USS Princeton (CG-59)
USS Princeton (CG-59) is a United States Navy Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser — the ship whose AN/SPY-1B radar system tracked the unidentified aerial phenomena for approximately two weeks before the Nimitz encounter of November 14, 2004, establishing the sustained radar track record that distinguishes the Nimitz incident from single-observer UAP reports and that forms the evidentiary foundation of subsequent UAP disclosure analysis.
Role in the Nimitz incident
In late October–early November 2004, Princeton's SPY-1B radar began detecting objects descending from extreme altitude to approximately 20,000 feet, holding briefly, and then departing at speeds that exceeded radar tracking capability. Princeton's Senior Chief Operations Specialist Kevin Day logged the contacts and communicated their anomalous characteristics to the carrier strike group. On November 14, Princeton vectored F-A-18 Hornet pilots — including Commander David Fravor — to intercept one of the objects approximately 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. Fravor's visual observation of the "Tic Tac" object correlated with Princeton's simultaneous radar track loss.
Fravor provided a detailed account of the Princeton's role in the intercept: "We're on the carrier. We've got a cruiser, we've got all the support ships out there, and we're going to integrate all the defenses and train as one unit. So, the exercise that we're going to do is an air defense exercise... we're going to work with the USS Princeton, which is going to be the controller, and they're going to control the blue forces... they would show up for two weeks before. They'd been tracking these things coming out of the sky... the USS Princeton is tracking them. They saw them on the Nimitz's radar and the E-2 could see them."
The intercept communication
The critical moment of Princeton's role came when its controller vectored Fravor's flight from the training exercise to a real-world intercept. Fravor described the exchange: "The controller had told us that these objects had been observed for over two weeks coming down from over 80,000 feet, rapidly descending to 20,000 feet, hanging out for hours and then going straight back up. For those who don't realize, above 80,000 feet is space."
Princeton's Combat Information Center tracked the intercept in real time, calling merge plot (the moment when Fravor's radar and the object's radar return merged into a single resolution cell) when the aircraft reached the object's position. After Fravor's visual observation and the object's disappearance, the Princeton controller made the observation that anchored the incident's most extraordinary claim: "The controller on the Princeton comes up and says, sir, you're not going to believe this, but that thing is back at your CAP point — that was our original point where we were going to hold, 40 miles south of the ship — so this thing went from wherever we were at to about 60 miles in maybe 30 to 40 seconds. It's already over there and it just appears, it just shows back up on the radar."
Active jamming of aircraft radar
Princeton's role extended beyond passive tracking: Fravor's Congressional testimony identified active jamming of the pursuing F/A-18's radar as an additional capability of the object. When the second crew dispatched with a targeting pod attempted to lock on with their APG-73 radar: "he goes to lock it up and immediately the radar can tell it gets signals back that it's being jammed. And technically jamming is an act of war. It starts jamming, the radar goes into a jam extrapolation." The crew switched to their passive FLIR targeting pod and captured what became the FLIR1 video.
At the 2023 congressional hearing, Fravor made the jamming capability explicit: "What you don't see is the radar tape that was never released and we don't know where it's at, the active jamming that the object put on an APG-73 radar. And I can get into modes that it shut down, but it shut down certain modes on the radar on the airplane that was doing the intercept with the targeting pod."
Missing radar tape
A critical evidentiary gap in the Nimitz incident concerns the Princeton's radar tape — the electronic recording of the two-week track that would constitute the primary instrument record of the objects' behavior. Fravor testified that this tape "was never released and we don't know where it's at." The non-release of the Princeton radar tape has been raised repeatedly in congressional oversight hearings as an example of the information management pattern surrounding UAP incidents: physical evidence collected through standard procedures that subsequently disappears from the chain of custody without explanation.
Significance for UAP evidentiary standards
The Princeton's SPY-1B data — combined with the USS Nimitz's AN/ALQ-99 jamming pod sensor data recorded when the F/A-18s were in close proximity to the object — represents the multi-sensor, multi-platform, multi-observer evidence set that Luis Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, and Tim Burchett have cited as meeting intelligence community evidentiary standards for genuine unknowns. The two-week prior radar track rules out a one-time instrumentation anomaly.
Fravor described the technology of the SPY-1 system to convey why the track was significant: "The SPY-1 system on an Aegis cruiser is probably one of the most sophisticated systems in the world." The SPY-1B is a phased-array radar capable of tracking hundreds of targets simultaneously at ranges beyond 200 nautical miles, making its sustained two-week track of objects descending from above 80,000 feet — a realm normally accessible only to ballistic missiles and high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft — an anomaly that could not be attributed to atmospheric ducting or other common false-return phenomena.
Fravor described the object in his congressional testimony: "a small white Tic Tac object with a longitudinal axis pointing north south and moving very abruptly over the water like a ping pong ball. There were no rotors, no rotor wash, or any sign of visible control surfaces like wings."
Fravor's description of the Princeton's role
In a 2020 interview with Lex Fridman, Fravor provided additional details about his interaction with the Princeton's controllers. He described the SPY-1 system as "an incredible spy one system phased array four panels so it looks in and quadrants" and recounted the moment the controller informed him of the two-week tracking history: "sir, we've been tracking these things for about two weeks. That's, we had been at sea for two weeks. He goes, this is the first time we've had planes airborne. We want you to go see what these are."
Fravor also described the Princeton controller's report of the object's reappearance at the CAP point after the encounter: "hey sir, you're not going to believe this, but that thing is at your cap. It showed back up, it just popped up. You know, this is like 60 miles away. It just reappears."