AGUADILLA 2013

Opening

On the night of 25 April 2013, a US Customs and Border Protection aircraft climbing out of Rafael Hernández Airport in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, filmed a small warm object on its infrared camera. The object crossed the airfield, moved low over the coast, seemed to dive into the ocean and come out again, and at one point seemed to split in two.

The footage leaked in 2015, alongside an analysis by a private research group arguing the object moved far faster than wind and went in and out of water. In March 2025, the Pentagon's UAP office concluded it was most likely a pair of sky lanterns drifting on the wind.

Timeline

25 April 2013, around 21:20 local timeA CBP DHC-8 surveillance aircraft takes off from Aguadilla. The crew notices a light with no transponder signal near the airport. The infrared camera films it for a few minutes.

2015The video leaks online. The Scientific Coalition for Ufology (now the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, SCU) publishes a report. It estimates speeds of over 100 mph at times, says the object entered the sea without slowing, and argues that no balloon, bird, or known aircraft fits.

2015 onwardSceptical analysts, including Mick West, reconstruct the camera's position and the aircraft's orbit. They argue that parallax from the moving aircraft makes a slow object look fast, that the object drifts with the wind, and that "entering the water" is the object losing contrast against a sea of similar temperature.

20 March 2025The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) publishes its case resolution. It concludes with moderate confidence that the objects were sky lanterns moving at about 8 mph with the wind, and attributes the apparent water entry to thermal crossover.

Key figures

The CBP crew filmed the object and reported it. They're not named in the public material.

SCU wrote the strongest case for an anomaly and has disputed AARO's conclusion.

Mick West and other analysts argued for a wind-borne object before AARO did.

AARO made the official call in 2025.

Physical and documentary trail

What survives: the leaked video, SCU's 2015 report, independent reconstructions, and AARO's 2025 resolution. Air traffic and radar data from the night have been cited in some analyses, but haven't been published in full.

Nobody disputes that the video is real. The argument is entirely about what distance and speed it shows.

The objects did not exhibit anomalous speeds or other behavior exceeding known state-of-the-art performance characteristics.

Things you might not know

• The tower called it in. According to the SCU report, the crew was alerted by the control tower to an unknown red light heading for the airport.
• It was over Rafael Hernández Airport. The airport near Aguadilla is a former Air Force base.
• The video runs three minutes. The object itself is in view for about two of them.
• The "split" may be two lanterns. Supporters say the object comes out of the water and splits in two; AARO says the video shows two objects travelling close together from the start.
• The drift matched the wind. AARO's reconstruction put the objects' speed at about 8 mph, the speed of the wind that night.

Competing explanations

A transmedium object. SCU's reading is that the object travelled fast, entered the ocean, and came out again, which no known craft can do.

Sky lanterns. Two lanterns released that night, moving with the wind and dimming as they cooled or passed over water, explain the speed once parallax is accounted for, and explain the split as two objects separating. This is AARO's conclusion and the sceptics' reading.

Later life of the case

Aguadilla is still one of the most-watched UAP videos and a test case in the argument over whether AARO takes anomalies seriously. SCU has kept disputing the lantern conclusion.

Finding

A real government video, a detailed analysis in each direction, and an official resolution. The lantern explanation accounts for what the video shows without needing an object that moves between air and water. SCU's case depends on distance estimates that the moving camera makes hard to pin down.

What still will not resolve: the full radar and air traffic data from that night, which would settle the distance, and with it the speed.