PURSUE Record — Aguadilla — DHS thermal video, Puerto Rico, April 25, 2013: U.S. Department of Homeland Security / Customs and Border Protection · Aguadilla air

The Aguadilla record is a piece of thermal infrared footage captured on April 25, 2013 by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection aircraft operating over the northwest coast of Puerto Rico. Released publicly in 2015 by the Scientific Coalition for Ufology and now catalogued as part of the PURSUE Release 01 set, it represents one of the most studied civilian-agency sensor recordings of an unidentified object in the public domain — examined not by a military analytical unit, but by an independent civilian team working directly from the raw footage.

What this record contains

The record is classified as HIST — an official historical document — originating from DHS Customs and Border Protection. It consists of a single file: a 2-minute 25-second thermal infrared clip recorded from a CBP DHC-8 Q200 surveillance aircraft over Aguadilla's Rafael Hernández Airport and the adjacent coastline on April 25, 2013. The footage shows a small unidentified object — estimated at roughly 3 to 5 feet in size — traveling at low altitude over land and water before apparently entering the ocean and then reappearing at the surface. This apparent air-to-water transition has been characterized as transmedium behavior in subsequent analysis.

In 2015, the Scientific Coalition for Ufology published a detailed technical study of the footage — the first rigorous public treatment of the clip — estimating the object's airspeed at between 80 and 120 mph and its apparent underwater speed at approximately 95 mph. DHS has issued no official analytical conclusion about the recording. The public release contains no accompanying agency explanations, classified annotations, or identification reports beyond the raw video itself.

Sensor & operational context

The DHC-8 Q200 operated by CBP is a twin-turboprop surveillance platform commonly used for maritime border monitoring throughout the Caribbean, equipped with a stabilized forward-looking infrared sensor package capable of producing high-contrast thermal imagery day or night. These sensors detect differences in thermal emission rather than reflected visible light — objects that deviate from ambient temperature register distinctly against a cooler ocean or land background. CBP regularly conducts patrol flights along the Puerto Rico coastline as part of counter-narcotics and border interdiction operations, making the aircraft type, airspace, and flight procedures operationally routine and well-documented.

Thermal cameras of this type are capable of tracking airborne and surface objects at range, but they are not designed or calibrated for precise size or velocity measurement of small, fast-moving targets. Speed and size estimates derived from FLIR footage depend on aircraft altitude, field-of-view geometry, and triangulation assumptions — a methodological caveat the SCU analysis addresses directly, but one that remains a legitimate source of analytical uncertainty regardless of the quality of the work.

What this does and does not prove

The Aguadilla footage documents a real thermal signature that CBP crew did not identify at the time, and which has not been officially attributed to any source since. What it does not establish is any specific cause: the object's origin, propulsion method, or physical nature remains unresolved. The SCU's speed and transmedium estimates represent serious independent analytical work, not official conclusions, and the apparent water entry could reflect optical geometry, sensor behavior, or the target passing below the camera's effective horizon. The footage alone cannot eliminate those possibilities. What is documented is that the signature exists, behaved unusually relative to known aircraft profiles in the thermal record, and was never explained by the releasing agency.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

Within the broader PURSUE Release 01 set — 162 documents spanning FBI archive materials from 1947, Department of War military sensor records, and NASA imagery programs — the Aguadilla case sits among the 28 video records as one of the few civilian-agency entries in the release. It represents DHS border-security sourcing rather than DoD or NASA channels, adding a distinct operational thread to the collection. Its inclusion alongside resolved cases reflects the release's stated analytical discipline: the unexplained filed next to the explained. Additional PURSUE coverage, including records from the FBI archive series and contemporary military sensor reports, is available in the SkyLens PURSUE blog series. The full indexed set is on the SkyLens UAP files page.

Editorial note: This analysis is independent commentary on a publicly released document. The original record, source links, and full release metadata are catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page alongside every other case in the PURSUE Release 01 set.