Mexican UFO Case Still Unsolved

May 16, 2004

 

By Richard M. Dolan

 

Since the news was released in early May 2004 that a Mexican Air Force interceptor encountered several invisible objects that registered clearly on radar and infrared systems, a number of articles appeared that attempted to explain the event as either weather phenomena or new stealth technology. Such conclusions are very premature.

 

On May 10, 2004, Mexican television showed a video taken two months before by a Mexican Air Force interceptor engaged in drug-traffic interdiction patrols. The aircraft had sophisticated equipment that included infrared cameras. Although weather conditions and visibility were excellent, nothing could be seen, except that infrared and radar clearly detected up to 18 objects, which at one point practically surrounded the aircraft. The entire event lasted at least 24 minutes. This was the first official Mexican video of such a type to be released.

 

Since then, a lot of nonsense seeking to explain it all has appeared in the printed and electronic news media around the world.

 

Nearly all of them explain the event in one of two ways. First, the most ridiculous, as ball lightning or perhaps some other type of weather phenomenon.

 

Reuters for some odd reason found it fit to quote a nuclear physicist named Julio Herrera, who said the blobs of light may have been nothing more than ball lightning. “I feel this is one of these rare events,” he said to Reuters. It’s obvious he knows nothing about the case, and yet Reuters felt it was useful to quote this man. Indeed, he admitted “it would be very interesting to be able to analyze all the information these pilots obtained.” 

 

Yes, and maybe it would be interesting if Reuters knew how to find a qualified commentator.

 

The other explanation making the rounds is that this was advanced American stealth technology.

 

Not surprisingly, such explanations always come with the obligatory ridicule of UFOs. Thus, one aviation hack writes “while X-files and UFO extra-terrestrial believers say the video is clear proof of some form of spacecraft visiting Earth, the sighting can be attributed to the Bush defense budget and not little green men.”

 

Bush defense budget? Hmm, okay. The author continues:

 

“The unidentified aircraft that shadowed the Mexican surveillance plane are reportedly part of a squadron of new stealth strike craft operating from the U.S.”

 

Certainly, that is interesting news — if it actually qualifies as genuine news. Except that the writer of this so-called bit of investigative journalism never bothered to mention a source, or even to indicate just why he thought such a thing was so. He added, matter-of-factly, that the invisibility was rendered by “special light panels designed to hide the plane in broad daylight.” He writes that this “confirms” that the U.S. Air Force possesses more than one of these jets. A great deal of irrelevant history regarding secret and stealth U.S. technology is then introduced as a way of explaining this particular event.

 

Of course, if this were true, I’d surely be interested in reading some follow-up from other sources. After all, if you’ve got an airplane that is invisible in broad daylight, that would be news, wouldn’t it? So far, no journalist has decided to follow up.

 

Mexico’s Secretary of Defense, General Clemente Vega Garcia, released the video, saying “we don’t know what they are. We have been analyzing them.”

 

Thus, we have what could well be among the most important sightings of anomalous craft in the past ten years. Not simply because of official recognition by a national government and Department of Defense, but because the case offers a great deal of data available for further study, data that gives us a clear idea of actual technological capabilities. These capabilities include not only daytime invisibility, but darting maneuvers and possibly hovering, all by the same craft.

 

Ted Roe, the Executive Director of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), has investigated this event, and is possibly the most knowledgeable American researcher regarding it. What is needed for this case now, he says, is to “conduct a thorough and independent analysis of the material in the great tradition of scientific peer review. It is the only way to advance in science.”

 

Science certainly is not being served by irresponsible journalists who arrogantly claim to have “solved” this case when they clearly haven’t gotten their facts straight.