off the atlantic coast. oh, got it! woo-hoo! roger. reporter: former navy fighter pilot alex dietrich told anderson cooper about seeing one off the coast of san diego. enter stage left, the tictac. that s what we affectionately refer to it as. reporter: it was about the size of an aircraft fuselage. it was white, like a matte finish just like a tictac. and it behaved in a way that we were surprised, unnerved. it accelerated. it almost didn t accelerate, it sort of jumped from spot to spot and tumbled around in a way that was unpredictable. reporter: former navy commander david fraver was on the training mission and
struggles to lock on to a mysterious fast-moving object off the atlantic coast. oh, got it! woo-hoo! roger. reporter: former navy fighter pilot alex dietrich told about seeing one off the coast of san diego. enter stage left, the tictac. that s what we affectionately refer to it as. reporter: it was about the size of an aircraft fuselage. it was white, like a matte finish just like a tictac. and it behaved in a way that we were surprised, unnerved. it accelerated. it almost didn t accelerate, it
neil: alright quick heads up for you if you are all flying next week, you could be running into delays because of an faa emergency inspection following that deadly engine explosion on southwest airlines flight. deirdre bolton is back with more on that what s going on? yeah, neil, the faa s directive to inspect these engines is coming after that fan blade on that southwest airline is a boeing 737-700 snapped off mid flight. it sprayed shrapnel and punctured the aircraft fuselage and that killed a passenger and so now the national transportation safety board investigators are going around looking for signs of cracking and metal fatigue as where they saw in that engine that had the problem at the point where the blade broke so the faa says all of this kind of engine has to be inspected in the next 20 days
reporter: in 2009 i asked explosives expert sydney alford to show me what a top al qaeda bomb maker was capable of. this is what six grams of petn does to something that is twice as thick as an aircraft fuselage. reporter: he mastered the white powder explosive petn. the al qaeda bomb maker made this, the underpants bomb targeting a u.s. passenger jet christmas 2009. here in russia, the rising question is likely to become who made the bomb that brought down metro yet 9268? was it isis, an isis affiliate, another radical islamic group or al qaeda? what we do know is that after the underpants bomb, al qaeda s bombs became even more sophisticated. 2010. printer bombs hidden in cargo on two planes. fortunately, they were
the prime minister s office itself. that lends some credibility, as you know, because the british are generally reticent to fan public concern or hysteria. and the second sourcing coming from the u.s. government about the concerns it may have been a bomb. number two, to speak to how this investigate is going to go, and we discussed a moment ago, the multi national parties involved here, but to look for signs of a bomb, they ll clearly be looking for explosive residue, but also they will look for any pitting or pock marks on the aircraft fuselage, any of those tell tale signs of a bomb. also, there s a chemical change in the metal they can detect that will give them a sense of whether it was an explosive. and if there was an explosive, did it explode from the inside out and if so, from what portion of the aircraft did it occur? was it the fuselage, the fuel tank, the rear of the plane? all of that will be telling to them. even more important, to really underscore this entire