Estados Unidos / Mar RojoUnited States / Red Sea.Yemen — Orbe / Misil Hellfire (MQ-9, 2024)Yemen — Orb / Hellfire Missile Strike (MQ-9, 2024)

On October 30, 2024, at approximately 04:17Z, two U.S. MQ-9 Reapers operating in the Red Sea off the Yemeni coast — an active theater for anti-Houthi operations against drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping — located an unidentified orb using 'buddy lasing' (cross-aircraft target designation) which, per the footage presented, was moving in a straight line low over the sea surface. One MQ-9 fired an AGM-114 Hellfire missile at the object. Video recorded by the second MQ-9 shows the projectile entering from the left of frame and making contact with the orb: the missile deflects without detonating, the object deforms and begins to tumble, shedding smaller objects — one barely visible — trailing from its rear.

The missile's behavior is analytically significant: the AGM-114 Hellfire is a highly effective missile against armored targets and drones, designed to detonate on high-velocity impact. Deflection without detonation implies either a failure of the impact-detonation mechanism or a material property of the orb inconsistent with any known aircraft or drone. The buddy-lasing technique carries tactical weight: that two platforms coordinated target designation before firing indicates the object was treated as a real, trackable aerial threat, not a sensor artifact or a diffuse phenomenon. The exchange was captured on high-definition electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor, the Reaper standard.

The video was obtained by Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Missouri) from a military whistleblower and presented publicly for the first time on September 9, 2025, at the U.S. House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets hearing titled 'Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection.' Burlison stated that an independent review was ongoing at the time of the hearing. The Department of Defense did not issue a public statement about this incident.

The most serious prosaic explanation comes from within the scientific field itself. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, far from endorsing an exotic origin, publicly argued that the object is most likely an Iranian-made Samad attack drone operated by the Houthis: its apparent size —a few meters— matches that UAV family, and a Samad, with a mass of about 200 kg (several times that of the Hellfire), would explain the missile 'bouncing off' and shearing only fragments if the impact fuze failed or the angle was oblique. The context reinforces this: on October 29, 2024, the day before the incident, the Houthis announced a multi-drone attack against southern Israel. A Hellfire fuze failure against a real drone is a known and far less extraordinary event than an anomalous material property. The case is therefore genuinely open: high-quality military video and a documented armed engagement, set against a strong conventional hypothesis that the independent review has not yet ruled out.

El incidente Yemen 2024 es el primer caso en el corpus con evidencia de un compromiso armado directo entre un sistema de armas estándar (Hellfire) y un objeto no identificado, registrado en sensor militar de alta definición y revelado en una audiencia del Congreso de EE. UU. Su importancia es doble. Primero, marca un umbral institucional: por primera vez se hace público que plataformas MQ-9 estarían siendo empleadas para atacar blancos aéreos no identificados, lo que en sí mismo —al margen de la naturaleza del orbe— constituye una revelación operacional significativa. Segundo, el resultado documentado (deflexión sin detonación, deformación, desprendimiento de sub-objetos) sería, si fuese genuinamente anómalo, evidencia de categoría-breaking sobre las propiedades materiales del fenómeno.

Pero el corpus lee este caso con cautela deliberada y por eso lo sitúa en Tier A y no S. La hipótesis prosaica es fuerte y proviene de un científico crítico, no de un creyente: el orbe encaja en tamaño y dinámica con un drone Samad iraní de los Huthi, y una falla de espoleta del Hellfire es un evento conocido. La zona de combate, que en una lectura descarta fenómenos naturales y blancos civiles, en otra lectura aumenta la probabilidad de que el objeto sea precisamente un drone enemigo. Decisivamente, la autenticidad y el contexto del video dependen de un denunciante y de una revisión independiente que, al cierre de este registro, seguía en curso y sin validación oficial. El caso es un test de calibración en tiempo real: máxima carga potencial, provenance todavía no asegurada.

The Yemen 2024 incident is the first case in the corpus with evidence of a direct armed engagement between a standard weapons system (Hellfire) and an unidentified object, recorded on high-definition military sensor and disclosed at a U.S. congressional hearing. Its importance is twofold. First, it marks an institutional threshold: for the first time it becomes public that MQ-9 platforms are reportedly being used to engage unidentified aerial targets, which in itself —apart from the orb's nature— is a significant operational revelation. Second, the documented outcome (deflection without detonation, deformation, sub-object shedding) would be, if genuinely anomalous, category-breaking evidence about the material properties of the phenomenon.

But the corpus reads this case with deliberate caution, and therefore places it at Tier A rather than S. The prosaic hypothesis is strong and comes from a critical scientist, not a believer: the orb matches an Iranian Samad Houthi drone in size and dynamics, and a Hellfire fuze failure is a known event. The combat zone, which on one reading rules out natural phenomena and civilian targets, on another reading raises the probability that the object is precisely an enemy drone. Decisively, the video's authenticity and context rest on a whistleblower and on an independent review that, as of this record, remained ongoing and without official validation. The case is a real-time calibration test: maximal potential load, provenance not yet secured.