Were the El Paso Lights
the US Army Golden Knights?

Just my two pennies.....i live next to the largest military base in Canada and i have my whole life...both my parents are military and so is my brother i also have countless friends in afganistan and elsewear...i actually lived on the base housing units for thriteen years of my life...i have seen every airplane you can think of and my father was also a helicopter engineer for both the military and civilian companies....i have seen parachuters both in the day and at night with flares attached the their shuts( probably feet) . I cannot say that these lights were etvs but i can honestly say that they are not parachuters....no flares looks like that...these balls of light did not act like parachutes if they did when they were pulled the loghts would have to rise a huge amount before steadying...so these lgiht would have to fall than rise....my father in law has done countless jumps and can confirm this... the fact that these lights stopped than hovered is quiet exact and parashuters can not do taht ..yes they can make fromations but it is not that pretty...i have had vip passes to massive air shows ( biggest in canda ). and have seen shuter demonstarations..they also practice alot during the spring and summer months of the year where they make formations( parachute on top of parachute) ..all i can say is that these lights do not act like typical parashuters..and if they are what the hell did they have lit when they were falling through the sky and how did they stop on the spot like that and hover?..just putting in my change....

I made this account to make a post on the main Lights over El Paso thread, but to my dismay found that it had been closed as it had been "identified" as the Golden Knights. I accepted this answer as probable, but decided to do some further looking in to the matter, and found that there are several troubling discrepancies between these videos and a Golden Knight nightjump with magnesium flares that leave me unconvinced.

The first discrepancy is that of freefall time. A Golden Knight exhibition jump is generally done from an altitude of just under 4000 meters (around 3800m to be more precise), with the jumpers opening the chute at around 600 meters, with anything less being considered increasingly dangerous. They do this for the superior air time and the ability to perform more stunts and tricks with the amount of freefall time available (just under one minute of freefall). If, in the first news video, you suppose that what we are seeing is the Golden Knights or skydivers of any kind, freefall from the beginning of the streaking magnesium to the alleged opening of the chutes would be about ten seconds of freefall, which would only be about 560m of fall for a skydiver. Could the Golden Knights be jumping from 1200m? Its possible, but unlikely. We know that the conditions for the jump were good that night, and we can know from both US Army sources and youtube videos of other Golden Knights night-time jumps that freefall is AT LEAST 20 seconds, and a jump height below 2500 meters is probably out of the question. Why? Because ten seconds of streaking magnesium is not very impressive, and the stunts they perform need time, in addition to the fact that it is much safer to jump further up.

The second discrepancy is the behavior of the magnesium flares. While at the beginning of descent, the object shows tails similar to magnesium flares, the similarities cease once the objects hover ("open chutes"). A magnesium flare would still be a fountain of sparks, and IS, as is clearly visible in other night-jump videos, but any such a fountain is absent in ANY of the videos of the lights over El Paso. They have one, single, uniform glow that is not consistent with magnesium. You could say that it was just the angle that the cameraman was at, that made is simply APPEAR to be one, uniform glow, but that does NOT explain how EVERY video presents a uniform appearance. It is very, very unlikely that every cameraman was simply at the viewing angle necessary to view the magnesium flares as a single orb. Not only that, but the magnesium flare would without a doubt light up the canopy of the parachute, and anyone who has seen a similar thing in person would be able to tell you that a similarly lit canopy is visible for miles, and the visibility and size of the "flare-trails" relative to the cameramen should indicate that they would almost certainly be able to see a lit canopy from that distance, and have it show up on video. You can see the visibility of the canopies for yourself on the many youtube videos of night-jumps.

The third discrepancy is that EVERY night diver MUST have a flashing light on him. Obviously, it won't be visible when the much brighter magnesium flares are going, but after the flares go out YOU MUST be able to see a flashing light indicating that there is an airborne object there. These lights are an FAA regulation, and the Golden Knights, nor any other reputable skydivers, would break such an obvious and important regulation. Therefore, if the lights were indeed skydivers, then the lights could NOT have simply disappeared without being replaced by flashing aircraft lights. You can clearly see the presence of these lights in other videos of the Golden Knights or any other night-jumper also. In addition, if you argue that the freefall time can be explained by them lighting their magnesium late (which is wrong, because they ignite it as they leave the plane) then they would have blinking lights visible before ignition. If the "fourth diver" had a faulty magnesium flare that only lit up after he had opened his chute, then his flashing light would have been visible prior to the flare starting up, thus making it unlikely that the fourth orb was a fourth skydiver who did not appear due to a faulty flare.

This website's motto is "DENY IGNORANCE!" I wish that some people would really consider the facts before deciding prematurely that a certain explanation fits "perfectly" and that, therefore, the anomaly has been identified. I will make no claims here about the nature of the lights over El Paso, nor their origin. My aim is to simply point out several holes in the theory that they were night-time skydivers. Yes, the Golden Knights are the most convincing explanation yet, but it is still not entirely convincing, and the lights over El Paso certainly shouldn't be treated as "identified" or "solved."

Update