More UFO kerfuffle in Texas

As the hype around a U.F.O. sighting in Texas garners an unusual amount of attention, a local Air Force reserve base stepped up on Wednesday with a statement that either completely debunks the story or fuels it further, depending on who you ask and when you ask them.

In the days since the reported sighting — which one witness said was of an object in the sky “bigger than a Wal-Mart,” with the addition of many, many strobe lights — officials at the airbase initially said that none of their aircraft were flying on the night in question.

But they changed their story on Wednesday: now they say that 10 F-16 fighter jets were indeed airborne between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. local time that night, on a training mission. That includes the 5-minute period when unidentified flying objects were sighted.

So is it time to say, “So much for aliens in Texas dairy country”?
 
Not if you ask The Associated Press, which published that line in an early version of its report before switching to a much more noncomittal lead paragraph.
 
One of the people expressing doubts about the F-16 explanation was Kenneth Cherry of the Mutual UFO Network, who asserted, “This supports our story that there was U.F.O. activity in that area.” He was apparently referring to one witness’s claim that the fighter jets were there to chase the U.F.O.