The Aguadilla Incident

Rafael Hernandez Airport, Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. April 25, 2013. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft running a surveillance flight filmed something small, fast, and strange on its thermal-infrared camera — an object that appeared to cross the runway threshold, hug the coastline, split into two, and then dip toward the Atlantic. The footage leaked. Analysts argued about it for a decade. In March 2025, the Pentagon's AARO office published a formal case resolution. The argument did not stop.

What happened

The CBP aircraft was operating near Rafael Hernandez Airport when its thermal camera picked up a small object moving at low altitude. The object appeared to travel at high speed along the coast, then — in the footage — seemed to split into two distinct objects before descending toward the water. The video circulated publicly and became one of the more technically debated pieces of UAP footage of the 2010s, largely because it came from a government platform, not a shaky phone camera.

The Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies conducted a frame-by-frame infrared and radar analysis and concluded the object was genuinely anomalous — not a known aircraft, bird, balloon, or lantern. Their report described apparent transmedium behavior (the object appearing to enter the water and re-emerge) and argued the split represented a real division into two objects. SCU has not retracted the report.

What the explanations don't explain

The lantern explanation is coherent. It is not airtight.

SCU's analysis disputed the parallax framing directly, arguing the apparent speed exceeded what wind-drift and camera motion could account for. Their report also addressed the split as a genuine bifurcation, not a resolution artifact. The Black Vault noted the tension between AARO's resolution and SCU's prior work — two groups, both doing technical analysis, reaching opposite conclusions from the same footage.

The core dispute is methodological: how you model the aircraft's flight path and camera geometry determines whether the object's apparent speed is explainable by parallax or not. AARO and West say it is. SCU says it isn't. Nobody has produced the original raw sensor data with full metadata, which would settle the geometry question.

What did the Aguadilla UAP footage actually show?

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection thermal-infrared camera filmed a small, low-altitude object near Rafael Hernandez Airport in Puerto Rico on April 25, 2013. The object appeared to move at high speed, split into two, and descend toward the ocean — behaviors that analysts have disputed ever since, with explanations ranging from sky lanterns to genuinely anomalous flight.

What did AARO conclude about the Aguadilla incident?

In a March 2025 case resolution report, AARO concluded with high confidence that the footage shows two small objects drifting at approximately 8 mph, consistent with wind speed, and with moderate confidence that those objects were sky lanterns. AARO attributed the apparent speed to parallax, the 'split' to camera angle resolving two separate objects, and the 'water entry' to a thermal-imaging artifact.

Why do some researchers still dispute the sky lantern explanation?

The Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies conducted an independent frame-by-frame infrared and radar analysis and concluded the object's apparent speed and behavior couldn't be accounted for by parallax and wind drift alone. SCU has not retracted its report, and the core disagreement comes down to how each group modeled the aircraft's flight path and camera geometry — a question that full raw sensor metadata could settle but hasn't.

Did the object really enter the water in the Aguadilla footage?

Both AARO and Mick West at Metabunk argue the apparent water entry is a thermal-imaging artifact — the objects cooling past the infrared crossover point and briefly blending with the ocean surface in the camera image, not an actual transmedium event. SCU's analysis described apparent transmedium behavior, but this remains one of the most contested specific claims in the case.

Is the Aguadilla case officially closed?

AARO published a formal case resolution in March 2025 classifying it as resolved — sky lanterns drifting at wind speed. The Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies has not accepted that resolution, and their prior analysis remains unretracted. 'Officially closed' and 'universally accepted as closed' are two different things here.

The Aguadilla Incident

What happened

The GoFast Video

The GIMBAL Video

The Stephenville Sightings

Contested

The evidence