Since discovering ATS, I have paid more and more attention to the night skies. As everybody knows, there is a relentless high pressure system over my area of Texas which makes life almost unbearable save one aspect, stargazing.

Now, over the last couple of months, I have gazed into the night sky. I watch the usual falling stars, satellites, virtually anything that can be viewed moving with the naked eye. It passes the time.

I have come across one thing during my nightwatch that baffles me, unidentified aircraft. I've watched close to try and gleen a pattern, but to no avail. I will attempt to describe the craft as best I can, but I always see them at night.

The first time I saw this craft, there were two large escorts with it. The escorts are as follows, large, low-flying craft with one red and one blue light on each wing-tip. They seem to fly unusually slow. The red and blue lights seem to fade in and out like radio tower lights, no visible strobes. The three times that I have seen them, there is no noticable sound. I can't tell if they are jets or planes.

The craft in question, which these much larger craft are escorting is very very small, no strobes, no lights, just almost ambient lighting, which I suspect is the floodlights on the wings of the escort craft. One of the escorts is always in extremely close proximity. So close in fact that when directly overhead, it is difficult to distinguish one from the other, and in all three instances, it appeared to be one large strange looking craft with an orangish, glowing trapezoidal frontal nose section.

I see these between 9:45pm and 10:00pm, always flying from north to south, but not daily. Two instances have been on a Thursday, once (tonight) on a Monday.

My questions to ATS on this are...

Is this an escorted drone?

Has anybody else seen these?

Is this a border security deal?

Does anybody have any suggestions on what type of camera I could use to capture these night-time images?


I know the rules, pics and documentation or it didn't happen, and I accept that. I would just like some insight on the best way to bring this to light.

Much thanks in advance.

i have a friend in Seminole who videos jets refueling mid-air over his house darn near every day. Not sure where you live in west texas.... but....

Drones have been operating over American skies for some time now. Your theory is most definitely possible. Those lights you describe are common "FAA lights." For a craft that doesn't have any, there are one of a few things possibly going on:

1) Malfunction (explains the escort)
2) Black aircraft
3) Alien spaceship (of course it's not but... just saying)

I live seventeen miles from Seminole.

At first I thought the same thing, it has to be a refueling exercise, however, in all instances of mid-air refueling (that I know of), the large craft flies in front of the small craft. This isn't the case here. It is the small craft that is flying in front of the large craft.

Not only that, but they are flying low and slow enough for me to hit them with my pocket laser pointer that I use to scare birds out of the peanut plant I manage.

Sadly, they are not low enough for me to capture an image on my cell phone camera. I am going to take my Cannon digital to work for the next month in hopes of getting something.