Sighting in Espinasse, October 12, 2023

At around 11:30 pm, the witness was stargazing from their terrace when they noticed at least two intensely white lights in the southeast. The lights blinked out of sync and moved quickly in a straight line from south to north. The phenomenon crossed the sky in 15 to 20 seconds, rising from about 30° above the horizon at the start to between 45° and 60° at the end, before the witness lost sight of it in the northeast. The witness went briefly indoors, for 4 to 5 seconds, to grab their phone and film, but the video is of little use. Towards the end, they heard a rumble for a few seconds, like a large airliner heard from far away, though they did not know whether it was connected to the phenomenon.

The witness first thought it was an aircraft, but the blinking puzzled them: in their experience, airliners blink red and white and do not move so fast at altitude. They live under a military air corridor and know fighter jets, which usually fly low over their house and much faster than what they saw.

The GEIPAN investigation concluded that the witness saw a patrol of 4 Rafale fighter jets, whose presence was confirmed by the CNOA and its radar tracks, moving from southwest to northeast. Several points matched: regular white blinking typical of anticollision lights, the noise, the aircraft being present in the time window and azimuths described, passing about 5.5 km from the witness at closest, and a crossing of roughly 30 seconds at about 970 km/h. Their movement away to the northeast fits the rising elevation the witness reported. The absence of red flashing lights may be explained by discreet flying, for an exercise for instance, and the other lights may have been off or drowned out by the glare of the anticollision lights and the distance. At about 10 km altitude, the jets also account for the fainter noise and lower apparent speed. The case was classified A: observation of 4 fighter jets.