A new ‘UFO video’ made news around the world last week when it was revealed to the public for the first time at the most recent US Congressional hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena. Very few details were given about the video, which shows the UFO being tracked by a drone off the coast of Yemen, as a Hellfire missile approaches and then strikes it, with the object deflecting but apparently continuing on.
Much was made of the object’s apparent invincibility to the missile strike, with journalist George Knapp – a long-time veteran of the UFO beat, who appeared at the hearing – saying “that’s a hellfire missile smacking into that UFO, and bouncing right off – and it kept going.” All in all, the video made for eye-catching content, and there was much initial excitement about it both in the UFO community and also in the wider mainstream press.
One person who was impressed on first viewing was former US Navy F/A-18F pilot Ryan Graves, who has emerged in recent years as a leading advocate for serious and open investigation of UFO sightings. “I’m not aware of any object that can take a missile hit and the constituent components continue to travel together,” Graves said after his initial viewing of the video. “I’ve not studied the video closely, but after first watching- I don’t have an explanation.”
However, after further review, Graves voiced more skepticism, saying “it’s conceivable the video is of a prosaic target struck by a missile, chunks broke off, stabilized in the airstream, and began a parabolic descent that is generally aligned with the camera angle, making the target aspect change nearly imperceptible as it descends.” Graves requested that more video be released to help properly ascertain what the object might be, stating “if we had a longer video we may see the components impact the water surface eventually.”
Another former pilot, Chris Lehto, was even more critical than Graves though, saying the object seemed very likely to be a balloon. Lehto – who has been a staunch defender in the past of some UFO videos, reviewed the entire Congressional UFO hearing on his YouTube channel (embedded below for convenience), and classified various parts of the proceedings under ‘Good’, ‘Bad’, and ‘Ugly’ while providing his expert commentary and opinion as a former Air Force F-16 pilo . He filed the part of the hearing in which this video appeared under ‘Bad’, stating that “this is where I have to be critical of our side, the the pro-Disclosure side”:
So I understand why this this looks really compelling at first glance. I was excited when I saw it, right? New videos are always exciting. But once we analyze this technically, we can see that the object is wavering just like a balloon. So consistent with a balloon, the apparent movement is likely parallax. So really the drone is moving…and so what you’re going to see from any object it’s tracking is in the distance you will see the opposite motion from the drone.
And as far as the Hellfire missile…it didn’t explode, so it didn’t detonate…they use impact fuses. So that means the actual missile has to impact something hard enough to explode. You don’t want your missiles just exploding off nothing, right? If it goes through like a cloud or there’s a little bit of ice, something like that or just from the air pressure… And as we’ll watch here in the video, I think the missile actually did not detonate because it was hitting just a balloon and deflected off of it. Basically did not crush the impact fuse and did not detonate the missile.
The other major point of this is it’s just a video from, you know, a Reaper feed off the coast of Yemen. There’s no witness testimony. There’s no radar data. There’s no other information at all. And so I I would be shocked if anyone could provide any sort of compelling evidence why or how this is not a balloon.
Lehto instead said most people were ignoring perhaps the real star of the hearing: US Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins, who gave testimony about a ‘Tic-Tac’ UFO sighting by him and other crew members aboard the USS Jackson in 2023. Lehto noted how this particular case had a number of compelling aspects to it: multiple witness testimony, compelling radar data, FLIR video, ocean-to-air ‘transmedium’ movement, seemingly impossible acceleration, and encountered in the same area as the original ‘Tic-Tac’ sighting of David Fravor.
Lehto expressed his frustration that the UFO community and the mass media were, in his opinion, focusing on the wrong case from the hearing.
So I think what we’re going to see is another similar issue [like] when Lue Elizondo showed that off-the- cuff photo, right, ended up being a crop circle at the last UAP briefing or discussion… I just don’t think these are good ideas… I would say definitely just after a few short minutes looking at this video and actually watching it in real time, you should not at all post this at the hearing. Okay? Because now that’s all people are talking about, and it’s taken over – when there [actually] was some really compelling evidence…
The problem is you’re throwing a softball to the skeptics and the debunkers to just knock this out of the park, when we should be focusing on the compelling evidence… We had all of the information. We have it all. It’s posted there. [Chief] Wiggins: amazing, compelling radar data, witness testimony, visual, FLIR video. We have everything, right? There’s no need to go off the cuff and throw out some [other] video that hasn’t been vetted through anyone.
If even the pilots who are very open to taking UFO sightings seriously think that this case might not be too strong, perhaps it’s worth paying attention.
