The Pentagon released footage taken by a US MQ-9 Reaper drone on Wednesday after it came upon an unknown flying object swooping over the Middle East. The event, which was reported last year, marked an unmanned aircraft's first contact with what the military now refers to as Unexplained Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), described the details of the footage before a Senate hearing by describing the characteristics of the brilliant and shimmering "metallic orb" the military drone witnessed after a "spherical UAP."
“Silver. Translucent. Metallic. 10,000 to 30,000 feet [in the air] with apparent velocities from the standstill to mach with no thermal exhausts typically seen," he stated, saying the item had behaved "consistently with other'metallic orb' sightings in the vicinity."
A human witness has almost always been necessary for UFO sightings in the past since it took human judgment to establish if a craft's movement was within the realm of what was feasible with available technology. But even without a human pilot, the Reaper's camera was able to follow and track the orb.
Kirkpatrick would not rule out the possibility that the orb was "adversary breakthrough technology," but he did agree that its design and speed were amazing and that it may be related to "known objects or phenomena" or even "extraterrestrials."
Kirkpatrick informed the Senate that the AARO typically succeeds in identifying its aerial prey and hinted that he had even informed the Defense Department and intelligence officers that the US's foreign enemies had technologies Washington was completely ignorant of.
The goal of the AARO, which was founded in July, is to coordinate all efforts made by the Defense Department and other federal agencies to find and attribute "anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged, and transmedium objects." The agency was created because a Senate measure the year before that demanded information from US intelligence agencies regarding "unidentified aerial phenomena" left senators with more questions than it did answers.
Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), described the details of the footage before a Senate hearing by describing the characteristics of the brilliant and shimmering "metallic orb" the military drone witnessed after a "spherical UAP."
“Silver. Translucent. Metallic. 10,000 to 30,000 feet [in the air] with apparent velocities from the standstill to mach with no thermal exhausts typically seen," he stated, saying the item had behaved "consistently with other'metallic orb' sightings in the vicinity."
A human witness has almost always been necessary for UFO sightings in the past since it took human judgment to establish if a craft's movement was within the realm of what was feasible with available technology. But even without a human pilot, the Reaper's camera was able to follow and track the orb.
Kirkpatrick would not rule out the possibility that the orb was "adversary breakthrough technology," but he did agree that its design and speed were amazing and that it may be related to "known objects or phenomena" or even "extraterrestrials."
Kirkpatrick informed the Senate that the AARO typically succeeds in identifying its aerial prey and hinted that he had even informed the Defense Department and intelligence officers that the US's foreign enemies had technologies Washington was completely ignorant of.
The goal of the AARO, which was founded in July, is to coordinate all efforts made by the Defense Department and other federal agencies to find and attribute "anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged, and transmedium objects." The agency was created because a Senate measure the year before that demanded information from US intelligence agencies regarding "unidentified aerial phenomena" left senators with more questions than it did answers.
