Strange Lights Over Northern Afghanistan

Hi, long time reader first time writer to you. I'm prior service from the military and I served in the Army for five years, during those times, I never saw or heard or experienced anything out of the ordinary or unexplained during my time in service except for one incident which I will describe.

After I was honorably discharged in early 2009, I worked as a defense contractor for a small company out in Virginia, my job entailed deploying overseas for several months at a time. After being hired on I deployed to Northern Afghanistan to one of the Forward Operating Bases there. Ironically I ran across the story on your site about the alleged haunted outpost the Marines took over in December of 2009, a few days before the incident.

This was close to New Years in December of 2009. I was in the office and monitoring message traffic when I noticed a peculiar email and attached report. One of the Forward Operating Bases reported seeing lights near a valley adjacent to a nearby mountain top. One of the soldiers had reported seeing a series of lights during the evening hours as the sun was setting. According to him he thought they were possibly Coalition Aircraft and didn't pay too much attention to it. What ended up catching his attention was the fact that they were perfectly stationary and unmoving for several minutes as darkness approached. According to him the lights had a steady clear white glow to them.

Helicopters can be ruled out as the lights were near a mountain peak, and the strong wind currents as well as altitude would have made it pretty hard to keep a that sort of vehicle stationary let alone hovering safely. The terrain itself is very rugged and rough and the weather can be especially brutal at higher altitudes during the Afghan winter.

It was not an airplane either as the soldier could not make it any distinguishing characteristics or markings. After a few more minutes, according to the soldier as the sun had finished setting, the lights dimmed a bit and could not be made out as well so the soldier grabbed his night vision goggles to get a better look. (He didn't say specifically which ones he took, but most NVG gear will pick up near infrared light/heat sources if they are strong enough) He stated that the object was glowing almost "red hot" through his night vision goggles, and had an elongated cigar shape to it. Size was difficult to estimate but at least 200 feet in length.

There was no more description or detail of the incident as the report itself was spartan and the preceding emails to it were almost poking fun of the story (I honestly thought it was a prank at first, but the report had indeed gone through all the appropriate channels and was disseminated throughout the email chain). I have heard incidents similar to this before from other soldiers, but this is the first time I actually came across a real report that documented this. Please feel free to email me back with any questions you might have but this is the gist of it. Thanks...