FigureAlex Dietrich (b. 1976)

United States Naval Academy 1999. F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot with strike fighter squadron VFA-41 “Black Aces” aboard USS Nimitz, ranked Lieutenant Commander at the time of the 14 November 2004 Tic Tac encounter. Dietrich was the pilot of the wing aircraft of the second intercept pair vectored to investigate the Princeton’s radar contact; her WSO was Lt. Cmdr. Mike Day. The FLIR1 video, the principal physical artifact of the Nimitz encounter and the first of the three Navy videos released by the Pentagon in April 2020, was captured from her aircraft’s ATFLIR pod.

Dietrich continued her Navy career after the 2004 encounter to the rank of Commander before retiring from active service in 2021. She served as an instructor at the Naval Academy and at the Pentagon’s Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Her first on-camera interview about the Nimitz encounter was with CBS 60 Minutes on 16 May 2021, in conjunction with the segment featuring David Fravor and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Dietrich’s account corroborates Fravor’s in all material respects: the visual observation of the white Tic-Tac-shaped object, the disturbed-water area beneath it, the rapid acceleration and disappearance, the Princeton’s relocation of the object 60 miles away at the next CAP point in seconds.

Dietrich is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) where she works on technology and national security issues. Among the post-2017 Navy on-record UAP witnesses, her dual role as a corroborating eyewitness to a senior commander’s account and as a continuing-service officer who waited 17 years before discussing the encounter publicly has given her testimony a particular weight in congressional and policy reception. She did not testify in the 26 July 2023 House Oversight hearing but has briefed congressional staff in classified setting per her public statements.