Yemen Orb Survives Hellfire Missile Strike: Congress Shown Footage

On a day in September 2025 that may eventually be remembered as a turning point in the long and frustrating history of UAP disclosure, members of the U.S. House of Representatives watched in silence as footage played on screens before them showing something that should not have been possible. An MQ-9 Reaper drone—one of the most advanced unmanned aerial platforms in the American military arsenal—had locked onto a small, spherical object moving at considerable speed off the coast of Yemen. The drone’s operator fired an AGM-114 Hellfire missile, a precision-guided weapon designed to destroy armored vehicles and hardened targets. The missile struck the orb directly. And then, as the infrared footage made unmistakably clear, the object continued flying as though nothing had happened.

The footage had been recorded in October 2024 during routine military operations in the waters surrounding Yemen, a region that had seen intense naval and aerial activity related to Houthi rebel threats against international shipping lanes. The MQ-9 Reaper, operated remotely by U.S. military personnel, had detected the anomalous object on its sensors and, following whatever engagement protocols applied, had attempted to neutralize it. The Hellfire missile—a weapon with a proven track record across decades of conflict, capable of punching through the armor of a main battle tank—made confirmed contact with the target. Yet the spherical object displayed no damage, no deviation in its flight path, and no reduction in speed. It simply carried on.

The Congressional Hearing

The footage was presented during a House task force hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, one of several such hearings that had taken place since Congress began taking a more assertive posture toward the UAP question in the early 2020s. Representative Eric Burlison played the video for his colleagues and the assembled witnesses, using it as a centerpiece to challenge what he and other lawmakers characterized as a persistent culture of secrecy within the Department of Defense regarding encounters between military assets and unidentified objects.

The hearing was not limited to the Yemen footage alone. It formed part of a broader effort by members of both parties to force the Pentagon into greater transparency about what the military knows—and what it may be concealing—about objects that appear to operate beyond the boundaries of known physics. The Hellfire-resistant orb was, in many respects, the most dramatic piece of evidence presented, but it sat within a wider mosaic of testimony and documentation suggesting that encounters between U.S. military personnel and unexplained aerial phenomena are far more common than the public has been led to believe.

Lawmakers pressed Pentagon officials and military representatives on why such footage had not been shared with Congress sooner, and why service members who reported encounters with anomalous objects continued to face professional consequences rather than encouragement. The frustration in the hearing room was palpable. These were not fringe conspiracy theorists demanding answers—they were elected officials with security clearances and oversight authority, confronting what they perceived as institutional stonewalling on a matter of national security.

Dylan Borland’s Testimony

Among the witnesses who testified at the hearing was Dylan Borland, a former geospatial intelligence specialist who had served at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Borland’s account provided a deeply personal dimension to the proceedings and illustrated the human cost of the military’s approach to UAP reporting.

Borland told the committee that during an overnight duty shift in 2012, he had observed a large triangular aircraft hovering silently above his position at Langley. The object remained stationary for several minutes—long enough for Borland to study its shape and characteristics in detail. It displayed no conventional navigation lights, produced no sound, and exhibited flight characteristics inconsistent with any known aircraft in the U.S. inventory or that of any foreign power. As a trained intelligence specialist working at one of the nation’s premier military installations, Borland was not a casual observer prone to misidentification. He knew what belonged in the sky above Langley, and this was not it.

What happened after Borland reported his sighting followed a pattern that has become distressingly familiar in UAP testimony. Rather than receiving a thorough debriefing or having his report treated as a potential security matter worthy of investigation, Borland claimed he faced professional retaliation. His account echoed those of dozens of other military and intelligence personnel who have come forward in recent years to describe a culture in which reporting anomalous encounters is treated not as a duty but as a career liability. The message, whether delivered explicitly or through institutional pressure, was clear: see something, say nothing.

Borland’s willingness to testify before Congress despite the consequences he had already endured lent his account considerable weight. He was not seeking attention or financial gain. He was a professional intelligence officer who had witnessed something extraordinary at a sensitive military installation and who believed that his government owed both its service members and its citizens an honest accounting of what is happening in American airspace.

The Broader Pattern

The Yemen orb footage and Borland’s testimony did not exist in isolation. They represented data points in a pattern that has been building for years, accelerating since the 2017 publication of Navy pilot encounters with anomalous objects off the eastern seaboard and the subsequent release of now-famous infrared videos showing objects performing maneuvers that defied conventional aerodynamic understanding.

What distinguished the September 2025 hearing from earlier proceedings was the quality of the evidence and the directness of the confrontation between legislators and the defense establishment. The Yemen footage was not ambiguous sensor data requiring expert interpretation. It was a clear sequence showing a U.S. military weapon system engaging an unknown object and failing to destroy it. The implications were stark: either the object was constructed from materials and employing technologies far beyond anything in the known human arsenal, or something about the encounter defied straightforward physical explanation.

Lawmakers accused the Pentagon of maintaining what they called a “lack of transparency” that bordered on obstruction. Several representatives noted that the Department of Defense had been directed by legislation to establish reporting mechanisms and share information about UAP encounters with Congress, yet progress remained agonizingly slow. Classified briefings were often vague, requests for documentation went unanswered, and the newly established All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office appeared to some members to be more focused on managing the narrative than pursuing genuine investigation.

The hearing concluded without dramatic revelations or definitive answers—such hearings rarely do. But the Yemen footage had introduced something new into the public record: visual evidence of a direct military engagement with an unidentified object in which the object proved impervious to one of the most effective weapons in the American arsenal. For those who had long argued that UAP represent a genuine and urgent mystery, it was a vindication. For those tasked with maintaining the position that there is nothing to see, it was an increasingly difficult piece of evidence to explain away.

The orb, wherever it came from and whatever it was, flew on. The questions it left behind showed no signs of doing the same.

Sources

• Wikipedia search: “Yemen Orb Survives Hellfire Missile Strike: Congress Shown Footage”
• CIA UFO/UAP Reading Room — Declassified CIA documents on UAP
• AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) — Current US DoD UAP office