Alex Dietrich

Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich (Ret.) is a former U.S. Navy strike-fighter pilot who witnessed the now-famous "Tic Tac" UAP encounter on November 14, 2004, while flying with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. She has since testified before Congress and the NASA UAP Independent Study Team (IST), and has spoken publicly about reducing the stigma around UAP reporting.

What did Alex Dietrich witness in 2004?

On November 14, 2004, Dietrich flew as wingman to Cmdr. David Fravor during a routine training exercise about 100 miles southwest of San Diego. The USS Princeton had detected what operators described as "multiple anomalous aerial vehicles" descending from over 80,000 feet in less than a second. Dietrich and Fravor were diverted to investigate.

Four crew members total witnessed the object from both F/A-18F aircraft. They observed a white, oblong object, shaped like a Tic Tac, hovering above a disturbed area of ocean surface with no wings, markings, exhaust plumes, or visible means of propulsion. When Fravor attempted to close on it, the object ascended rapidly and disappeared. The USS Princeton then detected it approximately 60 miles away within seconds.

What has she said publicly about the encounter?

Dietrich appeared with Fravor on CBS News "60 Minutes" on May 16, 2021, describing seeing "this little white Tic-Tac-looking object" with "no predictable movement, no predictable trajectory." She described the experience as unsettling: "It was unidentified. And that's why it was so unsettling to us. Because we weren't expecting it. We couldn't classify it."

She has also stated that the object's flight characteristics, hovering and then instantly accelerating and turning, were "incompatible in our current configurations, in our current technology, with the fuel we have, with the materials that we have." She has publicly said it would be "arrogant," "reckless," and "foolish" to draw conclusions about what the object was.

What is her military background?

Dietrich served in the U.S. Navy from 2001 until 2014, described as one of the nation's first female strike-fighter pilots. She flew an F/A-18F Super Hornet with the VFA-41 "Black Aces" squadron at NAS Lemoore, California, from 2001 to 2007. She logged more than 1,250 flight hours and performed 375 carrier-arrested landings. She served two combat deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, and completed a yearlong boots-on-ground assignment as an infrastructure reconstruction engineer in Ghazni, Afghanistan. She was awarded a Bronze Star and Air Combat Medal.

What has she done since leaving the Navy?

After separating from the Navy, Dietrich taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a Naval Science instructor at a Washington, D.C. university consortium. As of 2023, she is an instructor in the Lockheed Martin Engineering Management Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In November 2023, Enigma Labs announced she had joined as an official advisor focused on data-driven approaches to UAP reporting. She has stated her broader goal is to "normalize" UAP reporting and reduce the stigma associated with pilots disclosing unexplained aerial encounters.

How has her account shaped the broader UAP conversation?

Dietrich testified before the NASA UAP Independent Study Team and appeared at the July 26, 2023 House Oversight Committee hearing on UAP. NASA IST member Mike Gold cited her account in written congressional testimony as a prime example of how stigma around UAP prevents the gathering of valuable data, noting that Dietrich was mocked by colleagues and ignored by superiors for years after the encounter. The Pentagon officially released video of the 2004 Nimitz encounter in April 2020.