Image Credentials: Image Title: The U.S. Military Fired a Hellfire Missile at a UFO, and the Orb Appeared to Shrug It Off Source: (Sora.ChatGpt) Date: September 2025. Attribution: Created using AI-generated imagery (Sora.ChatGpt), this does not depict a real-world scene.
By Staff Writer | Open Chronicle with Agencies
During a House hearing on September 9, lawmakers and whistleblowers watched grainy black-and-white drone footage that stunned the room, footage a Republican congressman says was provided anonymously to him. The clip, played by Representative Eric Burlison, shows an MQ-9 Reaper tracking a bright, metallic orb over water off the coast of Yemen, while a second Reaper appears to fire a Hellfire missile that strikes the object, but fails to stop it, with fragments scattering and the orb continuing.
Burlison, who posted highlights of the footage on X the same day, wrote, “Greenlight given to engage, missile appears to be ineffective against the target,” language that captured the hearing’s central mystery, and that helped turn the short clip into immediate headlines.
What the video shows, and what it does not show, matter. The engagement was said to have occurred in October 2024 during U.S. operations in the region, according to reporting and congressional testimony, and the footage was presented to the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets as evidence that some UAP encounters may involve objects that behave unlike any ordinary aircraft or munition.
Hellfire missiles are precision weapons, designed to destroy armored targets and suicide drones. They are not toys, so the apparent failure to disable the orb prompted immediate questions about the object’s composition, propulsion, and intent. Journalists, veterans, and so-called whistleblowers who testified at the hearing argued that the clip is one of several unexplained encounters that merit both transparency and serious technical investigation, including efforts they claim exist to recover and reverse-engineer advanced, non-standard technologies.
Officials, predictably, gave few answers. Requests for comment to the Department of Defense produced terse replies, and AARO, the government office tasked with tracking anomalous aerial phenomena, has increasingly been urged by members of Congress to make more material available to investigators and oversight bodies. Chairwoman Anna Paulina Luna opened the hearing by saying the American people deserve clarity, and she pressed for protections for whistleblowers who come forward with sensitive information.
How to read the footage remains contested. Some analysts quickly urged caution, noting that distance, parallax, sensor artifacts, and misidentification of conventional systems can make objects appear faster or more resilient than they are. Others, including veteran witnesses at the hearing, described long careers in the military and intelligence communities. They said that these encounters did not fit known capabilities, and they called for expanded resources to study UAPs as potential national security threats.
This hearing is the latest sign that UAPs have moved from late-night speculation into formal policy territory, with Congress holding multiple hearings in recent years, and with bipartisan pressure to force agencies to share more data. Whether the Yemen orb proves to be a balloon, an adversary drone, a sensor illusion, or something else entirely, the clip crystallized a broader political question, one that mixes technical curiosity with strategic urgency, and that will keep legislators and intelligence officials under pressure to explain what they know.
For now, the video stands as a striking, unresolved image, a programmable missile meeting an unknown object, a small explosion, debris that seems to travel with the target, and more questions than answers. The Pentagon so far has declined to provide a detailed public analysis, making the task of sorting fact from footage a continuing responsibility for journalists, scientists, and congressional overseers alike.
Notable sources and developments
• Video shown during House Oversight hearing on UAP transparency, September 9, 2025.
• Rep. Eric Burlison’s X post and video highlights.
• Multiple news outlets are reporting on the clip and the October 2024 incident near Yemen.
If you want, I can draft a shorter briefing for editors that summarizes the chain of custody questions and the most plausible conventional explanations, or produce a timeline of congressional hearings and public disclosures on UAPs to help reporters follow the story.
References
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The Debrief. “U.S. Military Video Shows Missile Fired at Metallic UAP During Drone Surveillance Over Yemen.” The Debrief, September 9, 2025.
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Fox News. “Video Shown to Congress Appears to Show U.S. Missile Fired at UFO During Military Operation.” Fox News, September 9, 2025.
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Burlison, Eric. Post on X (formerly Twitter). “Greenlight given to engage, missile appears to be ineffective.” September 9, 2025.
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Politico. “Congress Probes UAPs Again as Whistleblowers Demand Transparency.” Politico, September 9, 2025.
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The Guardian. “Congressional Hearing Reveals Footage of U.S. Missile Ineffective Against UFO.” The Guardian, September 9, 2025.
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The Hill. “Lawmakers Demand UAP Transparency After Yemen Missile Video.” The Hill, September 9, 2025.
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BBC News. “Pentagon Silent After Footage Emerges of Missile Strike on Mysterious Orb.” BBC News, September 10, 2025.
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NPR. “Whistleblowers and Journalists Testify on UAPs at Latest Congressional Hearing.” NPR, September 9, 2025.