Aguadilla Trans-Medium Video

Rafael Hernández Airport sits on Puerto Rico's northwest coast, at Aguadilla, with the Atlantic shoreline just beyond. On the evening of April 25, 2013, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection DHC-8 lifted off on a routine patrol. It carried a Wescam MX-15D turret, a mid-wave infrared camera set to "black hot." On that screen, hot things show dark.

About 9:20 pm, the crew spotted a pinkish to reddish light in the air above the Atlantic Ocean. It was moving toward the airport. The pilot called the tower. The controllers confirmed they could see the light as well. They did not know what it was.

According to the SCU, the research group that later analyzed the footage, the object passed directly over the runway and delayed a commercial departure. There was no squawking transponder signal to alert the tower. The crew have never been named. Their own words have never been published.

The camera found the object and held it for 3 minutes 54 seconds. The video is silent. It shows a small, roughly round thermal blob traveling through an urban area at night, at times below tree-top altitude, at speeds the SCU put at approaching 100 mph. It slips behind trees.

Then comes the moment that made the clip famous. The object descends to the ocean surface and appears to enter the water with minimal impact. It comes back out. It grows larger. It splits into two equal parts, and each drops back into the sea at a different time.

Around October 20, 2013, an anonymous official passed the video to the SCU. Its team, Robert M. Powell, Morgan Beall, Larry Cates, Carl Paulson, Richard Hoffman and Daina Chaviano, triangulated the object from on-screen timestamps, camera line of sight and aircraft position. They said FAA radar data supported its presence. Their report, released in August 2015, called it "the best documentation of an unknown aerial and submerged nautical object exhibiting advanced technology that the authors of this report have ever seen."

The Department of Defense posted the footage publicly in November 2024 as "Puerto Rico Objects." On March 20, 2025, AARO, the Pentagon's UAP office, delivered its case resolution. "AARO assesses with moderate confidence that the objects were a pair of sky lanterns." Its reconstruction showed two objects drifting in a straight line at about 8 mph, matching the wind. The disappearances, it said, were thermal crossover, the objects briefly matching the background temperature. Nothing entered the water.

The lantern idea was not new. In July 2017, retired Argentine Air Force commodore Rubén Lianza had proposed on Metabunk "a simple pair of wind-driven hot air lanterns in the shape of hearts, tied together, very likely released during a wedding party." He pointed to an east-northeast wind that night and to wedding resorts downwind of the airport, including the Villa Montana Beach Resort.

The SCU pushed back. By its geometry, any wind-borne object had to travel at least 16 mph, typically too strong a wind for a lantern to stay aloft. That is double AARO's figure. In April 2025 the group sent AARO five questions, asking for the reconstructed flight path and whether tower logs or military radar had been obtained. AARO acknowledged them. It was "not currently prepared to provide answers."

No one claims the footage was faked. Both sides accept it as genuine CBP video. The fight is over what it shows. Newscasts, podcasts and the 2025 documentary Puerto Rico's UAP have kept the question alive. Twelve years on, the Aguadilla object is still either two lanterns on the wind or something that flew, dove and divided.