It's been a long time since I've seen UFOs reported in mainstream media.
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<<video link with commentary>> (Spanish)


Edited to add more vid links.

Yeah, I just saw it on CTV Newsnet. At least they didn't put any "theories" forward.

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Isn't Mexico or the whole south american region a hot spot for UFOish type sightings?

Well, I'll toss out my speculative opinion (notice I didn't say "theory" or "proof"). Perhaps these phenomena fall into the catagory of "earth lights". Here in the USA strange lights similar to this have been seen in certain locations, the Brown Mt. lights in NC and the Marfa lights in TX. This could have more to do with earth science than aliens!

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

I also wonder if the aircraft picked the object up on radar. If it was just visual (night vision or IR) and not radar, it seems doubtful it was "an object".

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cnn, our nation's "other" source of the dim (FOX being first) is 'covering' it as well (by covering, I mean after months of hard training they have mastered both 'cut' and 'paste'

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americ....ap/index.html

*sigh* its been a bad news week. still, the Zetan Greys will save us. YAYYY

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I remember reading on CNN that three objects appeared on the radar.

Here is a link to a more extended video of the event:

http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/vi...68/detail.html

The conversation between the crew members shows a group of men excited and in awe. Their exchange reveals no key info to the case, except for the fact that they say the objects are at the same altitude as theirs, and that they were unable to identify them visually.

On the aftermath interview, one of the pilots says that the objects increased speed from 60 nods to perhaps 300 nods in a matter of seconds

Patricio! Great to see you.

I saw your partial transcript of the pilots' conversation from the video over on JREF.

Were the objects traveling at 60 knots to begin with, then accelerated to 300 knots? That's some pretty weak performance for an ET craft.

It'll be interesting to see what we're able to discover -- perhaps someone with a knack for this sort of thing will study the video and present some decent possibilities (I wonder if Mr. Oberg has seen the video yet...).

I have to say it sure looks like car headlights.

It looks like a sequence of car headlights from a highway. Perhaps reflected/refracted up from the ground much like a mirage. The parallel movement of the lights, the speeding up as their viewpoint moves (the refraction angle increases markedly) followed by disappearance.

All fun for a slow news day.

Robert.

Ye sure, and moving behind clouds...

Why not reason that it is a lens-flare from the guys who shot the film

Oh doodie...

Now CNN is hyping the Mexican story. It's a sad day for the media when woo woo's can charge hefty fees to be interviewed on "mainstream" news.

One might note that those were filmed with an infrared camera. Those aren't not only potentially "lights" but could just be "heat sources" like other planes, birds, ball lightning, hot pockets of gas, etc.

Pelicans, that winter in that area, fly in "straight line" formations.

What about this,
Only three of the objects showed up on the plane's radar.

They appeared to be flying at an altitude of about 3,500 metres and allegedly surrounded the air force jet

Lt. Vazquez insisted there was no way to alter the recorded images.

The plane's captain, Major Magdaleno Castanon, said the military jets chased the lights ?and I believe they could feel we were pursuing them.?

When the jets stopped following the objects, they disappeared, he said.

In the infra-red film I notice that a lot of the clouds appear to glow bright-white as well. In fact the film is very hazy indeed.

On this basis the lights could be any number of things. Birds, reflections, etc.

But then you'd think that experienced pilots would have a pretty good idea about what looks right, and what is out of the normal? Particularly from the perspective of their altitude and speed, etc.

In some reports the pilots claim to have been surrounded by the lights, and unable to close in on them. How long did the encounter last, though? I have seen no mention of this.

I reserve judgement.

Hi Wolv, nice to see you again!!

Yeah, the right word is "knot", sorry for the mis-spelling. The last officer in the interview speculates that the objects' speed was about 60 knots, increasing to some 300 knots, then he adds.... "something never seen before". Then the commentator says it was a sudden change in speed from 180 km/h to 540 km/h.

It's interesting to note that the pilots repeatedly say that the objects were at the same altitude as that of their plane, that rules out the possibility of car lights in a motorway, unless they made a gross mistake in the data interpretation in the instruments

Also one of the pilots seems to imply that they made eye contact with the objects, but were unable to identify them. According to the info on one of the frames of the radar screen (lower right), the event took place at about 5 PM (17 hours), so it was in the daylight. That fact also possibly rules out the "birds formation" explanation.

I was more surprised that Mexico has an Air Force than the UFOs!



Leave it to CNN to believe something made up. I haven't seen the footage, but some of it just looks like headlights of a car through the fog.

But I wonder if it has anything to do with Iran seeing "UFO's" lately or maybe they're just fast-high flying predator drones looking for "coyotes" and drug runners in Mexico...

*shrug*

I'm not about to question the intergrity of the Mexican military and have no doubt they believe they recorded "something," but I'm not about to jump on the UFO bandwagon just yet. I have a couple problems with this incident and hope that more information or analysis is forthcoming. The problems I have are:

I understand that these objects were invisible except by radar and IR. If otherwordly craft are able to render themselves invisible, why don't they do this all the time?

Why did only 3 of the "objects" show up on radar. Why not all of them or none at all?

What are actually the criteria for something to show up on radar? As far as I know it is:
- Altitude of an aircraft
- a 'detectable' volume/weight (a cloud doesn't show up an radar, so I assume weight must be taken into account with that)
- The shape of the aircraft must bouce back impulses (The Stealth fighter is known for it's shape)

That's all I can think of for now.
Would a (weather)balloon show up on radar, based on the above premises?

Do you really believe Mexicans are only capable of eating Taco's, after a 2 hour siesta?

I'm not really sure if a weather balloon would show up or not cuboctahedron. Based on the video, these objects seem to have met at least 2 of your criteria but only 3 registered on radar. I'll keep my eyes peeled for anything new out on the net regarding this incident and post it here. Hopefully there will be more info forthcoming.

This is one of those incidents that I file into the area of ... :-k It's one that defies easy explanation. But I will hold off on declaring them as real E.T."s until one lands in the Rose Garden and says "take me to your leader".

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Those who repeat History are doomed to learn it.

I bet it was those angel aliens from Battlestar Galactica. They were buzzing the Mexican airforce because President Fox is really Lucifer just like in those episodes.

Really the number of possibilities, especially considering drug traffic was involved are huge. If I was a drug trafficker being buzzed by fighters I would probably do all kinds of funny things to distract the pilots. Probably flares or drone decoys or rockets. Also the poor "image" quality isn't helping any woo woo cases out there. Since it's merely the thermal blooms we're seeing it could have been anything that has heat but the actual objects if any could have ranged in size from massive (and youre just seeing jet engine exhaust) to tiny (and you're just seeing bird body heat eminations).

It surprises me that people, without any meaningful contribution as to explaining what these sightings ('scientific') might be, are referring these sightings as woo-woo phenomina, characterized by postings absolutely useless, and basically 'windows-dressing' their own ignorance, or should I say lack of opinion.

I know this board will bash you (as I have experienced myself) if you leave gaps in personal reasoning unaccounted for, but in avoiding personal speculations or ideas, whatever they may be, just to save yourself from bashing doesn't leave much available room to seek answers to such phenomina.

A few centuries ago one would equally avoid being bashed if he/she would mention ideas for the fact that Earth might not be flat after all.

I am NOT saying they are ET's, but referring to this phenomina as Battlestar Galactica-ish, doesn't help us much neither.

Right you are, Cub, but it's no surprise to me. I've found there are nearly as many pseudoskeptics as there are woowoos.

Anyway...

I think the most important aspect of this story is the Mexican Air Force "officially" recognizing the event; this is a First.

Some additional info here.

Hmmm... for some reason your URL didn't come up, but when I quoted you I was able to see it.

Anyway, the first thing I saw when I got there was this:

How can you release footage of something that's invisible? That makes no sense. Obviously, it's visible.

As for you and cuboctahedron patting yourselves on the back for being so open-minded... that's fine, but it doesn't make you somehow better than those who reserve their judgment.

Why is the assumption on your part that these phenomena will be explained as aliens and not something natural?

The second there is a sighting, UFO lovers come running out of the woodwork screaming about how right there were, before there's any chance for any meaningful research. It's only natural that rational thinkers who have never seen evidence to support aliens might react with a little skepticism.

You don't really expect everyone here to embrace the idea of aliens just because the Mexican government saw something they couldn't identify do you?

I still stand on the fence regarding UFO phenomena myself, but the very tone of the article on CNN was a little hard for me to take. They pursued the lights, which seemed to "feel" this pursuit. I really don't think feelings are the way to go with this type of thing, especially if it's something you want to happen.

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"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

Actually A.DIM raises a good point. Do we look for a reasonable terrestrial source for these lights? Or dismiss them as the product of bored MAF pilots on a routine patrol?

"Pseudo-skeptic" sounds like rhetoric. I'm skeptical, not pseudo-skeptical. Anyway, I believe the Mexican Air Force recorded "something," but since it was in the IR spectrum there's no easy answers as to what was imaged. Hopefully there will be fruitful followup analysis. All too often these kind of stories make the news wires and then fade into oblivion unresolved.

These "UFOs" appear to be in two groups. Both groups are made up of three bright blurry spheres preceded and followed by one faint light. The positions of these groupings of lights mirror each other, (one group being a reflection of the other.) Looking carefully at the video there appears to be very faint blinking lights adjacent to the bright lights. This might indicate that these are blurry images of aircraft, with blinking tail-lights and that the mirrored effect of the image is a reflection shot through glass.

The objects might also be flares, which are small and bright. As flares don’t give much of a hint of scale, they don't appear to get larger as you fly toward them, and can also give the illusion that they are receding from you. In one segment, the lights appear to be moving across the screen.

These lights don't appear (from the video) to be higher than the aircraft that filmed them. They don't appear to be bright objects in orbit. They behave like flares or helicopters with bright lights.

From this, it is much more likely that they are unidentified man-made objects.

News directors likely find such stories useful as novelty and fluff between the more serious news of the day.

P.S. Some facts about the "Fuerza Aerea Mexicana" -
The Mexican Air Force has a long history and is presently equipped with American, Italian and Russian aircraft.

I'd like to see a better version of the video than what appears online. I maintained IR imaging systems in the USAF for several years and I have to say that if the online video comes close to the what the source video shows, it's a very poor (or poorly maintained) system. By today's standards, the system I worked on is antiquated but it when viewing planes, people, birds, or trucks with it, they pretty much looked like planes people, birds, or trucks.

Of course, there are a lot of factors I don't know...max lines of resolution, minimum resolvable temperature, magnification in use, etc. I also don't know if the system had a manual gain adjustment feature. If an object "blooms", it usually means it's IR emission is overloading the detector array...like pointing a video camera at a bright light. Turning down the gain might've revealed more detail.

With all that said, I didn't see any behavior on the video that couldn't be demonstrated by conventional aircraft.