A never-before-seen video shown during a Congressional hearing purports to depict a U.S. military drone attempting – and failing – to shoot down a mysterious "orb"-like object.

Provided by a whistleblower to a member of the U.S. House, the video was arguably the highlight of a lengthy hearing Sept. 9 on Capitol Hill surrounding UFOs, which the government now refers to as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.

The hearing was the third in as many years in the halls of Congress since fiery testimony in July 2023 reignited public fascination in UFOs – not to mention the possibility that aliens are piloting them. Across the three hearings, several witnesses – including journalists and high-ranking military members – have testified under oath about shadowy military programs to retrieve and study not only interstellar alien craft, but the extraterrestrial pilots themselves.

Congress' latest foray into the topic of UAP comes amid heightened calls for transparency as legislation in the works would compel the federal government to release more information about what they've uncovered.

Here's what to know about the UAP in question, as well as the military's apparent attempt to destroy it with a Hellfire missile.

Video shows US missile fired at UAP

The viral video provided by an anonymous whistleblower to Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Missouri, appears to show a military drone attempting to shoot down an unidentified object.

Burlison presented the video publicly for the first time during Congress' latest UAP hearing, which took place Sept. 9. The video shown at the House hearing, taken Oct. 30, 2024, off the coast of Yemen, shows an unknown object Burlison referred to as an "orb" being tracked by an MQ-9 drone, also known as a Reaper, he said.

In the video, a second MQ-9 drone off screen fires a Hellfire missile that enters from the left side to make contact with the object, Burlison said at the hearing. While the mysterious craft appears damaged as smaller debris breaks off, it is able to continue on its original course after the direct hit.

"Greenlight given to engage, missile appears to be ineffective against the target," Burlison said in a post on social media site X after the hearing. He added that an independent review of the video is underway.

What does a Hellfire missile do?

A Hellfire missile is an American missile first developed for anti-armor use and later developed for precision drone strikes against other targets. The weapon can be used as both an air-to-air and an air-to-ground missile, providing precision strikes against tanks, bunkers, helicopters and other targets, according to Military.com.

"The Hellfire missile is capable of defeating any known tank in the world today," Military.com claims on its website.

Witnesses at the hearing, who included three military veterans, testified to Congress that no known human technology is believed to be capable of surviving a direct hit from a Hellfire missile.

But as journalist George Knapp observed during the hearing, the missile appeared to have "bounced right off" the object in question, "and it kept going."

Congress hears more testimony about UFOs

The video was perhaps the biggest revelation amid the latest hearing in the halls of Congress about UAP, and whether the U.S. military and the intelligence community know more than they're letting on.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida, who chairs the task force that hosted the hearing, said in a statement ahead of time that "American people deserve maximum transparency from the federal government on sightings." Luna's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets was established in February 2025 and is a separate House Oversight subcommittee from the one that last held a hearing on UFOs in November.

The four witnesses who testified discussed their own first-hand experiences of seeing what they believed were UAP, as well as their knowledge of what the federal government may be unlawfully shielding from lawmakers about the phenomena.

The hearing included discussion of what the Pentagon has – and may not have – disclosed about UAP and the Department of Defense's relatively new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, tasked with investigating sightings.

The hearing, Congress' third about UAP in as many years, followed the latest round of testimony Nov. 14, in which a different slate of witnesses testified about unexplained objects violating U.S. airspace and secretive programs to recover and study downed extraterrestrial spacecraft.

The Pentagon has routinely maintained that it has not found any evidence that any UAP witnessed and investigated are extraterrestrial in nature.

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US tries to shoot down mysterious UAP. Whistleblower video and what we know

Reporting by Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY NETWORK / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect