Puerto Rico, EE.UU.Puerto Rico, U.S..Aguadilla Puerto RicoAguadilla Puerto Rico

On April 25, 2013, around 21:20, a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) DHC-8 Dash 8 aircraft, equipped with a WESCAM MX-15 thermal camera system for anti-narcotics surveillance, took off from Rafael Hernández International Airport in Aguadilla, on the far northwest tip of Puerto Rico. Both the crew and, per the report, control-tower personnel detected a small object moving at low altitude, and the FLIR system operator began tracking it with the thermal camera.

Over just over three minutes, the infrared video records an unusual sequence: the object moves over land at low altitude, crosses the coastline out over the Atlantic Ocean with no appreciable change in speed or trajectory — the air-water 'transmedium' behavior that defines the case — submerges and re-emerges, and at one point splits into two discrete objects that continue on separate trajectories. The object appears as a cold thermal signature against the background, which in the subsequent debate has been read both as evidence of a cold solid body and of a low-thermal-inertia object.

The footage, which CBP never officially released, reached researcher Robert Powell in 2015. A Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) team performed an extensive technical analysis, published in 2018, including photogrammetry, immersion-depth modeling, and reconstruction of the camera-to-object lines of sight. From those computations the team estimated a size on the order of one meter and a speed of roughly 100 km/h in the over-water segment, concluding that the characteristics did not match known aircraft, birds, drones, or unmanned underwater vehicles available in 2013. Kevin Knuth later complemented the physical analysis in a 2019 publication. The video's chain of custody, having been leaked rather than officially released, is a legitimate point of contention.

Es el único caso conocido con un video FLIR de origen gubernamental que muestra comportamiento transmedio aire-agua sostenido y, además, la división del objeto en dos durante una grabación continua. Su importancia metodológica es doble: por un lado, es la pieza central de la categoría de objetos sumergidos no identificados (USO), poco representada en el corpus pese a su relevancia; por otro, el estudio de la SCU constituye una de las investigaciones civiles más rigurosas y replicables jamás realizadas sobre un video UAP estadounidense, con metodología explícita que terceros pueden revisar.

La honestidad editorial exige dar peso a la explicación escéptica seria, que existe y es articulada. El análisis más citado en contra, asociado al ingeniero José Lianza y discutido extensamente en el foro Metabunk, sostiene que el objeto son en realidad dos farolillos de papel (sky lanterns), posiblemente atados, arrastrados por el viento, y que el aparente 'ingreso al agua' es un efecto de paralaje: el objeto pasaría por delante de la línea de costa y de bancos de nubes bajos vistos desde el ángulo de la aeronave, sin sumergirse realmente. La SCU rebate esta lectura con dos argumentos centrales: que la velocidad reconstruida (del orden de 16 mph o más respecto al viento) excede lo que un farolillo encendido mantendría en vuelo estable, y que la hipótesis no explica la inmersión ni la trayectoria observada bajo la superficie. El caso queda, por tanto, en una disputa técnica genuina y no resuelta entre dos análisis cuantitativos: su fuerza para el corpus reside en que ninguna explicación mundana propuesta ha cerrado de forma consensuada la totalidad de los rasgos observados —transición, inmersión y división— en una sola hipótesis coherente.

It is the only known case with a FLIR video of government origin showing sustained air-water transmedium behavior and, additionally, the object splitting into two during a continuous recording. Its methodological importance is twofold: on one hand, it is the central piece of the unidentified submerged object (USO) category, underrepresented in the corpus despite its relevance; on the other, the SCU study constitutes one of the most rigorous and reproducible civilian investigations ever conducted on a U.S. UAP video, with explicit methodology that third parties can review.

Editorial honesty requires giving weight to the serious skeptical explanation, which exists and is well articulated. The most cited counter-analysis, associated with engineer José Lianza and discussed extensively on the Metabunk forum, holds that the object is actually two paper sky lanterns, possibly tied together, carried by the wind, and that the apparent 'entry into the water' is a parallax effect: the object passes in front of the coastline and low cloud banks as seen from the aircraft's angle, without actually submerging. The SCU rebuts this reading with two central arguments: that the reconstructed speed (on the order of 16 mph or more relative to the wind) exceeds what a lit lantern would sustain in stable flight, and that the hypothesis explains neither the immersion nor the observed sub-surface trajectory. The case therefore remains a genuine, unresolved technical dispute between two quantitative analyses: its force for the corpus lies in the fact that no proposed mundane explanation has consensually accounted for the full set of observed features — transition, immersion, and splitting — within a single coherent hypothesis.