USS Jackson UAP Encounter Revealed: Navy Crew Describes 2023 'Tic Tac' Sighting Over Pacific

EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—A previously undisclosed video of a 2023 U.S. Navy encounter with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) was just released by investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp. The incident, which occurred on February 15, 2023, involved the USS Jackson, an Independence-class littoral combat ship, and was officially revealed to the public in April 2025 through an episode of Corbell and Knapp’s Weaponized podcast.

The release includes infrared video showing four luminous, tic-tac-shaped objects hovering near the USS Jackson while it operated off the coast of Southern California near San Diego. In one sequence, an object appears to ascend from beneath the ocean surface. The objects, according to the crew, departed in unison and disappeared from radar.

Operations Specialist Senior Chief Alex Wiggins, a Navy radar operator aboard the USS Jackson with 23 years of experience, shared his account in the April 9, 2025 episode of Weaponized:

“I saw this craft come out of the water. It's nighttime, so I want to be clear when I say what I saw. I saw a light, and it was a decently bright light. So when you've been on the water as long as I have, you know the difference between an aircraft carrier's lights, the difference between an oiler's lights, a fishing, a cargo ship. It's what we learn when we freshly come into the Navy, especially as an operation specialist. We have to learn silhouettes, we have to learn lighting structures, things of that nature. It's just part of what our job, being senior enlisted, it's become part of very basic elementary things,” said Wiggins.

“So watching this light emerge from the water at a distance and then go into the air with a solid light — no blinking or anything — I’ve never noticed that and witnessed that ever in my life. That's kind of what triggered me to go back to my instrument, check it out, talk with the watch team and ask them: “are you seeing what I'm seeing? Let's use other sensors, let's use what we got to see what we're witnessing…that's why we got SAPPHIRE (thermal targeting system) to look in that direction and notice what we noticed."

The USS Jackson footage, which can be seen in its entirety on Weaponized, shows the objects glowing on infrared sensors without obvious signs of propulsion or heat signature. After the video ends, Wiggins alleged he saw the strange objects fly off.

“The video stops, and the CSM (Command Security Manager) zooms out, and as the CSM zooms out, we notice that there's a total of four. Now, on radar I already noticed that the one that I was looking for visually, and I noticed other contacts in that same location, but when we first zoomed in on the contact in the video that you see, we only saw the one, and then we see the second one. It was only when we zoom out we realize holy crap there's two more out here — a total of four. And so we're just watching, what's the point of looking away? You know we're witnessing something that most people don't get a chance to witness in their life, so we're just watching on SAPPHIRE and we're tracking it and SAPPHIRE is tracking one of them and it's tracking and tracking and tracking, and as time goes by we're like let's just watch. I would say maybe 20, 30 seconds pass after the video stops and all of a sudden you just see all four of them take off to the northeast all at the same time, just out of nowhere, and if I had to talk speed, I would say it’s like maybe two steps behind instantaneous. It wasn't like if you blink it's gone. We had time to watch them go off into the distance, like but really instantly. No noise, no sonic boom, no effects in the water that cause rippling in the water, nothing. Nobody was affected, nothing was affected. We didn't get a gust of wind to hit us or anything else. I’m not a scientist but anything else that could have been disturbed with that level of speed was not disturbed.”

“They all executed at the same time, leaving. It's not like three of them left and then one was kind of like a little behind them, no. It was in they were all in sync at the same time,” said Wiggins. “My thoughts were either they synced together like we do in the Navy, and we all take off at the same time, or get in formation at the same time and execute the order at the same time. Or, one entity is controlling all four of those objects at the same time and they're just synced together all four objects.”

The visual characteristics and behavior of the objects align with what have been described as “Tic Tac” UAPs — named after the now-famous 2004 sighting by Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group off the same Southern California coast. That case, declassified in part in 2017, featured an oblong, white object that moved at hypersonic speed and displayed flight characteristics outside known aerodynamic capabilities. The “Tic Tac” case helped galvanize public and government interest in UAPs, leading to congressional hearings and the formation of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) within the Department of Defense.

Jeremy Corbell, who has obtained and released multiple UAP videos from military sources over the past several years, described the Jackson encounter as “a significant example of transmedium travel” — objects appearing to operate both in the air and underwater.

“This was a coordinated event,” Corbell said in the episode. “And it was captured on military sensors. The American public has a right to know that these events are happening.”

Knapp, a veteran investigative reporter who has covered UAPs for decades, emphasized the importance of whistleblower testimony.

“We need more people like Wiggins,” Knapp said. “It’s clear that something extraordinary is happening here, and we’re only just beginning to document it.”

The Department of Defense has not publicly commented on the USS Jackson encounter. It is unknown whether the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has catalogued this event in its internal investigations or upcoming reporting to Congress.

While the origin of the USS Jackson objects remains unknown, the new testimony and video further fuel the ongoing debate about the presence of advanced aerial technologies in restricted U.S. airspace — and what, if anything, government agencies know about them.