A Hellfire, a 'Tic Tac' and Five Witnesses: Inside Luna's September 2025 UAP Hearing

Midway through the hearing, Rep. Eric Burlison asked for a video to be played and told the room he wasn't going to narrate it.

"I'm not going to explain it to you, you'll see exactly what it does," the Missouri Republican said, according to ABC News.

On screen, he said, was footage from an MQ-9 Reaper drone off the coast of Yemen on October 30, 2024. A glowing orb moves across the frame. A Hellfire missile fired from a second MQ-9 hits it. The orb keeps going.

That was Tuesday, September 9, 2025, at a UAP hearing held by the House Oversight Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.

The task force and the title

The hearing was titled "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection," according to the official transcript, Serial No. 119-44. Luna, a Florida Republican, chairs the task force.

She opened by trying to lower the temperature. "This is not science fiction or creating speculation," she said. "This is about national security, government accountability, and the American people's right to the truth."

She also described a fight over access. Congress, she noted, "tried to create formal channels through the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office." But the Defense Department had told members that, "due to the Department's special access program rules, only members of the House Armed Services Committee" could be read in.

The witnesses

The five witnesses, as listed in the transcript:

• Jeffrey Nuccetelli, U.S. Air Force veteran.
• Chief Alexandro Wiggins, U.S. Navy.
• George Knapp, UAP journalist.
• Dylan Borland, UAP witness and U.S. Air Force veteran.
• Joe Spielberger, senior policy counsel at the Project On Government Oversight, the minority's witness.

Vandenberg: "a massive glowing red square"

Nuccetelli testified that "between 2003 and 2005, five UAP incidents occurred at Vandenberg Air Force Base" in California.

The first, on October 14, 2003, involved Boeing contractors who reported "a massive glowing red square silently hovering over two missile defense sites," he said. Later that night, he said, guards described a triangular object "larger than a football field" hovering over an entry control point.

He said he saw something himself in 2005: a sphere of light about 30 feet across that came to within roughly 200 feet of his house before accelerating away.

"We sent information up, but we got no guidance down on how to handle these events," he said. He testified that AARO told him the Air Force had destroyed the relevant records.

USS Jackson: the tic tac from the sea

Wiggins began with a disclaimer. "The views I share are my own, and I do not represent the official positions of the Department of the Navy."

Then he described February 15, 2023, around 7:15 p.m. Pacific time, aboard USS Jackson in a warning area off Southern California. "A self-luminous tic-tac-shaped object emerged from the ocean before linking up with three other similar objects," he testified.

The four objects, he said, departed with "high-synchronized, near-instantaneous acceleration." He cited the ship's SAFIRE imaging system and radar tracks, which he said dropped shortly after the objects left.

His concern was practical, not cosmic. When watchstanders see unexplained maneuvers near ships and aircraft, "that is first and foremost a safety issue," he said, according to the committee.

Langley: a 100-foot triangle

Borland said he served at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia from 2011 to 2013. "I am a Federal whistleblower," he said, adding that he had testified to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.

He described a summer 2012 encounter near the NASA hangar at Langley: an "approximately 100-foot equilateral triangle" that made no sound and then climbed to jet altitude in seconds, "displaying zero kinetic disturbance, sound, or wind displacement."

He said he has faced more than a decade of reprisals, including harassment and security-clearance manipulation. He also told the panel he "had reservations with AARO due to assessments they were reporting publicly at the time as a misrepresentation of the truth." Those are his allegations; the transcript contains no independent corroboration.

Knapp: 38 years on the story

Knapp, the investigative journalist on the panel, said he had approached the subject "as a news story" for 38 years. "It is not a matter of faith or belief to me," he said. "It is a story, and it is an important one."

He testified about Soviet-era UAP files and recounted what he said former AAWSAP director James Lacatski told him, that the U.S. had "got at least one" craft and that it was "not ours." That is Knapp's account of a conversation, not a documented finding.

When Burlison's video ended, Knapp called it "the Hellfire missile smacking into that UFO" and bouncing right off, ABC News reported. "The public should be seeing this stuff, and why you're not allowed to, I don't know."

Asked by Rep. Nancy Mace whether UAP reports could be government psyops, Knapp said it was "Entirely possible," according to the committee's summary.

The whistleblower lawyer

Spielberger kept the focus on process. "Whistleblowers are the first line of defense to root out waste, fraud, abuse of power, and corruption in our government," he said.

He urged a default toward disclosure over reflexive overclassification, safe reporting channels and stronger anti-retaliation protections, and protection for independent watchdogs like inspectors general.

"Sailors need to know that reporting UAP encounters will not harm their careers."

The Pentagon's response

There wasn't much of one.

Asked by ABC News to authenticate the Hellfire video, including its time and location, a U.S. defense official said, "We do not have anything to provide on this." A Defense Department spokesperson, asked for comment, said, "I have nothing for you."

ABC noted that AARO continues to investigate UAP reports and has not found evidence of extraterrestrial origin, and that AARO previously concluded the 2015 "GoFast" Navy video showed an optical illusion involving a weather balloon.

Burlison didn't say how he obtained the footage and declined to speculate about the object. "Why are we being blocked from this information consistently?" he asked.

What we know, and what we don't

What we know

• On September 9, 2025, Luna's task force took sworn testimony from Nuccetelli, Wiggins, Knapp, Borland and Spielberger.
• Burlison played video he said was recorded by an MQ-9 off Yemen on October 30, 2024, showing a Hellfire missile striking an orb.
• The Pentagon declined to authenticate or comment on the video.

What we don't

• What the orb in the Hellfire video was, and whether the missile actually struck it or passed through.
• Whether AARO has investigated the Vandenberg, USS Jackson or Langley incidents, and what it concluded.
• How Burlison obtained the footage, and whether more exists.

Firsthand, finally, but still unverified

This hearing was different in one important way. Grusch, in 2023, said he'd been told. These witnesses said they saw.

That's stronger testimony. It is still testimony. The Pentagon's silence on the Hellfire clip isn't confirmation, and a missile that appears to bounce off a target can have explanations that don't involve anything exotic. Without the full sensor data, nobody outside the classified world can say.

What the hearing did show is a pattern: people who report UAP describe paying for it, and the institution that holds the data keeps saying nothing.

So here's the question: after watching a Hellfire missile hit an orb and the orb keep going, what would it take for you to believe the official explanation, whenever it comes? Tell us in the comments.

Sources

• Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection (hearing transcript, Serial No. 119-44) — U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2025
• Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection (hearing page and video) — House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, 2025
• Hearing Wrap Up: Government Must Be More Transparent About UAPs — House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, 2025
• UFO hearing: Newly released video appears to show US missile bouncing off object — ABC News via KGO-TV, 2025