Background: The Pine Bluff Arsenal is a U.S Army installation outside of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The arsenal formerly stored chemical weapons, and now manufactures smoke, riot control, and incendiary munitions, as well as chemical/biological defense operations items. This is the only location in North America where white phosphorus munitions are filled.
Claims: In January 2022, on a cold and still night, two men were out on the Arkansas river in a small boat. It was after midnight, and the men had launched their boat near Wright, Arkansas and had drifted downstream to near the Pine Bluff Arsenal. They were headed for a heavily-wooded island about 1.5 miles long, formed by a bend in the river. One of the men had seen a large White-tailed buck on the island days earlier, and they were creeping back under the cover of darkness with the intent of poaching deer.
As they were approaching the island in the bend of the river, the men noticed a bright light moving thru the sky, seeming to grow brighter and larger by the moment. It appeared to be descending over the arsenal to the west. They both panicked, and spent several seconds arguing whether or not the state game and fish commission had a helicopter. By the time their brief argument had finished, the light had disappeared to the west again. As they continued down the river, the light appeared again, and started to drop low over the trees, and started moving erratically back and forth to the left and right. Eventually the light settled below the tree line, but was so bright they could still see illumination through the tops of the trees. They estimated that it was about 2 miles to their west.
Both men became spooked and turned the boat around and started motoring back upstream toward Wright. Suddenly, the bright light had risen above the tree line again, and was hovering steadily a few hundred feet in the air. It hovered in nearly the same place for about 30 seconds, and then suddenly accelerated and disappeared at an extremely high rate of speed to the northwest, while appearing to climb at a steep angle.
Our take: This case came to our attention as both men are mutual friends with someone that also knows one of Robyn's relatives. This case is problematic, as both men were committing a crime while the sighting took place (poaching in Arkansas can carry a fine of up to $10,000 and a year in jail). Because of this, both men will not allow their names to be used in the investigation. They did allow us to view a cell phone video of the incident, but because their voices are on the video, they do not want to make it publicly available. (Again, they were committing a crime). To be honest, the cell phone video is of poor quality; you can see an out-of-focus bright light in the sky, which goes behind the trees, then after a time you see the out-of-focus light again, and it does appear to rapidly disappear.
The biggest problem with the video is that it was shot on an inexpensive phone that has poor resolution, poor low-light performance, and no image stabilization. In other words, it's a very dark, out-of-focus, shaky video with some blobs of light moving around on it while two guy yell and cuss excitedly about what they are witnessing. It's honestly of little value.
What really happened? We are actively investigating this claim. There is a long history of UFO's hovering over military installations, although they seem to be most interested in those that contain nuclear weapons. The Pine Bluff Arsenal does not (as far as we know) store nuclear weapons.
We are considering a number of rational explanations. My first thought is that they may have saw a bright star or a planet, which on a cold and clear night can appear to shimmer and "dance back and forth", however it's clear from the shaky video that whatever they witnessed was very bright and dropped below the tree-line and later reappeared - not a star or a planet. We are also exploring the possibility it was a helicopter with a searchlight, but there is no sound of a helicopter present on the video. Furthermore, a helicopter would not have been able to zip off at a rapid rate of acceleration at the end of the video.
Finally, I am considering the possibility that they witnessed an airliner with landing lights on, lining up to land at the Little Rock airport. The problem is, the airport is about 30 miles to the north, and this would not line up with a normal inbound traffic pattern. Aircraft approaching from the west would need to bank and turn toward the airport much further out to make a successful landing. In addition, the Little Rock airport normally receives its last scheduled inbound flight between 10:30 to 11:00 PM. Of course, if an aircraft was delayed, it could arrive later.
We are still actively interviewing potential witnesses and the case remains open.
