Originally published 2021-05-18.
Sean Cahill is a retired US Navy Chief Master-at-Arms who, in November 2004, was serving aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton off Southern California during the encounter now known as the "Tic Tac" UFO incident. In a May 2021 interview on CNN he described a smooth, oval object with no wings, no visible engines and no exhaust, which he believed showed technology far beyond anything the US military had. His comments came weeks before the US intelligence community published its first official report on what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP.
So what did he and the other witnesses actually report, what have official investigations concluded since, and how much of it remains unexplained? Here is a clear, evidence-first look.
The 2004 Tic Tac encounter in brief
In November 2004 the USS Nimitz carrier strike group was training in the Pacific off San Diego. Radar operators on the Princeton had reportedly been tracking unusual returns for several days. In mid-November, F/A-18F pilots led by Commander David Fravor were sent to investigate. Fravor and fellow pilot Alex Dietrich later said they saw a white, oblong object, roughly 40 feet long, moving erratically above a patch of disturbed water before it shot away.
Later that day, Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood recorded an infrared video of an object with his jet's targeting pod. He nicknamed it the "Tic Tac" for its shape. That clip, known as FLIR1, became public in December 2017 through The New York Times and was formally released by the Pentagon in April 2020, together with two later videos known as GIMBAL and GOFAST.
What Sean Cahill said on CNN
Cahill's role on the Princeton was security, not flying, so his account is that of a ship-based witness rather than a pilot. Speaking to CNN in May 2021, he said the object had no control surfaces and no propulsion the crew could detect, that it moved at extraordinary speed, and that it seemed to reach the pilots' planned rendezvous point before they did. His most quoted line was that the technology "outstrips our arsenal by at least 100 to 1,000 years."
It is worth reading that estimate for what it is: an impression from an experienced sailor, not a measurement. Nobody can derive a number of years of technological advantage from a sighting. What his testimony does add is another named witness to an event that several crew members have described in similar terms.
Other military voices in 2021
Cahill was not alone. In a CBS 60 Minutes segment broadcast on 16 May 2021, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves said his F/A-18 squadron began seeing unidentified objects over restricted training airspace southeast of Virginia Beach in 2014. Asked how often, he answered: "Every day for at least a couple years." He said the objects showed up on radar and infrared sensors at the same time, which made a simple glitch unlikely in his view.
Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence who served under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, appeared on both CBS and CNN. He argued that the US was seeing repeated incursions into its airspace by vehicles it could not identify and called it an intelligence failure. On 60 Minutes he said he was confident the objects were not American technology.
What the June 2021 government report found
The report Cahill's interview anticipated was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on 25 June 2021. The nine-page preliminary assessment reviewed 144 reports from US military personnel, mostly Navy, between 2004 and 2021.
- Only one case was explained with high confidence: a large, deflating balloon.
- Eighteen incidents involved apparently unusual movement, such as staying still in strong wind or moving abruptly without visible propulsion.
- Eleven reports described near misses with aircraft, which is why the issue is treated as a flight-safety concern.
- The report proposed five possible categories: airborne clutter such as birds, balloons or drones; natural atmospheric phenomena; secret US government or industry projects; foreign adversary systems; and "other".
Crucially, the report did not conclude that any object was extraterrestrial. It said the data were too limited to say what most of them were.
What has been learned since
In July 2022 the Pentagon replaced its UAP task force with the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO. Its first annual report, in January 2023, counted 510 reports in total. Roughly half of the new cases reviewed turned out to have ordinary explanations, mostly balloons, drones and clutter, while the rest stayed uncharacterised because of thin data.
In March 2024 AARO published a historical review of US government UFO investigations going back to 1945. It found no empirical evidence that any sighting represented alien technology, or that the government was hiding recovered craft. AARO has also said it continues to study a small number of cases it describes as genuinely anomalous, and a further release of declassified UAP records in 2026 likewise did not confirm extraterrestrial technology.
Common myths and reasonable explanations
Myth: "unidentified" means alien. The word only means the object was not identified with the data available. Officials have repeatedly stressed that most unresolved cases simply lack enough information.
Myth: the videos prove impossible speeds. Analysts such as science writer Mick West have argued that some apparent motion in the GIMBAL and GOFAST clips can be explained by camera rotation, parallax and infrared glare. The Tic Tac video itself is short and low in detail, and it does not show the dramatic manoeuvres the pilots described seeing with their own eyes.
Other explanations researchers consider include drones, balloons, foreign surveillance technology, sensor errors and even electronic spoofing of radar. None of these fully accounts for every account of the 2004 event, which is why it remains one of the most discussed cases. Equally, no evidence has emerged that the object came from beyond Earth.
Why the Tic Tac case still matters
Whatever the objects were, the pilots' central point has been taken seriously: aircrew need a way to report strange sightings without stigma, and unknown objects in training airspace are a safety and security issue. Congress has since required regular reporting, and the military now collects these accounts systematically instead of quietly filing them away.
For readers, the healthy position is curiosity with a clear head. Cahill, Fravor, Dietrich and Graves are credible witnesses describing something they could not explain. Explaining it still requires better data, and so far the data that exist point to many ordinary answers and a handful of open questions, not to visitors from another world.
Sources: Futurism: Sean Cahill and Christopher Mellon on CNN (May 2021); CBS News 60 Minutes: UFOs regularly spotted in restricted US airspace (May 2021); Wikipedia: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena; Wikipedia: Pentagon UFO videos and the USS Nimitz incident; Wikipedia: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
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