On 30 October 2024, a US military drone fired an AGM-114 Hellfire missile at an unidentified orb off the coast of Yemen. The missile struck it — and bounced off. The object continued flying, undamaged. Nine months later, Congress watched the video.
This is a living page — updated as new information, congressional testimony, and analysis emerges. It covers the Yemen UAP incident of October 2024, the congressional hearing of September 2025 where footage was first shown publicly, the broader whistleblower disclosures that accompanied it, and what the sceptics and analysts make of the evidence.
This is arguably the most significant UAP evidence ever presented to a legislative body. The footage has not been debunked. The Pentagon has not offered an explanation. And the story is far from over.
The Gulf of Aden and Red Sea had been a cauldron of military activity since October 2023, when Houthi forces in Yemen began launching missiles, drones, and kamikaze craft at commercial shipping and Israeli targets. The US military deployed MQ-9 Reaper drones to the region in force, conducting surveillance and strike missions around the clock.
Against this backdrop, at approximately 04:17 Zulu time on 30 October 2024, an MQ-9 crew spotted an anomalous object — a spherical, bright orb — moving steadily along a fixed path above the waves, west of the Yemeni coast. The object was not behaving like a Houthi drone or balloon. It was round, metallic-looking under infrared, and showed no propulsion signature. A decision was made to engage it.
What followed is documented on video. A second MQ-9 Reaper, using a technique called buddy lasing — where one aircraft illuminates the target with a laser designator while a second fires — launched an AGM-114 Hellfire missile at the orb. The on-screen HUD notation LRD LASE DES confirms this coordination between the two aircraft.
The missile struck the object. The footage, when slowed down frame by frame, shows the projectile making contact — and then deflecting away without detonating. The Hellfire's proximity fuze, designed to trigger on impact with conventional targets, did not fire. The orb, visibly undamaged, continued on its trajectory until it passed out of frame.
| DATE / TIME (ZULU) | 30 October 2024 / ~04:17Z |
| LOCATION | Off the coast of Yemen, Gulf of Aden / Red Sea |
| PLATFORM (OBSERVING) | MQ-9 Reaper drone (FLIR targeting camera) |
| PLATFORM (ENGAGING) | Second MQ-9 Reaper (buddy lasing configuration) |
| WEAPON EMPLOYED | AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missile |
| ENGAGEMENT MODE | LRD LASE DES (laser designator / buddy lasing) |
| TARGET DESCRIPTION | Spherical orb, metallic appearance, steady straight path |
| RESULT | Missile deflected without detonation. Object continued flying. |
| PENTAGON COMMENT | "We do not have anything to provide on this." |
The footage remained classified for almost a year. It was first shown publicly on 9 September 2025, at a House Oversight Committee hearing titled "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection." The video was introduced by Representative Eric Burlison (R-Missouri), who had been provided it by a military whistleblower.
The hearing was notable not just for the Hellfire footage but for the calibre of its witnesses. George Knapp — the veteran Las Vegas investigative journalist who first broke the story of Area 51's existence and has spent thirty years investigating UAPs — testified alongside military veterans and UAP researchers. Knapp's written testimony stated that official documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act "paint a much different picture than what the public, the press, and Congress have been told over many years."
When the Yemen footage was played, Knapp's reaction was unambiguous: "That's a Hellfire missile smacking into that UFO, and it just bounced right off." The room went quiet. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pressed the witnesses: had anyone ever seen a Hellfire fail to destroy a target like this?
"We've never seen a Hellfire missile hit a target and bounce off. No known material can withstand that kind of impact without triggering the fuze."— Lue Elizondo, former Pentagon senior intelligence official
The hearing also heard from US Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins and US Air Force veteran Dylan Borland, who provided firsthand accounts of their own UAP sightings during active service — encounters they said were systematically ignored or suppressed by their chain of command.
The congressman who introduced the footage to Congress. Burlison has been among the most persistent advocates for UAP transparency in the House, pushing for declassification and whistleblower protection. He stated: "This video is of an MQ-9 drone tracking an orb off the coast of Yemen. Something is out there."
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and chief investigative reporter for 8 News Now (Las Vegas). Knapp has investigated UAPs for over 30 years, broke the story of Area 51, and was central to bringing the Skinwalker Ranch story to public attention. His congressional testimony focused on the paper trail showing systematic government suppression of UAP evidence.
Former Director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) — the Pentagon's secret UAP research unit — and one of the most credible voices in the UAP community. Elizondo resigned from the DoD in 2017 to bring UAP information to the public and has been testifying to Congress for years.
Documentary filmmaker and UAP journalist who works closely with George Knapp. Corbell was among the first to publicly discuss the Yemen footage in detail, noting that in slowed-down analysis, a smaller orb can be seen peeling away from a larger craft before the missile engagement — a detail not widely reported.
A whistleblower who discovered a classified program called "Immaculate Constellation" — an unacknowledged special access program that collects and stores UAP imagery from military platforms across all branches of service. Brown attempted to report what he found through official channels and was blocked at every step before going public.
Active-duty and veteran military witnesses who testified about UAP encounters during their service. Their testimony followed a pattern seen at every UAP hearing since 2023: credible military personnel describing objects they cannot explain, and a command structure that actively discouraged reporting.
The Hellfire footage didn't emerge in isolation. It arrived alongside one of the most significant whistleblower disclosures in UAP history: the exposure of a classified program known as Immaculate Constellation.
According to Matthew Brown, who discovered the program while working within the intelligence community, Immaculate Constellation is an unacknowledged special access program (USAP) that functions as a central repository for UAP imagery and sensor data collected by US military platforms. It aggregates material from satellites, drones, aircraft, and ship-based systems — everything from FLIR targeting footage to radar signatures to measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT).
Brown was able to access thousands of images and videos on the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), the classified network used by the US intelligence community. What he saw, he said, was extraordinary: craft of unknown origin captured repeatedly and in high resolution by some of the most sophisticated sensor systems on the planet. The programme, he claims, has existed for years — collecting evidence while publicly the government has maintained it has found nothing anomalous.
Brown followed the rules. He reported what he found to superiors. He was ignored, then obstructed. His story — submitted in written testimony to Congress — is a textbook example of the institutional suppression that UAP researchers have been alleging for decades.
"What got me hooked is the paper trail. Documents squeezed out of the US government paint a much different picture than what the public, the press, and Congress have been told over many years."— George Knapp, Congressional testimony, September 2025
What makes the Yemen footage particularly difficult to dismiss is the combination of factors that all have to align for a conventional explanation to hold.
The AGM-114 Hellfire uses a proximity/impact fuze designed to detonate on contact with almost any material. For the missile to strike an object and not detonate, the target would need to be either incredibly soft (like a lightweight balloon), or be causing the fuze to malfunction in a way that has no known precedent.
The missile did not pass through the object. Frame-by-frame analysis shows it deflecting at an angle — consistent with striking something with surface integrity sufficient to redirect it. A balloon struck by a Hellfire would typically be punctured and destroyed, not deflect the warhead sideways.
The LRD LASE DES notation confirms this was a precision engagement, not a stray or errant round. Two aircraft coordinated. The target was actively lased. The missile was guided. This wasn't a near-miss or an accidental encounter — it was a deliberate military strike on a confirmed target.
The orb was moving on a steady, straight path before and after the impact. It did not flinch, accelerate, or change course. Its response to being struck by a Hellfire missile was, apparently, nothing at all.
The War Zone (The Drive), one of the most technically rigorous defence publications, noted that this hearing was the first public acknowledgment that MQ-9 Reapers are now actively engaging aerial targets in operational settings — regardless of the UAP context, a significant military revelation in its own right.
Honest UAP coverage requires engaging seriously with the sceptical arguments. Here is the strongest case against reading this footage as evidence of something non-human.
The balloon hypothesis. Analyst Mick West and others have pointed out that a large metallic-looking balloon — the kind used for high-altitude research, or the sort of Houthi surveillance balloon that was routinely reported in the region — could produce exactly what the video appears to show: an orb-like object moving on a steady path that is difficult to destroy with a contact-fuze weapon. A large balloon struck by a Hellfire might absorb the impact and deflect the warhead without triggering the fuze, if the missile struck at an oblique angle to a taut surface.
The parallax argument. The 2015 "Go Fast" UAP video — which appeared to show a hyper-fast object skimming the ocean at incredible speed — was later explained as a weather balloon viewed at an oblique angle by a moving aircraft, creating an optical illusion of velocity. Mick West has suggested the Yemen footage may involve a similar parallax effect for the deflection sequence.
The classified test theory. MUFON's photo analysis team raised the possibility that the footage represents a covert US military test — perhaps involving the AGM-114 R9X "Ninja" variant (which uses kinetic blades rather than an explosive warhead), which would explain why no explosion was seen. The R9X is designed to kill without collateral explosion, which might look exactly like a "bounce" on FLIR footage.
These are reasonable arguments. None of them have been confirmed, and all of them require the Pentagon — which has so far said nothing — to eventually provide data that would allow independent verification. Until that happens, none of the sceptical explanations can be elevated above "plausible alternative" status any more than the extraordinary ones can.
The Yemen incident does not exist in isolation. It is the latest in a long chain of military UAP encounters that have gradually forced the subject from the fringes of credibility into the heart of the US national security debate.
The 2004 Nimitz incident — where Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz carrier group encountered a white Tic-Tac-shaped object off San Diego that outmanoeuvred F/A-18 Super Hornets — was the first to crack open mainstream media coverage when its FLIR footage was leaked in 2017. The 2015 Gimbal and Go Fast videos followed. The establishment of AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) in 2022 represented the first formal Pentagon acknowledgment that the problem warranted dedicated institutional attention.
What the Yemen footage adds — if authentic and correctly interpreted — is something qualitatively new: a UAP that was not merely observed but actively engaged with a weapon, and survived. The US military has the most destructive and precise aerial weaponry in human history. A Hellfire missile has a warhead capable of destroying a main battle tank. Something absorbed its impact and flew on.
The implications, if true, are difficult to overstate. Not because it proves the object was non-human — it doesn't, by itself. But because it would mean that whatever these objects are, they are not merely puzzling: they are demonstrably beyond anything in our known physical or engineering understanding.
The Yemen UAP footage is the most consequential piece of physical evidence to emerge from the modern UAP disclosure movement. Unlike the Tic-Tac or Gimbal videos — which showed strange flight characteristics that could theoretically be explained by sensor artefacts — the Hellfire footage shows a direct physical interaction between a known weapon system and an unknown object, with an outcome that no known technology or material can currently account for.
The Pentagon has not offered any explanation. No conventional alternative has been confirmed. The footage has not been debunked. Independent technical analysis has been unable to reach consensus. The full, unaltered source footage — along with associated radar data, telemetry, and any debris or spectral analysis — has not been released.
Until it is, the honest position is: we don't know what that object was. But we know it survived a Hellfire missile, and no one in authority is telling us how.