Documents / Official release
This is a case resolution report from the Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), dated 20 March 2025. It covers infrared video taken on April 26, 2013 by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft over Rafael Hernandez Airport near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. AARO found with high confidence that the video shows two objects drifting at wind speed over land, not one object splitting or entering the ocean. It assessed with moderate confidence that they were sky lanterns.
UNCLASSIFIED 3 UNCLASSIFIED Performance Characteristics Object Speed: Systems Toolkit (STK) reconstruction determined the objects drifted at approximately 3.6 meters per second (8 mph) in a straight line over land, consistent with the recorded wind speed of 4.4 meters per second (9.8 mph) from the east/northeast.2 The objects’ apparent high speed is attributable to motion parallax. Motion parallax is an optical effect that induces an observer to perceive that a stationary or slow-moving object is moving much faster than its actual speed when viewed from a moving frame of reference. The more quickly an observer moves relative to an observed object, the more pronounced this effect is. In this case, the aircraft's flight speed, the sensor’s zoom, and the change in relative positions of the aircraft and the objects influenced their perceived behavior and performance characteristics. Object Flight Path: STK reconstruction integrated the aircraft's position with key sensor parameters (e.g., elevation, azimuth, and slant angle) to model the objects’ flight path. The IR sensor first detected the objects near the northeastern side of the airport at an altitude of approximately 200 meters (656 feet). The objects drifted southwest at wind speed before the IR sensor lost contact with them over the airport's central parking apron. AARO reconstructed the sensor’s look angle by plotting the aircraft's position and the sensor's view-to-ground projection onto a map (Figure 1). The reconstruction demonstrates that the objects remained over land during the encounter. Apparent Separation: AARO assesses with high confidence that the recording captures two objects traveling near each other rather than a single object splitting or replicating. The objects visibly separate multiple times within the first minute, suggesting that the video depicts two objects the entire time. Separation occurs at approximately 00:29.56, 00:40.76, and 00:47.00 seconds (Figure 2). The IR sensor’s view of the objects changed from side-on to top-down as the aircraft gained altitude. The sensor’s steeper viewing angle from a higher altitude likely made the objects' separation more visually dramatic near the end of the video (Figure 3, Image C). Apparent Transmedium Behavior: The STK reconstruction demonstrates that the objects did not exhibit transmedium performance characteristics. “Transmedium” refers to objects that transition between two or more domains, e.g., space, the atmosphere, or water, in ways not attributable to known technologies. The objects remained over land throughout the video. Page determined to be Unclassified Reviewed by Chief of Staff, AARO IAW FY24 NDAA, Section 1841(a)(1)(C) Date: 3/20/2025 010
Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 7 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.