Dave Fravor was the best witness imaginable, but recent comments definitely show poor judgement

Our first article for the UAP section of EvolveFirst.org was aptly titled Too real to ignore, which covered the 2004 Tic Tac encounter. Four US Navy pilots in two F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft had “eyes on” an anomalous craft in perfect weather conditions. Commander Dave Fravor was one of these. The case was corroborated by radar and video data.

Witness testimony is notoriously unreliable or, at least, fallible - as I have previously written about. This is undisputed and well-known to law enforcement professionals. Nevertheless, some legal cases are successfully prosecuted on witness testimony alone, rightly so, when there is no forensic evidence available. And if I was a judge or a jury member, I’d accept Dave Fravor’s eye-witness testimony of what he saw in 2004. He was exceptionally trained to rapidly identify aerial objects and respond appropriately at combat speed. As a real-life Top Gun, nobody could be better qualified.

So this current article is not in any way questioning the validity of the Tic Tac case. Yes, it was five years later before Dave Fravor was seriously asked and questioned about what he had encountered - and much longer still until he talked publicly. But this time lag doesn’t change the fact that what he has reported was clear cut in terms of the relevant specific observations and events. And, yes, he would have exerted some influence over the other three pilots because the necessary camaraderie in a Navy squadron has some drawbacks as well as many benefits. But, again, this factor is likely irrelevant here. Alex Dietrich, who was flying the other Super Hornet, has also spoken publicly and is adamant that what she saw was anomalous.

As “ufology” has unfortunately muddied the waters - and dumped a ton of shit in it as well - anyone interested in UFOs or UAP must be extremely cautious. We have to be self-honest. Fooling ourselves will achieve nothing worthwhile - the opposite of getting to the truth of a matter. Again, I’ve previously written about the considerable pitfalls of “I want to believe”. We’re all extremely vulnerable. And this liability is magnified further if the individual is ignorant about psychology, including cognitive bias and confirmation bias, which amounts to the vast majority of people.

Okay, that’s the necessary recap of where we’re up to. Anyone unfamiliar with any of those three articles mentioned above would be well advised to temporarily break off at this point and get up to speed. My colleague Victoria (another trained psychologist) and I have just watched the latest Dave Fravor interview. A few parts of it were sufficiently worrying that this new article had to be written. To repeat: we are NOT challenging Dave Fravor’s testimony regarding the Tic Tac case.

Dave Fravor made several references to Bob Lazar during the podcast interview, clearly implying that he considers the Lazar story to be credible. He’s met Bob Lazar and talked with him, considering him to be “a very legitimate guy” and “very smart”. Bob Lazar, now in his sixties, undoubtedly can be personable and intelligent. Some of the best con men have these qualities in abundance. He has similarly fooled Joe Rogan, who also believes Bob Lazar is being truthful.

I’ve followed the Lazar story for the entire 34 years since it broke in 1989. A few months ago, we decided to write an article making clear why his claims cannot be trusted. A team of us actually spent many days going back over everything that is known - watching, listening, and reading it all, carefully considering the various and conflicting points of view - before we committed to the article. When we did begin to write, the decision had already been taken to keep it factual, in-depth, with the approach that the facts should talk for themselves without much comment from us. We deliberately left a number of additional damaging points out, knowing that the question about Bob Lazar’s (un)trustworthiness should be clear to anyone with reasonable thinking skills without us unnecessarily burdening the article with further laborious detail.

We could have been far more explicit in pointing out that obtaining a security clearance to work in a top secret facility such as Area 51 or similar isn’t easy, for example, let alone getting work at the alleged most-super-secret-of-all projects at the fabled “S-4”. When we briefly mentioned that Bob Lazar’s first wife, Carol, had a “criminal record”, this bit could have been considerably expanded to include reference to drug addiction, involvement with Hells Angels, and murder - which, in itself, would have been sufficient to stop any potential top secret authorisation dead in the water. A spouse with merely a loose tongue or average gambling problem is known grounds for rejection. We did briefly mention that Carol had committed suicide two days after Bob Lazar had married Tracy for the first, but not last time, whilst still being married to Carol - but we didn’t feel the need to point out that this act is, in criminal law, bigamy. This was all before he filed for bankruptcy in 1986, and regardless of an inadequate educational background. Anyone who believes Bob Lazar’s story either doesn’t know all of the on-the-record facts, or else is a conspiracy theory nutjob.

Dave Fravor also mentioned the Roswell incident. Again, I’ve carefully followed this for over 35 years since the story surfaced. And we recently made a film - Something DEFINITELY crashed at Roswell in 1947 - shot on location at the debris field and nearby, as well as in the city of Roswell, and elsewhere in New Mexico. We’d just finished making another film - The best UFO cases and what they suggest - shot outdoors in the US, which didn’t include Roswell. Spoiler alert: Our best assessment, after careful examination of all the details, is that whatever crashed near Roswell probably wasn’t an exotic vehicle. Anyone who has gone down the rabbit hole and wandered far along the dark tunnels knows that several silly claims have been made in addition to the core story, which are preposterous and easily debunked. But the facts of the basic claims relating to an event which definitely happened strongly point to a mundane explanation when everything is objectively considered.

It’s therefore unfortunate that Dave Fravor can fall foul of poor judgement regarding Bob Lazar and the Roswell incident. He’s willing to make bold statements about two cases which are bogus, thereby giving debunkers ammunition to potentially discredit (wrongly) his testimony regarding the Tic Tac encounter. This is nothing less than sloppy thinking, presumably as a result of insufficient knowledge, flying in the face of his extensive naval training and experience. However, all of this isn’t exactly surprising - and every pilot knows about the dangers caused by the “human factor”.

He also says “UAPs” at one point in the podcast, which is another indication of sloppiness, as well as susceptibility to herd mentality. As we’ve pointed out before, you can say UFO, UFOs, or UAP - but you cannot say “UAPs” because unidentified aerial/anomalous phenomena (UAP) already refers to the plural. We need exactness, always, when dealing with this UFO/UAP subject which has a long and murky history of amateur woolliness and illogical thinking. You couldn’t fly a Super Hornet, or become a Top Gun pilot, with such a slack or shabby mentality.

If anyone erroneously thinks I’m being unfair to Dave Fravor here, I should point out that the good man himself champions exactness. In the same podcast, he rightly criticises others for embellishing the facts of the Tic Tac case, as he knows them from being the primary witness. (And, yes, this does all illustrate contradictory behaviour - which is part of the current human dysfunction, keeping us stuck at a semi-primitive stage, which urgently needs to be overcome so we can progress further.)

There’s a valuable lesson to be learnt here. If Dave Fravor - who has had an outstanding career as a US Navy Commander, with only five minutes of his 24 years’ service involving contact with an anomalous craft - can be vulnerable to lower standards of thinking and judgement, others should most certainly reflect on their own deficiencies and impressionability. There’s a massive need for a complete re-think, whether it’s to do with getting to grips with UFOs/UAP or the wider considerations of life.

One final point. Talking about his close encounter with the Tic Tac, which he assesses to have been of non-human origin, Dave Fravor commented: “I never felt threatened at all.” This was despite him, as a top military pilot, making an aggressive manoeuvre towards it. Talk of these unknown craft or visitors being malevolent is, in our view, merely displacement and highly likely to be wrong. UFOs, foo fighters, flying saucers, or UAP have been whizzing around our skies since at least World War II - sometimes coming extremely close to military, commercial, and private aircraft - with no evidence of a single collision ever having occurred. And the War of the Worlds has yet to begin - whereas human beings do continue to be far less than their best.

Written by Iain Scott, 8th July 2023