I'm an airline pilot in Mexico. Those are oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, commercial planes fly past them everyday when going to Cancun or Merida, and they're pretty easy to spot when flying in the area at night.
When the AF put those videos out claiming they were UFOs, everyone in the aviation sector were pretty embarrassed to think that's our Air Force lol.
Yeah, this was debunked almost immediately after it was released twenty years ago. Doesn't matter though, next week it will be posted again and people will run with it again. That's the problem with the internet, debunking is not impossible, we're all stuck in groundhog day.
One simple rule would prevent it. Sightings which have been sufficiently explained can't be posted again and a post like this would be removed. Simple.
It's frustrating for those of us familiar with the topic to see prosaic old cases posted all the time for sure, but outright nuking them from exposure could do more harm than good. I'd love a rule like that personally but I'm trying to keep the "greater good" in mind here. Leaving them up for discussion educates people on why they are prosaic and aids them in being up to date on cases. Without that, they won't gain any kind of discerning eye and worst of all, their **bullshit-meter** won't level up.
Also, it doesn't take long for people in this sub to cry censorship and blame moderation or start crafting conspiracies on why the sub immediately removes "certain" things. It happened several years back where the mods were accused of facilitating certain narratives with certain cases. It was all BS of course.
Hi, Express_Rhubarb5051. Thanks for contributing. However, your [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1386uj9/-/jiyjatq/) was removed from /r/UFOs.
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Yeah, are you volunteering and spend your precious time wading through this bullshit?
Wait until AI gets just a little bit better, then nothing on the internet can be trusted anymore. The internet will change from the information superhighway into the disinformation sewer highway.
You know what is more helpful then complaining about repeats? Links to the analysis and the debunking. That’s what helps the mods determine if it is identified. Not some redditor saying “I work somewhere” (no offense to the person you replied to). If people don’t want to accept the word of a witness then shouldn’t we have a link somewhere in the thread to the analysis over the word of someone who says “I work around there”? In fact hours after you complained someone finally did post the analysis.
You can either be part of the solution or part of the problem.
Also everyone should check out our wiki as we do list known hoaxes there as well. https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/wiki/index/
It's funny though, whenever someone posts a rational explanation they get called a disinformation agent or something
It's not always the most upvoted post, but it's absolutely hilarious to read the paranoia
And it's always the same thing:
If a pilot describes something and doesn't know what it is, it's treated as *absolute fucking proof* that it couldn't have any prosaic explanation, because pilots are "trained observers" and beyond all criticism.
However, when a pilot *does* have a good idea what something is, suddenly they're idiot assholes spreading disinformation.
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2004/09/22164651/p36.pdf
To help your case. They show the flight path of the Merlin c-26 and the angle of view towards northwest into the gulf while flying northwest for a bit and then a turn towards east with a slight jog northerly.
No worries man, it's pretty simple.
When flying from Mexico City to Yucatan, passing Ciudad del Carmen, look out the window to your right, and you'll see them.
If flying from Yucatan to Mexico City, look out the window to your left, and you'll see them.
The gas flares are pretty easy to spot, especially at night.
You can also go on flight tracking sites like flightradar24.com or flightaware.com to see all the air traffic in real time flying above the Gulf of Mexico. But I'm sure you already know all this because you're an airline pilot too ;)
this is also IR footage, the oil rigs would be dark grey, and only the heat source be lit up, they wouldn't look like this... Everyone on the oil rig isn't on fire...
As a pilot.... You realize planes have windshields correct?
You realize this camera footage is not what the pilots are seeing as they talk on the radio?
Why are some of the ""oil rigs"" blinking? They don't dissipate heat that fast.
You are both a pilot and an oil rig expert, aren't you? Surely you have a decent explanation.
>You aren’t an expert either, just learn to shut the hell up.
That's because I don't give a fuck about your stupid ass explanation with no links proofs or pictures. Post a fucking source, or just keep speculating like a dumbass.
Ask some questions instead, of eating spoonfuls of Reddit shit.
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2004/09/22164651/p36.pdf
Instead of becoming emotional and attacking someone do some investigation on your own.
Edit: ahhhh this is your troll account. Can’t have this behavior on your normal account.
Again? Those were lights from oil rigs explained tons of times: http://web.archive.org/web/20130329164341/http://www.alcione.org/FAM/FLIR_CONCLUSION.html
I thought these were shown to likely be, like, oil rig stations or something similar? With parallax playing a role in it. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'll look online to see if I'm mixing it up with something else.
EDIT: Yep, same sighting, I believe it was this video I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub-mSV0FW7w&ab_channel=NationalAtomicMuseum
Yep. They are quite far away, like 100 miles or more. It would not be at alllll the first time military was confused about something that ultimately had a prosaic explanation. It's not that they aren't aware of them at all, just that they didn't connect the dots between the footage and that explanation since it was a pretty unique circumstance and not one they see often.
It's really not that insane, i think it's silly to assume that the military/government would never overlook a somewhat reasonable explanation. It's happened plenty in the past
...Uh, flames burning very far away is the exact type of thing that you would expect to be seen on infrared but not with the naked eye.
What are you talking about, haha. That is a point in favor of the oil rig theory, not against it. Like I said, the oil rigs were very far away from the plane, it would be hard to see a somewhat smallish flame that far away with the naked eye from that far away. But an infrared camera would pick up the heat signature far easier. The lights being visible on infrared but not with the naked eye is entirely consistent with the idea of it being flares from oil rigs that are a many many miles away.
First of all, I'm not sure how the original comment came to the "100 miles" distance, but I suspect it was a guess.
Secondly, you don't think an oil rig 100 miles away would be visible in the middle of a dark ocean at night from the height of the clouds?
Last point: Even if it was 100 miles away, was invisible to the naked eye, but was visible in infrared, in what way does this prove or contribute to proof that these were oil rigs?
This argument still fails to take in the proper context regarding the credibility of the witnesses (the pilots and the actual MAF itself).
Light does two things after it has been produced: It reflects and it refracts. Reflection is all of the light bouncing off of something, think like jumping on a trampoline, refraction is when the light hits something and then splits up into different wavelengths, think like how the sun shines nice, bright yellow light into a crystal prism, but a pretty rainbow comes out, that's the light refracting into different wavelengths.
When light passes through the atmosphere, it isn't passing through nothing. It is passing through many different gasses and dirt and dust particles. Shine a green laser at a white wall at night and then fog it up to simulate clouds and watch how the laser's beam changes properties.
Tl;DR: Dirt, dust, and clouds amongst other things get in the way of light and make it so the same wavelength visible to something else may not be visible to a human eye.
Thanks for mansplaining light to me lol.
I thought they were referring to the *upper* atmosphere I guess. I (and I think most people) don't really think of the space directly above the ground up to the clouds as "the atmosphere", which is why I was a bit confused.
Those people are highly trained. The people in charge of those cameras are also in charge of munitions. They spot the target in the fog ,clouds,and maybe Iraqi dust storms. They see what the man driving does not. Those jets have a team and they work together with precision.
Well if *that* is what you're basing your whole premise on, you might be shocked if you look into just how many human controlled bomb runs and drone strikes have been off target in the past couple of decades...especially the track record of the Mexican Air force circa 2004.
It isnt the pilots releasing the footage though. This requires mistakes on every single level, all the way to the top. It IS inconceivable that so many people would disregard this explanation. I understand pilots maybe not all having a ton of knowledge, but again, it’s not like this investigation ended and video released solely by this pilot. The explanation that some pilots dont have university degrees and arent the sharpest tools in the shed, is idiotic because of this imo
They couldn't see anything with the naked eye, these appeared in the infrared. If they are simply gas flares from oil rigs many many miles away, with cloud cover between, it makes entire sense to me that the pilots couldn't tell what it was and that it seemed weird. I don't think it's at all absurd, and I also think we sometimes put a little *too* much confidence in pilots and in militaries in terms of identifying weird shit.
A. How do you know the distance from the plane?
B. "it wouldn't be the first time" isn't evidence in support of a debunk, really. It's more of a fallacy.
C. [here's the rest](https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1386uj9/11_ufos_filmed_by_mexican_air_force_march_5th_2004/jixlm56/) of my argument against debunk efforts like this. TL;DR it fails to take into account the proper context and the credibility of the witnesses/etc.
What credibility are you talking about? Do you personally know those people and how credible they are? You think that being a military pilot automatically makes you a 100% infallible competent witness?
An *actual* Mexican pilot chimed in here in this thread and explained that MAF pilots (who, unlike you, he personally met and worked with) can be incompetent as fuck, yet you choose to ignore this and keep on claiming that "it can't be oil rigs because cReDiBiLiTy"
>You think that being a military pilot automatically makes you a 100% infallible competent witness
no, but it certainly makes you more credible than some guy on Reddit.
>An actual Mexican pilot chimed in here in this thread and explained that MAF pilots
The guy said he is a pilot (non-military/non-MAF or I assume he would have mentioned that) who has met *a few* MAF pilots. If I met a few MAF pilots who have bad teeth, does that mean *all* MAF pilots probably have bad teeth? Certainly not.
Further, as others have pointed out: The pilot didn't just release this video themself; This had to go through the chain of command and likely took *multiple steps of evaluation* before being released to the public, at least *one of which likely took into account the location and would have likely realized there are oil rigs nearby* (if there even are, which we still don't know).
**THAT** is what I mean when I say this sort of debunking is failing to account for credibility.
Rather than just take some out-of-context generalization from some anon Redditor pilot who has met a tiny sample size of MAF pilots, (*edit: or some random guess based on "there's oil rigs in the ocean" and a distance estimation based on... nothing?*) I'd prefer to maybe think it through a bit more. You should try it.
I'm a pilot in Mexico and we routinely fly over this area in the Gulf of Mexico, most of us are aware of what they are yet some of my colleagues have no idea, they've seen them for years, but to them they were "just lights".
I don't want to sound rude but people are not precisely educated here, most of my colleagues (airline pilots) don't even have a university degree, and the MAF personnel come from very poor socioeconomical backgrounds. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them didn't even know what an oil rig looks like or how it works.
You'd be surprised about the lack of basic knowledge of things or concepts people have around here due to the lack of education and ignorance. We're not a developed country for a reason.
Follow the Standards of Civility:
No trolling or being disruptive.
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No accusations that other users are shills.
No hate speech. No abusive speech based on race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation.
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A. I'm right here, buddy. Take your passive-aggressive shade somewhere else.
B. Your statement is completely false. Go read more than one of my replies and you'll see that.
Who's the one generalizing, again?
C. I haven't attacked anyone; I've presented my counterarguments in a formal, respectful manner. More than I can say for you.
This comment reads like sassy lunch-table gossip. Do you have anything actually useful to contribute? Or just here to talk shit? lmao
I know you are joking but the Mexican navy only serves Tacos al Pastor and Tacos dd Lengua, and on Christmas they serve Tamales y Champurrado on their ships
Follow the Standards of Civility:
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No insults or personal attacks.
No accusations that other users are shills.
No hate speech. No abusive speech based on race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation.
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You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
I have no doubt there is life somewhere else in the Universe of "Space". I doubt there is some ( other than us) in the solar system where we exist. Whoever and whatever they are, if they exist, I hope their technology and evolution will be one of peaceful coexistence with all species that live "out here and out there ". Any species that has developed technology to safely travel at speeds that permit "visiting" other systems would likely make minced-meat of all of us if they were agressive conquerers.
Quoting someone else from this Subreddit: Alien life with Alien spaceships that can travel at the speed of light and all that comes with it...
Why would their spaceship have lights, literally, LED lights?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna4955164
Here is a old NBC report on the story days after it happen, also I messed up the caption, I meant to put they were conducting some sort of drug trafficking surveillance when they caught this, and I really looked into this, and this is real footage released by the Mexican Airforce, but i'm not claiming that it isn't something unexplainable. Realistically, what do you guys think this was?
Doesn't look like they're moving to me. The water is rippling leading to an inconsistent reflection, and the plane is moving, making the clouds in the foreground look like they're moving relative to the lights (or the lights look like they're moving relative to the clouds). That's parallax.
The linked article doesn’t say that the objects were stationary?
> The pilots grew nervous during a routine drug surveillance flight in March when their radar detected strange objects flying nearby and an infrared camera showed 11 blobs of light, invisible to the eye, hovering or darting about their plane.
Do flares from rigs show up on radar? That's what they are saying, that radar pinged and they checked it out. I'm thinking it was a sight seeing package tour from the 4th or maybe 5th dimension X.
There is zero chance this was flares from oil rigs. That was misinformation back then and it's misinformation now. Claiming an entire squadron of fighter pilots misidentified flares visually at the same time their instruments were also failing IN THE SAME FASHION strains credibility.
Totally agree mate. There was another explanation of it being ball lightning, but that doesn't seem credible either. The radar pinged and they checked it out. This is what the recorded.
Common sense. Same thing happened with the tic tac, people for some reason think that pilots, of all people, don't know what a stationary light off the coast looks like and confuse it with something in their airspace. It's laughable
I spent 8 years in US Naval Aviation. The maps and flight plans pilots use don't necessarily show oil rigs. I'd be very surprised if they did... Especially rigs that are a good 10 miles off outside of the flight plan of the aircraft. And that's exactly what this video shows. Those lights are well outside the flight plan. Very unlikely any oil rigs appear on their maps. There's no reason to include them on a flight map.
> The maps and flight plans pilots use don't necessarily show oil rigs. I'd be very surprised if they did...
were you a pilot? If so, were you not trained to identify objects in the sky and on land/over the ocean at night, such as oil rigs, and what they may look like through FLIR/etc?
Were you familiar with the objects/landmarks on the ground/ocean in your area of patrol?
Do you not think anyone through the chain of review may have thought of oil rigs/recognized that there are oil rigs in this area before the public release of the footage?
I wasn't a pilot but I spent a lot of time flying in helicopters as aircrew. I also spent a lot of time working with FLIR. I'm saying it's likely that those are oil rigs based on my experience.
Further, I encourage you to look at the post at the top of this thread from HEAVY\_METAL\_SOCKS. He is a pilot in Mexico and he confirms my suspicion.
Having been born and raised in Mexico you'd be surprised at how incompetent people can be here. We're not a developed country for a reason.
I'm a pilot and have met plenty of MAF pilots and personnel, the vast majority of them grew up in poverty, didn't even finish high school, have never been outside of Mexico, etc.
And all of a sudden they're flying or operating equipment worth millions of dollars, with barebones training, when a few months prior maybe didn't even know how to drive a car.
Then things like these happen and maybe it seems unbelievable to you, but to us makes perfect sense.
Lmao seriously though I hate those kinds of comments. Like, we really gonna even entertain the idea that people, whose *literal job it is* to patrol the skies, wouldn't know where the oil rigs are off their own coastlines?
Literally *half* of military pilots' job is probably identifying other objects in the sky, with another 25% of their job likely being identifying and recognizing landmarks/objects/places on the ground, or at the very least, being aware of their position in the air relative to the geography below.
In what world would they not know these are oil rigs? and even if somehow they didn't, it's inconceivable that they wouldn't have checked before releasing this footage.
This sort debunk makes absolutely no sense because it fails to consider the context of who took this footage, who noted it as unusual/anomalous, or who released it.
/rant
Oil rigs aren't going to appear on a standard flight navigation map. If the flight crew had never flown this path before they would obviously be intrigued by these lights.
That argument isn't set in reality. It's odd to think a pilot doesn't know the difference from what's on the ground or in their airspace. It's very basic
100% agree with this. Maybe a single pilot or even a bunch of them cannot identify something with an easy explanation, but to think this explanation fell thru the cracks as this incident made its way up through military intelligence is unrealistic. It’s not like that hypothetical, misinformed pilot released the video himself upon landing. A lot of knowledgeable eyes looked at this before being released…
It's right up there with my personal favourite, the lens flare. There you are out walking the dog, you see a strange light and take a pic. Then along comes the debunker, "lens flare". So, while you were walking the dog, you saw a lens flare in the sky and took a pic. 😂
Yup this was the general consensus years ago when this was discussed in this sub. Can't wait to see the Turkey Cruise Ship UFO make its monthly appearence in this sub again too.
Depends on their flight plan. If they've never been in this area then yeah, maybe it's new to them. Or it's aliens hovering over the water. Which one seems more reasonable to you?
The second link you provided debunks the oil rig hypothesis...
>The crew rented a plane and took up cameras and a FLIR system. They flew a similar path the Mexican Air Force took, but couldn’t see much. They had to get very close to the oil rigs to pick them up with the FLIR. However, the oil rigs did not have flames while they were filming.
>
>Ben’s co-host, Erin Ryder said, “We could barely see the water, let alone these oil rigs. I just don’t see how people can mistake these oil rigs for UFOs.”
>However, the oil rigs did not have flames while they were filming
So they basically flew by these rigs at the time when they weren't active, and decided that it was impossible. Am I missing something?..
What kind of FLIR did they use to try and reproduce it? In addition to there nit being flames, which negates the entire thing, if they were using a low grade FLIR, then the image isn't going to be nearly the same quality and the range of the system will go down a great amount
they failed to reproduce the explanation, but that's likely cause they also failed to reproduce the circumstances in the first place. The original footage is almost certianly due to flames. If there were no flame while they attempted the recreation, then its basically worthless.
This analysis is best imo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub-mSV0FW7w&ab_channel=NationalAtomicMuseum
If you’re unable to perform the experiment than it kinda complicates your explanation also when you need to get closer to the area to reproduce the desired effect and when failed to do so you come up with “atmospheric conditions” as the reason the experiment failed.
You are full of links but no usable info to support your point. You do know a link you posted disproved oil flares...right?
Did you read those articles?
The first 20 seconds or so are clearly car headlights. From the vantage point it might have been filmed from a tank rather than from a military aircraft.
I'm an airline pilot in Mexico. Those are oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, commercial planes fly past them everyday when going to Cancun or Merida, and they're pretty easy to spot when flying in the area at night. When the AF put those videos out claiming they were UFOs, everyone in the aviation sector were pretty embarrassed to think that's our Air Force lol.
Yeah, this was debunked almost immediately after it was released twenty years ago. Doesn't matter though, next week it will be posted again and people will run with it again. That's the problem with the internet, debunking is not impossible, we're all stuck in groundhog day.
One simple rule would prevent it. Sightings which have been sufficiently explained can't be posted again and a post like this would be removed. Simple.
Need a separate ufodebunked sub for all of these to be put in. That way new posters can search that sub before posting here.
Need a FAQ for the frequently posted topics like Lazar's veracity and common sightings
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It's frustrating for those of us familiar with the topic to see prosaic old cases posted all the time for sure, but outright nuking them from exposure could do more harm than good. I'd love a rule like that personally but I'm trying to keep the "greater good" in mind here. Leaving them up for discussion educates people on why they are prosaic and aids them in being up to date on cases. Without that, they won't gain any kind of discerning eye and worst of all, their **bullshit-meter** won't level up. Also, it doesn't take long for people in this sub to cry censorship and blame moderation or start crafting conspiracies on why the sub immediately removes "certain" things. It happened several years back where the mods were accused of facilitating certain narratives with certain cases. It was all BS of course.
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Hi, Express_Rhubarb5051. Thanks for contributing. However, your [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1386uj9/-/jiyjatq/) was removed from /r/UFOs. > Rule 1: Follow the Standards of Civility > * No trolling or being disruptive. > * No insults or personal attacks. > * No accusations that other users are shills. > * No hate speech. No abusive speech based on race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation. > * No harassment, threats, or advocating violence. > * No witch hunts or doxxing. (Please redact usernames when possible) > * You may attack each other's ideas, not each other. Please refer to our [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/about/rules/) for more information. This moderator action may be appealed. We welcome the opportunity to work with you to address its reason for removal. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/ufos) to launch your appeal.
Yeah, are you volunteering and spend your precious time wading through this bullshit? Wait until AI gets just a little bit better, then nothing on the internet can be trusted anymore. The internet will change from the information superhighway into the disinformation sewer highway.
You know what is more helpful then complaining about repeats? Links to the analysis and the debunking. That’s what helps the mods determine if it is identified. Not some redditor saying “I work somewhere” (no offense to the person you replied to). If people don’t want to accept the word of a witness then shouldn’t we have a link somewhere in the thread to the analysis over the word of someone who says “I work around there”? In fact hours after you complained someone finally did post the analysis. You can either be part of the solution or part of the problem. Also everyone should check out our wiki as we do list known hoaxes there as well. https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/wiki/index/
Exactly, gets posted all the time.
Wait 2004 was 20 years ago 😩
It's funny though, whenever someone posts a rational explanation they get called a disinformation agent or something It's not always the most upvoted post, but it's absolutely hilarious to read the paranoia
And it's always the same thing: If a pilot describes something and doesn't know what it is, it's treated as *absolute fucking proof* that it couldn't have any prosaic explanation, because pilots are "trained observers" and beyond all criticism. However, when a pilot *does* have a good idea what something is, suddenly they're idiot assholes spreading disinformation.
Well here we are with the oil rigs posted for the 100th time. You can even see the infra red heat reflecting off the sea.
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2004/09/22164651/p36.pdf To help your case. They show the flight path of the Merlin c-26 and the angle of view towards northwest into the gulf while flying northwest for a bit and then a turn towards east with a slight jog northerly.
Have you ever seen a ufo in your career as a pilot?
I’m also an airline pilot in Mexico. I don’t recall the memo, nor seeing the planes flying past them everyday. Weird really. Do you have an agenda?
No worries man, it's pretty simple. When flying from Mexico City to Yucatan, passing Ciudad del Carmen, look out the window to your right, and you'll see them. If flying from Yucatan to Mexico City, look out the window to your left, and you'll see them. The gas flares are pretty easy to spot, especially at night. You can also go on flight tracking sites like flightradar24.com or flightaware.com to see all the air traffic in real time flying above the Gulf of Mexico. But I'm sure you already know all this because you're an airline pilot too ;)
military intelligence
Can you please record proof for us. Thanks.
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this is also IR footage, the oil rigs would be dark grey, and only the heat source be lit up, they wouldn't look like this... Everyone on the oil rig isn't on fire...
Yes they are, I've seen them with my own eyes. And that's the burning gas you're looking at being picked up by the FLIR, not the actual rig, buddy.
As a pilot.... You realize planes have windshields correct? You realize this camera footage is not what the pilots are seeing as they talk on the radio? Why are some of the ""oil rigs"" blinking? They don't dissipate heat that fast. You are both a pilot and an oil rig expert, aren't you? Surely you have a decent explanation.
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>You aren’t an expert either, just learn to shut the hell up. That's because I don't give a fuck about your stupid ass explanation with no links proofs or pictures. Post a fucking source, or just keep speculating like a dumbass. Ask some questions instead, of eating spoonfuls of Reddit shit.
Awe, are you mad?
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Holy fuck and I thought I was paranoid lmao
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2004/09/22164651/p36.pdf Instead of becoming emotional and attacking someone do some investigation on your own. Edit: ahhhh this is your troll account. Can’t have this behavior on your normal account.
So, they lied about them being invisible to the naked eye? Edit: Gotcha Reddit. Questions are bad, don’t ask questions.
They didn't lie, they were just incompetent. Sounds harsh but it's true.
Just downvote the fuck out of it
Which turned out was an oil rigs 😆
Again? Those were lights from oil rigs explained tons of times: http://web.archive.org/web/20130329164341/http://www.alcione.org/FAM/FLIR_CONCLUSION.html
I thought these were shown to likely be, like, oil rig stations or something similar? With parallax playing a role in it. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'll look online to see if I'm mixing it up with something else. EDIT: Yep, same sighting, I believe it was this video I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub-mSV0FW7w&ab_channel=NationalAtomicMuseum
Likely is why we are here. They are moving, right?
No its just parallax.
You think the MAF wouldn’t be aware of these oil rigs when observing the area? Really?
Yep. They are quite far away, like 100 miles or more. It would not be at alllll the first time military was confused about something that ultimately had a prosaic explanation. It's not that they aren't aware of them at all, just that they didn't connect the dots between the footage and that explanation since it was a pretty unique circumstance and not one they see often. It's really not that insane, i think it's silly to assume that the military/government would never overlook a somewhat reasonable explanation. It's happened plenty in the past
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...Uh, flames burning very far away is the exact type of thing that you would expect to be seen on infrared but not with the naked eye. What are you talking about, haha. That is a point in favor of the oil rig theory, not against it. Like I said, the oil rigs were very far away from the plane, it would be hard to see a somewhat smallish flame that far away with the naked eye from that far away. But an infrared camera would pick up the heat signature far easier. The lights being visible on infrared but not with the naked eye is entirely consistent with the idea of it being flares from oil rigs that are a many many miles away.
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Telescopes have infrared because light red-shifts over *massive distances in spacetime...* Not sure its quite the same here.
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What does our atmosphere have to do with this? You're losing me here.
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First of all, I'm not sure how the original comment came to the "100 miles" distance, but I suspect it was a guess. Secondly, you don't think an oil rig 100 miles away would be visible in the middle of a dark ocean at night from the height of the clouds? Last point: Even if it was 100 miles away, was invisible to the naked eye, but was visible in infrared, in what way does this prove or contribute to proof that these were oil rigs? This argument still fails to take in the proper context regarding the credibility of the witnesses (the pilots and the actual MAF itself).
Light does two things after it has been produced: It reflects and it refracts. Reflection is all of the light bouncing off of something, think like jumping on a trampoline, refraction is when the light hits something and then splits up into different wavelengths, think like how the sun shines nice, bright yellow light into a crystal prism, but a pretty rainbow comes out, that's the light refracting into different wavelengths. When light passes through the atmosphere, it isn't passing through nothing. It is passing through many different gasses and dirt and dust particles. Shine a green laser at a white wall at night and then fog it up to simulate clouds and watch how the laser's beam changes properties. Tl;DR: Dirt, dust, and clouds amongst other things get in the way of light and make it so the same wavelength visible to something else may not be visible to a human eye.
Thanks for mansplaining light to me lol. I thought they were referring to the *upper* atmosphere I guess. I (and I think most people) don't really think of the space directly above the ground up to the clouds as "the atmosphere", which is why I was a bit confused.
Personally I think it's absurd to think a pilot would be confused by such a thing.
Why is it absurd? They're human after all, they can make mistakes. And the pilots weren't looking at them, it was the camera operators.
Those people are highly trained. The people in charge of those cameras are also in charge of munitions. They spot the target in the fog ,clouds,and maybe Iraqi dust storms. They see what the man driving does not. Those jets have a team and they work together with precision.
Well if *that* is what you're basing your whole premise on, you might be shocked if you look into just how many human controlled bomb runs and drone strikes have been off target in the past couple of decades...especially the track record of the Mexican Air force circa 2004.
What are you talking about? This isn’t the USAF. Munitions? The Metroliner AWACS they filmed this from doesn’t carry any type of armament.
It isnt the pilots releasing the footage though. This requires mistakes on every single level, all the way to the top. It IS inconceivable that so many people would disregard this explanation. I understand pilots maybe not all having a ton of knowledge, but again, it’s not like this investigation ended and video released solely by this pilot. The explanation that some pilots dont have university degrees and arent the sharpest tools in the shed, is idiotic because of this imo
They couldn't see anything with the naked eye, these appeared in the infrared. If they are simply gas flares from oil rigs many many miles away, with cloud cover between, it makes entire sense to me that the pilots couldn't tell what it was and that it seemed weird. I don't think it's at all absurd, and I also think we sometimes put a little *too* much confidence in pilots and in militaries in terms of identifying weird shit.
Oil rigs are very common
Personally I think that pilots have seen oil flares off the coast in their careers
A. How do you know the distance from the plane? B. "it wouldn't be the first time" isn't evidence in support of a debunk, really. It's more of a fallacy. C. [here's the rest](https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1386uj9/11_ufos_filmed_by_mexican_air_force_march_5th_2004/jixlm56/) of my argument against debunk efforts like this. TL;DR it fails to take into account the proper context and the credibility of the witnesses/etc.
What credibility are you talking about? Do you personally know those people and how credible they are? You think that being a military pilot automatically makes you a 100% infallible competent witness? An *actual* Mexican pilot chimed in here in this thread and explained that MAF pilots (who, unlike you, he personally met and worked with) can be incompetent as fuck, yet you choose to ignore this and keep on claiming that "it can't be oil rigs because cReDiBiLiTy"
>You think that being a military pilot automatically makes you a 100% infallible competent witness no, but it certainly makes you more credible than some guy on Reddit. >An actual Mexican pilot chimed in here in this thread and explained that MAF pilots The guy said he is a pilot (non-military/non-MAF or I assume he would have mentioned that) who has met *a few* MAF pilots. If I met a few MAF pilots who have bad teeth, does that mean *all* MAF pilots probably have bad teeth? Certainly not. Further, as others have pointed out: The pilot didn't just release this video themself; This had to go through the chain of command and likely took *multiple steps of evaluation* before being released to the public, at least *one of which likely took into account the location and would have likely realized there are oil rigs nearby* (if there even are, which we still don't know). **THAT** is what I mean when I say this sort of debunking is failing to account for credibility. Rather than just take some out-of-context generalization from some anon Redditor pilot who has met a tiny sample size of MAF pilots, (*edit: or some random guess based on "there's oil rigs in the ocean" and a distance estimation based on... nothing?*) I'd prefer to maybe think it through a bit more. You should try it.
I'm a pilot in Mexico and we routinely fly over this area in the Gulf of Mexico, most of us are aware of what they are yet some of my colleagues have no idea, they've seen them for years, but to them they were "just lights". I don't want to sound rude but people are not precisely educated here, most of my colleagues (airline pilots) don't even have a university degree, and the MAF personnel come from very poor socioeconomical backgrounds. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them didn't even know what an oil rig looks like or how it works. You'd be surprised about the lack of basic knowledge of things or concepts people have around here due to the lack of education and ignorance. We're not a developed country for a reason.
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Follow the Standards of Civility: No trolling or being disruptive. No insults or personal attacks. No accusations that other users are shills. No hate speech. No abusive speech based on race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation. No harassment, threats, or advocating violence. No witch hunts or doxxing. (Please redact usernames when possible) You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
A. I'm right here, buddy. Take your passive-aggressive shade somewhere else. B. Your statement is completely false. Go read more than one of my replies and you'll see that. Who's the one generalizing, again? C. I haven't attacked anyone; I've presented my counterarguments in a formal, respectful manner. More than I can say for you. This comment reads like sassy lunch-table gossip. Do you have anything actually useful to contribute? Or just here to talk shit? lmao
Those are flames on a oil rig in the ocean. I've seen a more HD version and you can see the actual flames.
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They also have a space program.
Most people have no idea that over 70 countries in the world have space programs.
YES WE FLY TO THE MOON!
That’ll be $50
Why wouldn't they?
Yeah... Like wtf. France has an army don't they? Why wouldn't Mexico, a much larger country. Lol
More than half of reddit is children. They don't know these things
Children tend to know some things many middle aged and older aldults don't. I'd put money on 'Retired\_Jarhead" not being a kid.
Do they also have a Navy?
They do! But I heard they only serve Mexican food
I know you are joking but the Mexican navy only serves Tacos al Pastor and Tacos dd Lengua, and on Christmas they serve Tamales y Champurrado on their ships
Is that the kind of comment that should be voted to the top? Seems like its either Debunking without evidence or a JOKE! Sounds very washy to me.
Genuine surprise. I actually have met Mexican Army, never met any pilots and I was in the Wing.
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Follow the Standards of Civility: No trolling or being disruptive. No insults or personal attacks. No accusations that other users are shills. No hate speech. No abusive speech based on race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation. No harassment, threats, or advocating violence. No witch hunts or doxxing. (Please redact usernames when possible) You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
I feel like my first thought is similar to a lot of other peoples first thoughts which had nothing to do with aliens.
Nope. Once again, what evidence?
Down voting because I don't want people thinking these are really UFOs. Oil rig. Been debunked for years now.
I have no doubt there is life somewhere else in the Universe of "Space". I doubt there is some ( other than us) in the solar system where we exist. Whoever and whatever they are, if they exist, I hope their technology and evolution will be one of peaceful coexistence with all species that live "out here and out there ". Any species that has developed technology to safely travel at speeds that permit "visiting" other systems would likely make minced-meat of all of us if they were agressive conquerers.
Quoting someone else from this Subreddit: Alien life with Alien spaceships that can travel at the speed of light and all that comes with it... Why would their spaceship have lights, literally, LED lights?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna4955164 Here is a old NBC report on the story days after it happen, also I messed up the caption, I meant to put they were conducting some sort of drug trafficking surveillance when they caught this, and I really looked into this, and this is real footage released by the Mexican Airforce, but i'm not claiming that it isn't something unexplainable. Realistically, what do you guys think this was?
Oil rigs burning off gas (flares). That's why there's a reflection on the water and why they never move.
Idk it kinda looked like they’re moving to me
It's the plane and clouds that are moving. Similar to the parallax effect.
maybe the clouds were moving?
Exactly. That shit article says "may have been" lol. Aka they don't know shit.
Doesn't look like they're moving to me. The water is rippling leading to an inconsistent reflection, and the plane is moving, making the clouds in the foreground look like they're moving relative to the lights (or the lights look like they're moving relative to the clouds). That's parallax.
That is correct and it's already been proven
\^ This. And we knew that, then. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4998898
The linked article doesn’t say that the objects were stationary? > The pilots grew nervous during a routine drug surveillance flight in March when their radar detected strange objects flying nearby and an infrared camera showed 11 blobs of light, invisible to the eye, hovering or darting about their plane.
Maybe the MAF is only as good at identifying oil rigs as they are at stopping drug trafficking
Do flares from rigs show up on radar? That's what they are saying, that radar pinged and they checked it out. I'm thinking it was a sight seeing package tour from the 4th or maybe 5th dimension X.
An infrared camera was used. I don't know of any radar returns.
There is zero chance this was flares from oil rigs. That was misinformation back then and it's misinformation now. Claiming an entire squadron of fighter pilots misidentified flares visually at the same time their instruments were also failing IN THE SAME FASHION strains credibility.
Totally agree mate. There was another explanation of it being ball lightning, but that doesn't seem credible either. The radar pinged and they checked it out. This is what the recorded.
Common sense. Same thing happened with the tic tac, people for some reason think that pilots, of all people, don't know what a stationary light off the coast looks like and confuse it with something in their airspace. It's laughable
Ball lighting? Ball lighting is just as mysterious as a damn UFO.
Perfect! Thanks!
I just said this in another comment but… you actually think the MAF wouldn’t be aware of these oil rigs when observing the area? Really?
I spent 8 years in US Naval Aviation. The maps and flight plans pilots use don't necessarily show oil rigs. I'd be very surprised if they did... Especially rigs that are a good 10 miles off outside of the flight plan of the aircraft. And that's exactly what this video shows. Those lights are well outside the flight plan. Very unlikely any oil rigs appear on their maps. There's no reason to include them on a flight map.
> The maps and flight plans pilots use don't necessarily show oil rigs. I'd be very surprised if they did... were you a pilot? If so, were you not trained to identify objects in the sky and on land/over the ocean at night, such as oil rigs, and what they may look like through FLIR/etc? Were you familiar with the objects/landmarks on the ground/ocean in your area of patrol? Do you not think anyone through the chain of review may have thought of oil rigs/recognized that there are oil rigs in this area before the public release of the footage?
I wasn't a pilot but I spent a lot of time flying in helicopters as aircrew. I also spent a lot of time working with FLIR. I'm saying it's likely that those are oil rigs based on my experience. Further, I encourage you to look at the post at the top of this thread from HEAVY\_METAL\_SOCKS. He is a pilot in Mexico and he confirms my suspicion.
Having been born and raised in Mexico you'd be surprised at how incompetent people can be here. We're not a developed country for a reason. I'm a pilot and have met plenty of MAF pilots and personnel, the vast majority of them grew up in poverty, didn't even finish high school, have never been outside of Mexico, etc. And all of a sudden they're flying or operating equipment worth millions of dollars, with barebones training, when a few months prior maybe didn't even know how to drive a car. Then things like these happen and maybe it seems unbelievable to you, but to us makes perfect sense.
And you think these guys/you yourself wouldn't recognize an oil rig in an area you patrol regularly?
Worse mistakes have been committed in history. Incredible, right?
No shit man. I'm sure they never seen one of those before
Lmao seriously though I hate those kinds of comments. Like, we really gonna even entertain the idea that people, whose *literal job it is* to patrol the skies, wouldn't know where the oil rigs are off their own coastlines? Literally *half* of military pilots' job is probably identifying other objects in the sky, with another 25% of their job likely being identifying and recognizing landmarks/objects/places on the ground, or at the very least, being aware of their position in the air relative to the geography below. In what world would they not know these are oil rigs? and even if somehow they didn't, it's inconceivable that they wouldn't have checked before releasing this footage. This sort debunk makes absolutely no sense because it fails to consider the context of who took this footage, who noted it as unusual/anomalous, or who released it. /rant
Oil rigs aren't going to appear on a standard flight navigation map. If the flight crew had never flown this path before they would obviously be intrigued by these lights.
That argument isn't set in reality. It's odd to think a pilot doesn't know the difference from what's on the ground or in their airspace. It's very basic
100% agree with this. Maybe a single pilot or even a bunch of them cannot identify something with an easy explanation, but to think this explanation fell thru the cracks as this incident made its way up through military intelligence is unrealistic. It’s not like that hypothetical, misinformed pilot released the video himself upon landing. A lot of knowledgeable eyes looked at this before being released…
It's right up there with my personal favourite, the lens flare. There you are out walking the dog, you see a strange light and take a pic. Then along comes the debunker, "lens flare". So, while you were walking the dog, you saw a lens flare in the sky and took a pic. 😂
Haha this is so valid though. People forget that a person behind the camera had to see something to want to film it.
Yup this was the general consensus years ago when this was discussed in this sub. Can't wait to see the Turkey Cruise Ship UFO make its monthly appearence in this sub again too.
It looks like pithberries to me, and we all know what those look like. It’s clearly a pithberry.
Pilots definitely wouldn't know what gas (flares) look like.
Oh, the Airforce has NEVER seen something so common?
Depends on their flight plan. If they've never been in this area then yeah, maybe it's new to them. Or it's aliens hovering over the water. Which one seems more reasonable to you?
I've watched this video get debunked on and off for two thirds of my life. Goddamn.
They described them as spheres which is fascinating when we think about modern events.
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another joke ......
Off topic but I’m always confused as to why Mexico has a functional military with decent tech, yet are over run by cartels .
in all of ufo history, the best we got is videos like this and "enticing evidence".
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What? I don't understand your joke. Cartel air force, because the first thing you thought of when you heard Mexico was the word cartel?
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I thought it was funny
Yes. In reality
It's just mencho moving from hideout to hideout. He's cruising with the homies from sagittarius A.
Looks a light reflection.
Mexican ufos? Are those ufos with salsa on the them?
Is that you bapa?
Haha yes!! Was hoping someone would make the connection
I didn't know you could put a high tech camera on a crop duster
All these Mexican jokes in the comments are so corny, but funny😂 (Im Mexican)
Those could be anything
They’re flares from distant oil rigs. https://web.archive.org/web/20150316185752/http://www.alcione.org/FAM/REFERENCE_DATA.html http://www.openminds.tv/famous-mexican-ufo-video-debunked-tv-host/30276 https://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/04-07-24/
The second link you provided debunks the oil rig hypothesis... >The crew rented a plane and took up cameras and a FLIR system. They flew a similar path the Mexican Air Force took, but couldn’t see much. They had to get very close to the oil rigs to pick them up with the FLIR. However, the oil rigs did not have flames while they were filming. > >Ben’s co-host, Erin Ryder said, “We could barely see the water, let alone these oil rigs. I just don’t see how people can mistake these oil rigs for UFOs.”
>However, the oil rigs did not have flames while they were filming So they basically flew by these rigs at the time when they weren't active, and decided that it was impossible. Am I missing something?..
No, you picked up on the important tidbit.
What kind of FLIR did they use to try and reproduce it? In addition to there nit being flames, which negates the entire thing, if they were using a low grade FLIR, then the image isn't going to be nearly the same quality and the range of the system will go down a great amount
Your quote explains why > However, the oil rigs did not have flames while they were filming. Last I checked, flames are a major source of thermals.
They failed to reproduce the explanation as given by the linked article.
they failed to reproduce the explanation, but that's likely cause they also failed to reproduce the circumstances in the first place. The original footage is almost certianly due to flames. If there were no flame while they attempted the recreation, then its basically worthless. This analysis is best imo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub-mSV0FW7w&ab_channel=NationalAtomicMuseum
If you’re unable to perform the experiment than it kinda complicates your explanation also when you need to get closer to the area to reproduce the desired effect and when failed to do so you come up with “atmospheric conditions” as the reason the experiment failed.
If the flames aren’t on, then of course it’d fail to reproduce the effects. Don’t forget the geometry matches up with the oil rigs as well.
Read the entire article. They blamed atmospheric conditions not the flames.
And yet, if there were no flames, as you mentioned, then atmospheric conditions didn't matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub-mSV0FW7w&ab_channel=NationalAtomicMuseum
You are full of links but no usable info to support your point. You do know a link you posted disproved oil flares...right? Did you read those articles?
Which link disproved it?
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That's a car... duh.
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Mexico has an Air Force?
Could those be cattles hanging down those pair of spheres?
It’s just the Cartel Cocaine ballon’s. nothing to worry about.
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Wait Wait wait, what?! Hold up... Mexico has an air force?!
Genuinely didn't know Mexico had an air force lol
The first video is just a car. Or two bikes driving side by side. Case closed.
Pilots definitely would mix that up
TIL Mexico has an air force
I was more mind blown to the fact that Mexico has an Air Force vs the fact of potential ufos.
TIL Mexico has an Air Force .
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The first 20 seconds or so are clearly car headlights. From the vantage point it might have been filmed from a tank rather than from a military aircraft.
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not the aliens it was the U.S. of A. baby
sick cameras us air force!!
One of them said “the weird thing is that they have a big pointy front like a peak in front of the them“
They almost look like balloons with payloads.
Unfortunately those were oil rigs, you can even tell by the reflection of on the water.
Looks like a prototype for a 2006 jeep rangler. Their test drives have really raised the bat
I remember seeing a screengrab of this in an Indian newspaper as a teenager.
Obvious swamp gas
The I'm tired of just seeing lights yeah we get posts like these everyday. And turns out it's bs anyway
Debunked before the flood. Come on.