A video shown Tuesday in a House hearing appears to capture a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone firing a Hellfire missile at an unidentified aerial object off Yemen in 2024.
Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., presented the 50-second clip during a session of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, which is reviewing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).
Below is the video I revealed in our @GOPoversight UAP hearing today, made available to the public for the first time.
October 30th, 2024: MQ-9 Reaper allegedly tracking orb off coast of Yemen.
Greenlight given to engage, missile appears to be ineffective against the target.… pic.twitter.com/jxJwl0e00S
— Rep. Eric Burlison (@RepEricBurlison) September 9, 2025
The footage, recorded on October 30, 2024, and provided by a whistleblower, shows a Reaper tracking an object described as an “orb.” A second drone, which is not seen in the video, fires a missile that strikes the object, causing it to break apart.
“It looks like the debris was taken with it,” Burlison said. “I’m not going to speculate what it is, but the question is why are we being blocked from this information consistently?”
The Pentagon has not confirmed the video. “We do not have anything to provide on this,” a U.S. defense official told The War Zone.
The House hearing, titled “Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection,” was the third UAP-focused congressional hearing in three years.
In 2024, the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office reported that most recorded UAP cases involved balloons, birds, or drones, and stated it found “no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology.”
