Jul 21, 2026
On November 14, 2004, the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group Eleven steamed through the clear waters roughly eighty nautical miles west of San Diego beneath cloudless California skies. Unbeknownst to many on board, for nearly a week, operators deep inside the strike group’s Combat Information Center aboard the USS Princeton had been watching something they could not explain. Initially dismissed as equipment anomalies, the contacts refused to disappear, returning repeatedly and exhibiting flight characteristics that seasoned radar operators struggled to reconcile with anything they had encountered before.
This week on The Micah Hanks Program, we take a deep dive into the investigations by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP) and the evaluation of the historic Nimitz incident by its contractor group, Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. What does this candid look at the official side of investigations into the landmark case reveal, and what does it suggest about a recently proposed “explanation” for the historic UAP sighting?
SHOW NOTES
Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode.
- VIKING AT 50: Viking: 50 Years on Mars — Poster - NASA Science
- LIFE ON MARS? Did Viking 1 find life on Mars 50 years ago? Here's why the debate continues | Space
- LIFE IN THE WRONG PLACES: Astronomers May Have Been Looking for Alien Megastructures Around the Wrong Stars
- USS NIMITZ INCIDENT: When Top Gun Pilots Tangled with a Baffling Tic-Tac-Shaped UFO
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