Gary Voorhis Jr.

Navy Service & Nimitz Incident

Gary Voorhis Jr. served as a fire control-man and Aegis Computer/Combat Information Center (CEC) technician aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton during the 2004 Nimitz carrier strike group exercises off the coast of San Diego. Responsible for two of the Princeton's advanced combat systems, Voorhis held a security clearance for classified materials and was trained on the W.A.S.P. military reconnaissance UAV during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

On November 10, 2004, Voorhis detected an unidentified object on radar beginning to maneuver erratically roughly 100 nautical miles off the coast. The radar signature was unlike any known aircraft or missile system. Four days later, on November 14, 2004, the object became the subject of the now-famous USS Nimitz tic-tac encounter. Voorhis observed the object through binoculars, witnessing its dramatic speed variations—ranging from approximately 25,000 to 30,000 feet altitude down to sea level—with impossible acceleration and deceleration for conventional aircraft. His technical expertise and eyewitness account remain central to the credibility of one of the US military's best-documented UAP cases.

UAPx Leadership

In August 2019, Voorhis co-founded UAPx (UAP Expeditions) alongside Senior Chief Kevin Day and Jason Turner—all three Nimitz incident witnesses—as a 501(c)(3) Federal non-profit scientific research organization dedicated to the scientific study of UAPs using advanced sensor suites. As President and Board Chair, Voorhis has led the organization's research initiatives and field expeditions.

In December 2023, UAPx released the pre-print of its first peer-reviewed scientific paper, analyzing data from its 2021 field expedition. The research was conducted by an interdisciplinary team including physicists Dr. Matthew Szydagis, Dr. Kevin Knuth, and Dr. Cecilia Levy from the University at Albany SUNY, alongside UAPx members Voorhis, Ben Kugielsky, and Jeremy McGowan. The paper represents one of the first rigorous scientific analyses of UAP field data in the modern disclosure era, bridging military eyewitness accounts with academic physics.

Plan to transition UAPx into a university-backed research program were underway in late 2025, promising continuation of the work under institutional support. Voorhis has become a regular speaker at UAP conferences and a guest on documentaries including Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.