UAP Video Footage Captured by Helicopters Released by US Homeland Security and Border Patrol

Washington (USA) Following the example of the US Navy, former US border guards have now turned to US journalists with their observations of unidentified flying objects. Part of the information currently published in this way also includes video recordings from the authorities’ helicopters. While some were previously known, a previously unreleased recording immediately sparked controversy among UFO researchers and skeptics.

The statements, information and videos were recently published in an exclusive article on TheDebrief.org, which was based on interviews by the news portal with former officers of the US Department of the Interior’s Customs and Border Protection Agency “Customs and Front Patrol” (CBP). Accordingly, the US border guards also observe and encounter “amazingly regularly so-called unidentified phenomena in the airspace, whose maneuvering and flight characteristics are said to be beyond the possibilities of conventional aircraft”. According to TheDebrief.org, some of these observations were also recorded, and corresponding video footage is said to show objects that Debrief says baffles even seasoned flight veterans and other longtime US Homeland Security personnel.

Most notably Robert Thompson, who recently worked for the Department of Homeland Security himself and confirmed that “it’s not just the Navy and the Department of Defense that are watching these things.” As a federal agent of the “Tucson Sector Special Operations Group” of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol initiated efforts to establish a UAP observation group in the Tuscon area.

As with the US military, the homeland and border guards were also able to document a number of these sometimes bizarre observations and encounters using the onboard technology and cameras of the emergency vehicles and aircraft, which the agency actually uses to combat smugglers and illegal immigration.

“I’ve spoken to dozens of officers who have had UAP experiences like this,” said Thompson, who himself had an 11-year career in the military and then in fire and disaster protection before 14 years since 2008 for US Customs and Border Protection Agency operated. From 2020 to 2021 he worked for the then newly established “Arizona Air Coordination Center”, which was responsible for air operations in the Tucson area. There he flew, not least as a paramedic, with the helicopters of the border protection authorities and was partly responsible for investigating UAP sightings, had access to the reports of his colleagues and also to photo and video material with which some sightings could be documented .

After the revelations in the New York Times about the US Department of Defense’s previously secret UFO investigation program, he himself compiled a UAP reporting form in order to improve reporting of UAPs on the US southwest border.

The incidents investigated and documented in this way include an encounter by the “Tucson Police Department Air Support” with a flying object that “contradicted the characteristics of known drones/small unmanned aircraft systems” (sUAS = small unmanned aircraft). The craft is described in the documents as a “highly modified drone”. According to Thompson, the object first circled the helicopters and then suddenly shot up to 14,000 feet. After it became known within the authorities that he was interested in such sightings from the perspective of national security, there was a flood of confessions from his colleagues.

The incident, which is currently backed by previously unknown video footage, took place about 40 miles from Tucscon, Arizona, around midnight on November 6, 2018 and includes onboard footage of an AH-64 attack helicopter. In fact, the recordings only show three distant points of light, only a few pixels across, which seem to be moving in an unusual way.

While the three objects initially appear to be flying in an approximately triangular formation, the co-pilot tracks the objects using the multi-sensor imaging system known as the Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor (M-TADS/PNVS). These are advanced tactical thermal imaging sensors used by US fighter pilots. In addition, the likewise highly developed infrared imaging system “Apache Aviator Integrated Helmet” (AAIH) follows the head movements and thus the line of vision of the pilot. “As the helicopter nears the base of nearby Picacho Peak, it suddenly appears as if the three objects are orbiting each other and an invisible axis as they continue their steady flight eastward,” the article comments on the recording. “After a few of these rotations, the objects assume a triangular flight formation again before disappearing from the field of view of the helicopter taking off after a few seconds.”

TheDebrief, based on the officially preserved video, concludes that “although the footage lasts only a few seconds, the unusual maneuvers of the objects represent the first publicly available footage from UAP, showing highly unconventional flight characteristics and recorded by military sensors. Since the incident was more than 45 days ago, journalists were no longer able to obtain footage of civilian pilot and radar communications from the region from the US Civil Aviation Administration (FAA).