MQ-9 Orb — Red Sea off Yemen Coast, 2024

On October 30, 2024, during ongoing U.S. military surveillance operations over the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen, a MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft captured infrared footage of an unidentified luminous object. The footage was subsequently presented at a House Oversight Committee hearing on November 13, 2024 — one of several congressional hearings examining unidentified anomalous phenomena in 2023 and 2024. The incident is notable for involving a direct kinetic engagement attempt against an unidentified aerial object, producing footage of the object surviving a Hellfire missile strike. The footage originates from U.S. military drone operations; the MQ-9 Reaper is a remotely piloted surveillance and strike aircraft operated primarily by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Operational crews for MQ-9 missions consist of a pilot and sensor operator, typically stationed at a ground control station. The footage was presented to the House Oversight Committee by members of Congress with access to military surveillance records. Specific crew identities have not been made public. Multiple members of the Oversight Committee, including representatives who have been vocal on UAP transparency, were present for the screening. The drone's infrared sensor captured a bright, spherical luminous object — consistent with the "orb" category of UAP that has appeared repeatedly in AARO-reviewed footage from 2014 onward. The object was airborne over the Red Sea, in the operational theater where U.S. forces have been conducting ongoing strikes and surveillance against Houthi positions in Yemen since late 2023. The orb appeared self-luminous in the infrared spectrum, with no visible propulsion system, exhaust signature, or aerodynamic control surfaces. Its precise altitude, speed, and size were not publicly disclosed. The duration of the encounter as captured on the drone footage was not specified in open-source accounts of the hearing. The primary anomaly documented in this footage is the object's apparent resilience to a direct Hellfire missile strike. The AGM-114 Hellfire is a precision air-to-ground munition designed to destroy armored vehicles and hardened targets; a direct hit produces a shaped-charge warhead detonation. In the footage screened at the November 13 hearing, the orb was shown continuing on its trajectory after the missile was observed striking it. No debris, dissipation, or change in behavior was documented post-strike. This constitutes a potential instance of the DoD observable category of structural resilience or anomalous material properties, though AARO has not publicly categorized the footage. The MQ-9's infrared sensor recorded the object and the missile engagement. A Hellfire warhead detonation would typically produce a thermal bloom visible in infrared; the nature of the thermal signature at the moment of strike was not described in open-source accounts of the hearing. No radar data or additional sensor fusion information from the incident has been publicly released. No secondary physical effects — electromagnetic interference, atmospheric disturbance, or wreckage recovery — have been documented in open sources. The footage was shown publicly at the House Oversight Committee hearing on November 13, 2024, as part of ongoing congressional oversight of UAP. Members of Congress who have been advocating for greater UAP transparency, including Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), were involved in organizing and participating in the hearing. The Department of Defense and AARO have not issued any public statement specifically addressing this footage or the October 30 incident. The hearing produced no formal DoD response to the specific engagement footage within the time frame of available public record. None documented. The footage was presented in an open congressional hearing rather than in a classified session, suggesting a deliberate decision to make the engagement visible to the public record. No witness suppression, NDA activity, or formal disinformation campaign has been associated with this specific incident in available sources. The Yemen MQ-9 orb footage represents a qualitatively distinct category of UAP evidence: direct kinetic engagement of an unidentified object by U.S. military forces, with footage of the object surviving the strike. Unlike the FLIR, GIMBAL, and GoFast videos released in 2017–2020 — which show objects behaving anomalously but without direct interaction — this footage, if authentic, documents U.S. forces actively engaging a UAP and the object continuing unaffected. The Red Sea / Yemen theater has been one of the most heavily surveilled and instrumentally documented operational theaters of 2023–2024 due to ongoing Houthi drone and missile activity, making the likelihood of sensor error or misidentification lower than in less-monitored environments. The case adds a Middle Eastern data point to the global pattern of military UAP encounters that has driven congressional action since 2017.