Hellfire missile 'bounced off' Yemen UAP, congressional video suggests

• Sep, 11 2025
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A missile that didn’t bite: what the video shows

A video shown to lawmakers on Capitol Hill appears to capture something that should be impossible: a U.S. Hellfire missile streaks toward a glowing orb over water, seems to hit it dead on—and then carries on, as if it skimmed a rock on a lake. The orb keeps flying, untouched. The clip, marked October 30, 2024, was said to be recorded by a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone off Yemen during ongoing operations in the Red Sea region.

Representative Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican, played the footage during a House Oversight Committee hearing focused on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). He said a whistleblower provided the video. One of the hearing’s witnesses, investigative reporter George Knapp, described the moment frame by frame: the missile appears to strike the object and then veer onward. Slowed down and zoomed out, the path looks even clearer.

Lue Elizondo, a former Pentagon official who once worked on UAP issues, said he had never seen a Hellfire fail to obliterate a target when it made a solid hit. He noted the weapon’s reputation for high precision and devastating effect. “Usually there’s not much left,” he said in remarks discussed at the hearing. Here, the orb remained intact and moving.

Lawmakers pressed service members and former officials on whether anything in the U.S. arsenal could shrug off a direct Hellfire strike. The answer given in the hearing was no. Asked if the video worried them, multiple officials said yes. That exchange, and the clip itself, raised a hard question: if the footage shows what it appears to show, what kind of object can ignore one of the military’s most reliable precision weapons?

The Pentagon is not talking. When reporters asked about the incident, a Defense Department spokesperson declined to comment or confirm whether such an intercept happened near Yemen. Key details—mission objectives, rules of engagement, telemetry, and the missile variant—remain classified. We don’t know if this was a deliberate test, a responsive strike, or a split-second intercept during a broader mission.

The timing matches a tense stretch at sea. Since late 2023, U.S. forces and partners have been intercepting missiles and drones fired by Yemen’s Houthi forces at merchant ships and warships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. MQ-9 Reapers have played a central role in tracking and striking threats. Hellfire missiles, carried by Reapers and other platforms, are the workhorse weapon for hitting small, fast, and dangerous targets.

That is why the clip rattled so many people. The AGM-114 Hellfire line has multiple variants: shaped-charge warheads designed to pierce armor, blast-fragmentation versions for softer targets, and specialized models for different guidance modes. In a typical hit, there is a violent detonation, and the target shows immediate damage or disappears from camera view. A clean “bounce” is not in the playbook.

At the hearing, members referenced a surge in UAP reporting in recent years. An official government update covering mid-2023 to mid-2024 logged hundreds of new reports from military and civilian sources, adding to a multi-year drumbeat that has moved the issue from fringe to mainstream oversight. The Pentagon set up a public-facing site in 2023 to host declassified materials. Even so, the most interesting cases—like this one—remain behind closed doors, with only snippets surfacing.

Witnesses told lawmakers the Yemen video is not unique. They described a larger bank of similar clips that Congress and the public have not been allowed to see. Every time a piece “gets out in the wild,” it tends to land without the metadata analysts need—things like sensor type, frame rate, aircraft position, weapon settings, and the missile’s flight profile. Without those, what looks extraordinary might be a trick of angles or timing in a dynamic 3D scene.

If the footage is exactly what it appears to be, the implications are big. Aerial objects that can resist—or redirect—kinetic strikes would force a rethink of tactics and defense planning. But if it’s a sensor artifact or a near miss misread as a hit, the lesson shifts to training and data hygiene: how to avoid misinterpretation in high-stress operations.

What it could be — and why it matters

Start with the obvious: there are normal explanations worth ruling out before jumping to extraordinary ones. Infrared sensors, compressed video, and long focal lengths can play tricks on the eye. Two objects moving at high speed along different lines can appear to collide when they’re actually miles apart. That is the parallax problem. Without range data, it is easy to call a pass a hit.

Second, the warhead might not have detonated. Hellfires have arming requirements designed to prevent premature explosions. Depending on the variant and settings, a missile that glances off at a shallow angle, or strikes a very small or very soft target, could fail to trigger the fuze. A no-detonation hit would still be expected to transfer force and cause disruption, but an object with low mass and little surface area can surprise you in sensor footage, especially at long range.

Third, think guidance and countermeasures. If the missile lost lock or was spoofed, it could change course at the last instant, making a near miss look like a deflection. Electronic warfare can confuse seekers. Flares and hot spots can attract them. On water, the sea surface itself can produce intense reflections and glare. What reads as a glowing orb could be a compact drone, a balloon-like object, or a glare artifact shaped by the sensor’s auto-gain and sharpening algorithms.

Fourth, consider the weapon variant. Some Hellfire models are optimized to penetrate armor; others disperse fragments. A specialized variant might behave differently on contact with a small or unusual target. There are also training rounds and inert loads. In a combat zone, live warheads are the norm, but without a weapon log, we are guessing.

Fifth, there is the simple “miss” scenario. Even a frame-perfect near miss can look like a hit when viewed on a single sensor with no depth cues. If the missile passes just above or below the object, the brain fills in the collision. In that case, the “bounce” is just continuation—of both object and missile—on slightly different tracks.

To move beyond speculation, analysts need the raw data. Compressed, edited clips rarely settle debates. What would help?

• Original, uncompressed video with the full HUD overlay and timestamps.
• Telemetry from both Reapers: position, altitude, speed, heading, sensor mode, and zoom.
• Weapon data: missile variant, fuze settings, arming distance, launch parameters, seeker video if available.
• Radio logs and crew statements to reconstruct intent and callouts at the moment of intercept.
• Environmental data: wind, sea state, temperature, visibility, and any other aircraft or ships in the area.

Those pieces can answer basic questions: Did the lines of sight actually converge? Did the fuze arm? Was there a detonation? Did the missile’s seeker lose lock? Did multiple sensors see the same thing? With that, you can choose between the mundane and the remarkable.

All of this lands inside a broader transparency fight. Congress has been pushing the Pentagon to share more about UAP cases with verifiable sensor data. The department created an office to centralize reports, triage cases, and publish unclassified updates. NASA convened an independent team that urged better data standards and more rigorous collection. Progress has been slow, and the best evidence usually stays classified.

The Yemen clip adds urgency because it intersects with active combat. U.S. forces have been engaging aerial threats launched from Yemen toward commercial shipping and naval vessels. Reapers have been shot at and, in some cases, shot down in the region. When a weapon behaves oddly in that environment, operators and commanders need answers fast. Is this a one-off anomaly, a repeatable technical issue, or an adversary capability?

Lawmakers at the hearing framed the stakes in national security terms. If an unknown object can negate a kinetic strike, it could complicate air defense and counter-drone tactics. If it is a sensor mirage, misreads could waste munitions, create safety risks, or inflate threat estimates. Either way, accuracy matters: budgets, training, and operational plans depend on it.

There is also a chain-of-custody problem. Whistleblower-sourced clips tend to leak with few supporting records. That fuels public interest but undermines analysis. Congress can fix that by requiring agencies to preserve and share full data packages—video, telemetry, weapon logs—under secure procedures with cleared staff and, where possible, redacted public releases.

Experts in munitions and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) will look for telltale signs in the frames—shockwaves, flash signatures, debris, plume behavior, and motion vectors. They will also compare sensor artifacts they have seen before: step-edge sharpening that turns hot pixels into “orbs,” frame dropping that distorts motion, and compression smearing that hides small explosions. Without the raw file, those checks are limited.

The hearing also highlighted how messy the UAP category has become. It holds everything from misidentified drones to atmospheric effects to truly odd cases with multi-sensor hits. The government’s own reporting shows that most cases end up explained once data improves. The small remainder keeps investigators busy, and that sliver is where this Yemen video will likely sit until more information appears.

Meanwhile, the questions pile up: Was the object maneuvering or drifting? Did any ship or aircraft nearby observe the event independently? Was there radar corroboration? Were there follow-on shots? Did the engagement trigger any safety reviews or weapon advisories? If the Pentagon has those answers, Congress clearly wants them on the record.

There is a policy piece too. Rules of engagement in crowded waterways are tight. Weapons like Hellfire are chosen for precision to avoid collateral damage. If a target behaves unpredictably—or if a sensor makes it look that way—commanders may hold fire or change tactics. That rolls into training updates, simulation tweaks, and, sometimes, new hardware requests.

For the public, the Yemen clip is a Rorschach test. People who think UAPs represent breakthrough tech see confirmation. People who focus on sensor pitfalls see a classic misread. Both camps have arguments. Only full-spectrum data will settle it.

Here is what to watch next:

• Whether the Defense Department releases the original video with metadata to Congress in a classified setting—and later, a redacted public version.
• Any review by the Pentagon’s UAP office or related intelligence components, and whether they brief findings to the oversight committees.
• Independent analysis by outside labs or national labs if the data is shared under controlled terms.
• Evidence of similar incidents in the region, suggesting a pattern rather than a one-off.
• Operational changes in counter-drone procedures in the Red Sea, which might hint at behind-the-scenes conclusions.

For now, we are left with a striking clip, a handful of on-the-record reactions, and a long list of unknowns. If the event is exactly what it looks like, it points to technology that outpaces what the U.S. military expects to meet over open water. If it is not, it is a reminder that even our best sensors, in the worst environments, can fool us.