SKIES & SAUCERS
Sixty-Page 'Trancas File' Reopens Argentine Air Force Lights Mystery
A letterheaded dossier of satellite photographs and officers' statements about 1995 sightings in Tucumán province has reached researchers, though its authenticity is unconfirmed.
TRANCAS, TUCUMÁN, ARGENTINA — A dossier of more than sixty pages, stamped "classified" and bearing the letterhead of the Argentine Air Force, has been circulating among UFO researchers and specialist journalists since early 2026, according to a report by PipolNews, translated and republished by the blog Inexplicata. It has become known as the "Trancas file."
The papers concern a wave of sightings between July and September 1995, when residents of Trancas, La Cocha and San Pedro de Colalao told local police they had repeatedly watched bright lights move silently over the Aconquija mountains. The report states that the Air Force's then-Intelligence Directorate, according to unnamed sources, sent an investigative team to the Tucumán base.
The file reportedly contains radio transcripts, three black-and-white satellite photographs, and four signed statements from non-commissioned officers whose names have been redacted. Two photographs are said to show a luminous point above a river; the third, of poorer quality, shows an elongated shape that a handwritten note says analysts never identified. All four officers describe an intense white light with red flashes that hovered for about twelve minutes before departing at great speed. None mentions confirmed radar contact, which skeptics consulted by the outlet called a weakness.
The report offers two readings of the witnesses' agreement. It may indicate a genuine event, or it may reflect a story that had settled into the garrison's collective memory before being written down. Archival specialists add that missing receipt stamps and an incomplete reference number make it impossible to establish the document's chain of custody from 1995 to the present.
The Commission for the Study of Aerospace Phenomena (CEFAE) reportedly declined to confirm the file's full authenticity, though it did not rule out that some material derives from genuine 1990s records. Astronomers consulted suggest atmospheric effects, aeronautical beacons or re-entering satellites, as have been proposed for past lights in the region, but none has been tested against the photographs, which have had no independent public assessment.
A note from Inexplicata's editor clarifies that this episode is distinct from the celebrated 1963 Trancas case.