And it's been almost 20 years, and we still can't explain it. So if anything, we should be able to identify something that's operating close proximity to a military exercise and close proximity to our

borders, especially in a post-9-11 era. So we moved beyond that question of, are UAPs real? They are real because we're seeing things that we can't identify? And by definition, that's unidentified. And then, like, what do we do about it? Right. So, and that's a loaded question because then you get into the, you know, well, who's responsible?

Who has jurisdiction? Is it, you know, is it the DOD? Is it a national security issue? Or is it the FAA? Because it's a safety of flight issue. And then all the scientists say, well, we want science with a capital health. That we need to have access to all of the data and information.

And then who pays for it? So, you know, all the industry folks were there saying, hey, we've got all these tools. you're welcome to apply them to this question. And somebody's got to pay that bill. So if we're going to reserve time, you know, in that satellite or on that supercomputer for crunching the data, once it's downloaded, you know, we got to fund it.

Yeah. And then ultimately, you know, folks, especially I think a lot of your viewers are going to say, well, who has access? So if we're using the satellites and we're using the supercomputers and we're funding the manpower Arrow or the FAA UAP office, then we want to be able to access that information and have transparency. And so there were a lot of questions that were asked in that first session. there were very few, if any, answers. Welcome to UFOs, yeah.

I have several other meetings planned, and I expect that they will, especially given the recent activity and interest, I expect they'll make progress. Awesome. Yeah, and I think what your article pointed out to is these efforts for cohesion, whether it's military, UFO,

encounters, whether it's something NASA has been tracking or doing, or the public. Like you mentioned, commercial pilots are seeing these things. And now with the work of people like Ryan Graves and whatnot, they will soon have somewhere to report these things and talk about them. And then, like you mentioned in your article, too, you have something like Enigma Labs that's showing up where anyone can then submit their UFO siting or a report. And like you said, kind of bringing all of this together so that the data sets work together. Like, why have just military encounters? Why just have NASA anomalous things happening?

Why have, you know, Joe Smith in Cincinnati in his UFO encounter too? Like, all of the data should be put together for these scientists, in my opinion. And so it was really invigorating to see you kind of point out, like, these are the different groups looking at this topic in different ways. But how can we bring all that data together to find a better understanding instead of the stope piping that we often see with a lot of this stuff? So, yeah, kudos on that as well. Thanks. Yeah, there are a lot of stakeholders for sure. And I'm glad you mentioned in the lab. So this is a new, really a tech startup.

They're folks, software engineers out of Silicon Valley and some sort of business folks out of New York City with no history in the UFO space. And it's refreshing because like me, they have this sort of neutral, just objective approach to what is often an emotionally charged or otherwise sort of you know, people get all hyped about the conversation. But they said, hey, let's make an app. Let's, you know, just like the tech companies in Silicon Valley do. Very 2023.

Yeah. You know, there's a lab for this. Okay. Here's a niche in the market. Let's jump on it. And so they started up, I think, you know, early last year. And then they reached out to me in the fall. And they said, you know, we like,

We like your style, you know, that you have this very sort of rational, you know, let's gather the information, see if we can make sense of it, approach without jumping to conclusions, without sort of imposing a narrative on it. And they ask me to be their first advisor. So it's an unpaid role. I know folks are interested in that. They say, oh, you know, what's the? I'm just getting paid. Yeah, I get it.

I get it. You know, you're in, and as far as I know, they don't have any contracts with any government agencies yet, you know, but I wouldn't blame if they were, you know, pursuing that, especially after the last two weeks, because there's a need here. There's a need for a sort of easy to use, you know, an interface for folks like you or me or, you know, the guy down the story. street to report. And so I realize that there are some other groups that are, you didn't mention Mufon, and I think there's a few others that are established. Unfortunately, you know, they have a, how do I put this diplomatically? You know, they have a reputation and they have an agenda associated with them that

that doesn't have that very sort of crisp, clean, neutral center approach. And they don't have the technology. So, again, what Enigma Labs brings is this very modernized approach and saying, hey, we can do this at scale, and we can bring in the AI, artificial intelligence, the ML, the machine learning, the NLP, the natural language process. and that big data analytics to handle the types of the scale of reporting that they hope to ingest through their app. So yeah, I wish them success. And I hope that some of these other folks in the space will step up, right?

Because that's what's great about our model in America is that competition will drive. excellence in the technology and in the services provided. So, yeah, I hope that we see some other apps that can hopefully drive the, yeah, advance this, advanced conversation and advance our abilities in this area. Right, right. There's a motivation to continue learning. And I think that's, like you mentioned, it is very. very American, but at the same time, like, there's a reason anywhere in the world you see a Starbucks

next to a Dunkin' Donuts. Like, there needs to be competition. So I get it. I get it. That's awesome, Alex. Well, I'm really excited. I'm really happy to have seen the positive nature of the article that you released because I think a lot of people in the past few weeks, primarily in the UFO community, if you want to call it that, have felt very deflated. because they think now everything's going to be a Chinese surveillance balloon or everything's going to be a drone. But in reality, like, that's what we're trying to do is explaining these unidentified, no matter what they are, prosaic or otherwise. So I think, you know, more than really being about the UFOs themselves, what are these things? Your article shows that there's many different ways that we can go about answering those questions.

And the answer might not be extraterrestrial. The answer might not be time travelers from the future. The answer might not be Russian or Chinese surveillance technology. It could be something that we haven't even scratched the surface out. But we're taking those baby steps. So yeah, yeah, that's kind of my final, I promise, my final endorsement. of the article. Well,

those were my questions for you. I have so many listener questions for you. I doubt we'll even get to all of them. But would you be okay stick it around for some of these? Yes, let's do it.

Be as rapid fire as you want or as deep as you want or if you don't want to answer it, you let me know. Let's see here. I'm going to start with this is a cool one. Dreamland XR on Twitter

asks, Alex, what or who inspired you to join the Navy and who are some of the influential people in your life? Oh, man. Do we have another hour? I know. Probably the worst question I could have started with, right? Yes. So I'm 43 this year. And I came of age in a pre-9-11 era, a pre-9-11 world. And I went to a boarding school for high school, a math and science-focused academy, and everybody was expected to go to college, and everybody was expected to be an engineer or a doctor

or have that sort of math and science STEM propelled into that world. And I, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't, I wasn't, you know, sort of, I didn't have that clear vision or anybody really pressuring me to go in a particular direction. And so, Mr. Hernandez, our college and career guidance counselor, he said, Al, you got to choose something. You can't be an undeclared.

major, you know, you've got to pick a school, you've got to pick a track, you've got to get on it. And we went, you know, round and round. And I said, you know, I don't know. He said, how about this? Picture yourself when you're 40 and look back and what do you want to have accomplished. And I said, okay, I'll play. And he said, you know, where do you want to be and what do you want to have done? And I said, well, all the 40-year-olds I know.

are divorced and you know on their second career and going through a midlife crisis and he said whoa whoa whoa that's not what I meant but I said no this is good this is good you know I appreciate this you know what you're right I'm going to go and have my adventure get my midlife crisis out

up front while I'm young and single and healthy and all that and so that's why I said, you know, I want to go be a fighter pilot in the Navy and travel the world and have a big adventure and do something cool, you know, flying jets. I graduated from college and commissioned in May 2001, went to ground school that summer, and then I had my first flight on 9-11. So that whole, you know, it's all about me and my selfish adventure and doing something cool, you know, that in an instant I realized it's not about me. And then I'm a part of something bigger than myself. And I need to figure out how to contribute in a meaningful way.

So, yeah, there was a paradigm shift, you know, for the world, definitely when planes hit. but for me, you know, as an individual, I sort of have that moment. So I've had, I've had countless, you know, mentors and coaches and my grandmothers were very influential and, you know, my early years. And, yeah, again, we could do a whole other show. Wow. No, that's cool. Fair enough. Fair enough. I love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Shane on Patreon, our patron members get priority to ask our guest questions as well.

He asks, while viewing the Tick-Tac, did you come away with the impression that the object was mechanical or organic? You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. That's a good question.

And I can't say. Yeah. That's fair. We don't know what it was. And yeah, it would be irresponsible of me to suggest either way. That's fair. Yeah. And I do apologize in advance. You're probably going to get a lot of Tick-Tac questions. I'm sure you kind of expected that here on a UFO podcast. But no, that makes perfect sense. Let's see. Lyle on YouTube asks, was the cap point to which the UAP flew a point,

was it a point that had been used previously during these exercises, which would suggest the object had been monitoring operations, or was it a novel previously unused cap point, which would suggest something much more disturbing and extraordinary? So I did a lot of questions about this cap point point. this point in the story. And this is another thing where I'm not going to lead anybody down the path of this way or that in the thinking. And I don't know, but I'm wondering whether the radar operator,

the controller, the air traffic controller, who was giving us vectors and talking us through what they were seeing in order for us to merge with the Tic Tac originally and have our engagement. And then when we lost visual and said, you know, what's the picture or what are you seeing on your radar? I haven't confirmed this with the radar operator, but I'm wondering whether they used the cap point as a reference. Because we knew what it was. I don't know whether it was, you know, exactly at the cap point.

or whether it was near it, and they just use that as an anchor. So, yeah, the cap point gets a lot of, there's a lot of time and energy spent on that, and it's something that I can't speak to. Okay, yeah, fair enough. Irish scientist, I love this name, on Twitter asks, pilots often report that the debunkers are coming to conclusions based on an incomplete understanding of aviation and the military in general. What are some of their biggest misunderstandings in this regard?

Biggest misunderstandings? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Does he provide any examples of? Let's see. I think what they're sort of, let's see, I'll edit this, obviously. The debunkers are coming to. So the problem there is assuming that I'm following the conversation with all the debunkers.

That's a good point. This is one of those where, you know, there's a lot of chatter on the net, we would say. Yeah. So, and I just, I don't, I don't get drawn into those, you know, sort of tit for tat conversations. And I'm not really sure what the debunkers. are suggesting or where they're misunderstanding or lack of understanding of the technology lies. It's hard, I mean, it's hard to relay in a tweet or in a short post or even a quick conversation on a podcast. all of the technical and tactical knowledge that you learn in flight school over the course of years.

You have primary, you have ground school, aviation pre-flight indoctrination, and then you have primary flight training, intermediate flight training, advanced flight training, your fleet replacement squadron, and then you're in your in your fleet squadron going on these missions and deployments in the real world. So, I mean, it's years that you're spending at the controls, getting those site pictures, understanding, again, those tactics and maneuvers.

So I don't know what exactly the debunkers are claiming or suggesting, but it would be hard for them. it would be hard for me to counter any points if they were worthy of being countered just because we have tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Explicit is that which can be written down in a handbook or a checklist

explained. Tacit is all of that that other knowledge that you get through experience and It's very hard to relay. Yeah. Well, and I think this question is a prime example of, you know, the lack of data that either end of a debate might have. You know, I know a lot of people are very vocal about their not skepticism, but their questions they have of the whole TikTok event.

someone like McWest, for instance, a skeptic that a lot of people turn to or hate. And he is the first to admit that, you know, until we have sufficient data with this event, you know, out in the public for scientists and analysts to look at, we're not going to get any answers. So I think, again, this is just a prime example of no matter which side of the debate you're on, it's. the lack of data that really keeps it going, keeps that not knowing going. That makes sense. I have no interest in convincing McWest or any debunkers about what we saw that day in November of 2004. I, in the moment, had a real sense of urgency and wanted to convince and communicate to the people back on the ship. the other air crew in my squadron, the intelligence team,

again, on the ship, on the aircraft carrier, and the chain of command, which for me, my commanding officer of my squadron was the other pilot in the encounter. So Commander David Fraber was my immediate chain of command.

And so that was, you know, check, that's done. But after that, you know, that day, that moment where we felt this vulnerability, where we felt, you know, if this is an adversary, they're here, they're messing with our military training exercise. And they're right here off the coast of San Diego with all of these civilians. This was 2004.

It wasn't that long after the events of 9-11. So we certainly had that sort of. spiny sense of there's something here in our skies and we don't know what it is as military were conditioned to think friend or foe. So, you know, foe is our is our assumption or conclusion when we can't identify it. But after that day and that period, you know, I have no interest in convincing anybody about what I saw that day. What I do have interest in is giving other folks, you know, to normalize the topic, to reduce the stigma and to give folks and encourage, you know, those government agencies

and folks who have the means to establish that systematic reporting, whether it's a app or a channel or website, having a way for other eyewitnesses to report what they see and to make sense of that. So I don't really care whether we figure out what we saw in November of 2004. And I certainly don't care if McWest knows what we saw in November of 2004.

It doesn't matter. You know, it's 2023 now. What matters is whether, you know, somebody sees something weird, do they know how to report it? Can we respond? Can we react with the appropriate level of whether it's sensors or kinetic response, right? We've shut down a few things recently that, you know, I have full faith and confidence that those crews that were deployed. that they weren't shooting at random targets, that there was a positive identification made

and that they took the appropriate action. So my concern is that whether it's aircrew or operators on the ground or civilians, that if you see something, you're able to say something and that we have a systematic way to report and make sense of those some things. at the future. Oh, this is an interesting one.

ASM on Twitter asks, has Alex heard of an event that's similar to hers that isn't publicly known yet? Have any other pilots come to you and been like, yeah, we've encountered these things as well? Or how does that work? Has there been a response since you've come forward from other pilots?

Well, again, you know, I don't consider myself to have come forward. forward or to be sort of trying to evangelize on the topic. But what's been interesting is since the 60 Minutes piece aired in the spring of 2021, I have been contacted by a lot of folks who said, you know, I'm not crazy. You don't seem crazy. And I don't think I'm crazy. But I had this experience and I didn't know where to go with it.

I didn't know who to share it with or how to report it or I was afraid of the stigma. You know, whether it's, you know, I have this serious job and I'd be afraid of what people would think or losing my job or, you know, I'm part of a religious organization. And, you know, this is antithetical to that faith system. I wouldn't want anybody in my community or my neighbors to know that I'm a UFO person because it has that that sort of taboo stigma associated with it. So I have received a lot of DMs and messages where they just want to share their story. They kind of say, you know, I've been carrying this around. I didn't know where to put it. And now, you know, you seem like someone that could hold this with me.

Or if I tell it to you, then it's off, you know. I saw something and I said something and I said something. And now it's right. Moving on. Yeah. And back in 2021, I said to the folks at the, I guess it was atyip at the time. But now it's, again, sort of transitioning into this arrow, more comprehensive office.

But, you know, the points of contact at the Pentagon that I have, I said, hey, what do you, I'm getting all these reports. You know, some of them are really old, but some of them are relatively recent. What do you want me to do with them? Like, where do you want me to put them? Is there a Google sheet or something that you want me to? And they said, well, just hang on to them for now. And so, yeah, again, that's why I'm, when Enigma Labs said, hey, we're building this app and this mechanism to collect and analyze reports.

I said, oh, great, I've got a stack waiting to put them in. And, you know, they showed me their prototype and I was able to give them feedback, not just on my own encounter, but on some of these others that I've heard. And I said, okay, you know, this, you know, the app, again, it's very user-friendly. The interface makes sense as any good apps do. They're intuitive. But I said, oh, hey, you know, you asked about this, but there's no place to put, you know, this other technical detail or, you know, you have all these technical details about the object,

but you haven't asked whether there's any physical. physiological symptoms or, you know, do you hear static on the radio or ringing in your ears or nausea or whatever. So I was able to give them some feedback, again, because none of them are really UFO people or experiencers or eyewitnesses. I think that that was helpful to them and their development of the tool. And I was only able to do that because as other folks have shared these encounters with me. So, yeah, it's, you know, I have had a high-ranking scientist who works in atmospheric science, meteorology, tell me that, you know, when they were a postdoc very early in a career,

that they encountered something strange and didn't have any explanation for it. And there were other eyewitnesses, you know, they were with a group of people and this thing happened. And they said, you know, this is why we do science. This is, you know, I have a PhD and I'm, you know, at this big level, at this big institution. And I saw a UFO. But that's why we continue to study and collect information and try to make sense of it because there are things out there that we don't understand. And then they gave me a lecture on lenticular clouds. They always get a bunch of inquiries anytime there's a lenticular cloud in the area because people are, oh, there's a UFO.

And this is how they're formed. This is why they look that way. And it's not a flying saucer. And I said, okay, so you're very quick to dismiss other people's UFO sightings as clouds. But you just, and they say, yeah, yeah, yeah. except what I saw was not a liticular cloud

yeah I think we can all agree on that for sure let's see yeah there are there are people out there pilots and others who I would consider to be

credible witnesses who have you know have advanced degrees and extensive training and have no reason to

you know, pull a prank or otherwise, you know, sort of, I don't question their mental capacity in any way. But if they saw something strange, again, they don't know where to report it or how to report it. Okay. Yeah. That's fair. This is one of our, probably one of our most popular questions. And there's been a lot of, you know, debate back and forth on the TikTok video that Chad Underwood filmed. And a lot of people wanted to know, Alex, did you ever see any other video except what that was shown to the public, the video that we've all seen for years now? Did you ever see anything longer, anything more clear, anything like that? Is that something you can even speak to? So when we came back, this other aircraft launched.

So our two ship came back, our two aircraft came back with our four aircrew on board and another single aircraft launched with Chad in the backseat and his pilot. They looked for, found, and recorded the Fleer footage that we believe to be the same thing, the same Tick-Tac that we encountered just one cycle. And when I say a cycle, so on an aircraft carrier, we're launching and recovering in cycles that are about an hour in length, but there's a bit of an overlap.

So, you know, we're in the same airspace and we're in the same, you know, relative time as when the folks on the Princeton are seeing the radar hits. And when we had the visual encounter, and then Chad and his pilot, pick up and record on the Fleer. So when they came back, we had been debriefing the Intel folks, talking to other people in the squadron, and then they plugged in this tape into, we call it a stack.

So it's this video players, tape players. And we all gathered around and we watched several times this black and white fleer footage. It was much clearer the resolution than what you see now if you just Google Tick-Tac video because it was the original tape, you know, it was this not a copy of a copy of a digital copy kind of thing. So yes, we watched that and We were confident that what we were seeing was what we had seen visually just a short time earlier. Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah. Was there any other distinguishing factors or anything else dramatic that occurred in the video you saw?

Again, I know some of this may be still classified and whatnot, but anything that we have not seen in the public that was seen, this video. No, I mean, it's, yeah, again, people are really just holding on so tightly and trying to wring every last bit of information out of this video clip. And I don't think that you're going to find anything else there. I think you need to move on and say, how do we collect more and better data and information from the UAP encounters that are happening today and tomorrow and next week, you know, instead of trying to wring out more information from something that happened

almost 20 years ago. Yeah. Move on. I think that's the key here, guys. Well, this one is not so much moving on, but it is a question that I think a lot of people have as well, Alex. the sort of roiling waters that were described by Fravor and a possible object under the water. Do you know, was that ever investigated?

We don't hear a lot about that aspect of this entire thing and the testimony behind that. Was there anything done about that aspect to the entire TikTok event? Like what would have been done? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that is a good question. I can't pretend it. It was something that we reported real time on the radio for sure. I mean, that's actually how I got a visual on the Tick-Tac

is because somebody said, hey, look in the water, and we saw this turning water. I thought in the first moment that whatever we had been vectored to intercept had crashed in my heart sink because I thought, you know, we went from go get them to, oh, now we're unseen commanders for a search and rescue effort. And then the Tic-Tac zoomed across. And so I don't know that I would have picked up because it was moving so

erratically. I don't know that I would have picked up my visual tally on the tic-dak if it hadn't crossed over that rolling water. Yeah. So and then we went to look for that again because that was sort of our anchor point where we had first encountered it. You know, when we lost visual, we said, okay, look back in the water. Everything's calm. We can't pick that up again. So I don't know whether they're related. I think it would be irresponsible to suggest that they are. It was a data point. It was something that we've included in our debrief with the Intel folks in the chain of command. And subsequent debriefs in the Pentagon with folks.

It's certainly an interesting detail. But, yeah, I don't know whether there was any... other systematic follow-through or investigation. Again, I was a lieutenant J.G. at the time. Yeah. There's Ensign and Lieutenant J.G. I'm a lieutenant, you know, so I had very little rank or authority or anything. Right.

It's not. Hey, Alex, go check out that roiling water over there, please. Yeah. You know, you have to do these in front. At the time, my situational awareness was low and my, you know, level of responsibility. And I had somebody who was actually when we were talking to, on the hill at Congress. And somebody said, well, why didn't you go to the USS Princeton and follow up with the radar operator? And I said, sir, I was on an entirely different ship.

in the Pacific Ocean. You know, I'm on a different vessel. How, like, how would I, how would I get to the other ship, first of a lot of logistics? And I was a lieutenant, JG. It wasn't my place to investigate or follow up or follow through in that way. You know, I debriefed to the Intel folks, debrief to the chain of command, and then it was out of my hands.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people forget, too, the split-second reactions that pilots go through, especially when you're observing something you've never really seen before. Your first thoughts are not, okay, make sure I'm recording this properly. All right, let me start writing down every single detail of what I'm saying. I can't even imagine everything that's going through your mind, let alone pushing a, UFO into that picture in dealing with that during an exercise. It's amazing.

Yeah. And I've spoken to this before that this was happening during an administrative phase of flight. So we'd just launched. We'd just taken off. We were just doing our rendezvous and our initial fuel checks and, you know, getting our everything sort of set to head to the cap point to then begin our military exercise, to go into tactical mode, that's when we would turn on our tapes.

That's when we would get ready to do all those things. And so the fact that we were interrupted in our normal flow, and we were in this administrative, you know, sort of takeoff mode, we weren't thinking about recording. And it was not part of our normal checklist. And so we really, that's another thing that I'm, You know, when I talk about this, and advocate for having a clear channel to report and a template to follow is to say, hey, and this would be for the radar operators on the Princeton, if you're seeing weird hits for days, if not weeks, before you vector pilots to get a visual, give them a heads up, tell them what we're, because, I mean, I don't know that they expected us to see anything. I think they really thought that it was just weird stray trons in their system.

I think they were as surprised as we were when we said, ah, there's something here. But, you know, it really would have been not just the professional thing to do, but the more productive thing to do would be to pre-brief us and say, hey, we're seeing weird hits. They don't make sense. But we're going to send you out to get a visual and see if there's something there. there. In that case, we would have

had our binoculars prepped. We have binoculars. We would have had our I think, I don't know, Go-Pro's worth thing at that point, but people had personal sort of cameras and gear that we could have strapped onto our helmets and used our

recording system in the chat. But, you know, we would have taken a much more collective, you know, we're in a collection posture than we're going out to do this military training exercise with these very tactical objectives that we were sort of calibrated to. Right. Interesting.

Last two questions on the Tic Tac, I promise. And then we will wrap things up, Alex. Let's see here. The German dude on Twitter asks, on a more personal level, has this experience changed you at all? religiously, spiritually, your thoughts, your beliefs. And then kind of on the flip side of that, did you experience any sort of like physiological or emotional effects during this event? I guess that's a two-prong question there.

Yeah. No, I didn't have a come-to-Jesus moment or, you know, I, no, it didn't change me. or my faith or my beliefs at all. I certainly was excited. I had a roller coaster of motions in the few minutes of the event, you know, from getting vectored to go intercept an unknown thing. We thought maybe it was drug runners coming up the coast from Mexico. You know, and that sort of had an exciting, oh, we're going to go get the bad guy.

eyes. And then again, my heart sinking when I thought that they had crashed and then, you know, the Tick-Tac entering stage left and sort of, oh, what is that? You know, so shock and awe and confusion. And, you know, so I sort of hit all of the emotional keys very quickly. But it wasn't traumatic. Again, I don't have nightmares or, relive the experience. You know, there were, everything was sort of buzzing for a day or two on the ship afterwards, but then again, we refocused and got ready to go deploy to, you know, real world, tangible,

known engagements that we had in the Middle East. So, yeah, it was really, again, a blip on my radar. All right. Chris, Chris over at the debrief, actually, how appropriate. Christopher Plain wants to know, is flying upside down as cool as it sounds? Yes.

Awesome. I couldn't ask for a better answer than that. No need for elaboration on that. Chris, I hope that answered your burning question, buddy. You don't have to be a strike fighter pilot, you know, to fly or to fly upside down. There are so many opportunities to get out there and fly. I would encourage folks, you know, just get a few hours. You don't have to even get your full private pilots license, but go out to your local airfield.

There's a lot of municipal airports. A lot of flying clubs. There are a lot of clubs for youth and, you know, young eagles and civil air patrol. They could use their support. Even if it was just going out and hanging out of the hangers, and doing a movie night or something like that. We did Girl Scouts in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum,

which was really fun. Warflights who talked to the girls all day about flying, and they gave us a case of Girl Scout cookies on the way home. Yeah, anybody who's interested or curious or wants to feel that joy of getting airborne, I would encourage you to do it. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC.

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with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. College PC. That's awesome. I have had quite a few individuals reach out me and say that, you know, their young daughters were inspired by, by hearing your story. Not just about the Tick-Tac, but just, you know, the accomplishments you've had.

And that was super cool to hear, you know, besides the whole UFO aspect of all this. It's clear you're a true inspiration to a lot of people out there as well. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Last question for you. What do you want to say? Any final words to the UFO community out there moving forward? I mean, we're on the precipice of something that we've never really seen in the United States and the world in general when it comes to this topic. It's more in the forefront than it's ever been before.

It's being taken more seriously. What are kind of, I guess, your last words you want to leave our audience with? Oh, I lost your video. No. Of course. There you are. Yeah, you're back. Paid to Black is my last one.

Thanks for your patience with me. And that is actually my advice. And I was having a few conversations recently in the DMs of Twitter, UFO Twitter, which are that you have to be patient. You have to be patient with each other. We have to be patient with this process. We have to be patient with. with the government.

There's all of this disclosure now and release the videos and release the, you know, where's the wreckage and all that? I, having, you know, been on that side, having still connections and folks who are working this issue in the Pentagon and going to the NASA panel in the fall

and, you know, there, these are, These are just people. These are just good, honest government servants. You know, they're not doing this for the money. They're certainly not getting paid enough to deal with all of the grief that they're putting up with. And they're trying to work within the law. You know, there's certainly a lot of regulation about what can be disclosed and how it can be disclosed.

And then they're trying to work within their resources. So whether it's manpower, funding for the tools and technology, you know, there's a lot of impatience. And I think Hollywood does us a big disservice because in all of these movies and TV shows, you know, the government sort of has this unlimited resource and all of these folks, the men in black, you know, behind the scenes working on this issue. I can tell you that it's just a couple of people working at these very austere offices, you know, at these like out-of-date desks with computer blitzing, you know, and they're trying, they're trying to work. And there is no conspiracy. there is no sort of cabal

that's happening behind the scenes it's good honest, hardworking folks that are trying to try to do what's right. So I would say be patient be patient with each other in this space.

Be patient with the debunkers. I think they're asking good questions and if we engage in civil dialogue, we can all hopefully come up with the answers that everybody's looking for. Absolutely. And, you know, I don't want to give away the ending to your article,

but it really spoke to me. You said, we barely tasted the sky. And that really stuck with me. And I think it's so true. We know so little about what's up there. And the possibilities are endless. What's that? You know, it's a reference to?

The Da Vinci? I don't know. Look it up, Da Vinci. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Yeah. Okay. Awesome.

I got to get back into my art history then, but I love that. I thought it was a perfect way to kind of to kind of wrap up all of this. You know, there's so much to look forward to and look up to instead of looking back and trying to answer these questions. Arrogent to, you know, assume that we have a. all the answers and that we understand everything, just as, you know, Da Vinci and his colleagues at the time. My final thought there is that it would be really arrogant to assume that we have

all the answers or that we've figured everything out. And so, you know, be patient and be humble. We need to keep being curious and asking the right questions, but also open-minded and listen as much as we talk, which on a podcast. Good point, good point. No, I think if we all listened a little bit more, we get much further with this conversation. Alex, I have to thank you. We had a million other listener questions,

but we'll have to have you back sometime. But, no, thank you for being so open with us tonight. Thank you for your service. And thank you for coming on somewhere in the skies. Thank you. The Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is part of the Lionsgate Sound Network. Please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever possible. Thank you for listening.

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