Dude this whole ridiculous affair is so deliciously tongue-in-cheek it's like an Area 51 patch made real. An F-18 has a 37 foot wingspan. It's 52 feet long. We're talking about the aviation equivalent of "I was tailgating my buddy when suddenly a car swooped in between the two of us - it looked like a sphere encasing a cube." There is ample evidence that the CIA played up the whole UFO craze because it's an excellent distraction. Read your quote again: The quote is that the video was seen by "eyeballs." Yet here we are, speculating about magical drone technology fifteen years ago. Glowsticks aren't nearly bright enough. The trick my uncle pulled was you get a roll of dry cleaners bags, which are essentially a single long tube of very lightweight plastic. You roll out 50 feet or so and heat seal one end, then fill the other with propane. You then tie off the other end with a good long length of cannon fuse. Hold balloon upright. Light fuse. Release balloon. As soon as cannon fuse burns down to balloon, balloon will ignite in a spooky, soundless bluish-orange flame, leaving no evidence that it was ever there.
There would be associations. I would be sitting at lunch five years later with some of my colleagues. Rumors tend to have legs. “Hey, you were out on the Nimitz in ’04. Someone told me about some alien spacecraft.” And I’m like, “Well, (1) the video that you see is my video. And no, I’ve never said that this is what I think it was or speculate as to what I think it was. That’s not my job. But I saw something. And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well.
I keep meaning to tie glowsticks to some helium balloons and launch them at night.