The Pentagon released a newly declassified video of a UFO soaring above the Middle East last year during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
The footage captured by a US military drone shows a mysterious spherical object zooming across the sky above an active military zone.
Officials don’t know what the fast-moving orb is, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the Pentagon’s new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), revealed as he played the video during a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing.
“This is essentially all the data we have of this event,” Kirkpatrick said. “It’s going to be virtually impossible to fully identify that just based off that video.”
He noted, however, that AARO doesn’t believe the object presented any “apparent threat to airborne-asset safety” in his presentation.
He said the incident is one of about 650 reported sightings of UPAs or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena — the government term for UFOs — the recently formed office is investigating.
Despite the unexplained sightings, Kirkpatrick said there is no suggestion of alien activity.
“AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics,” he said at the hearing.
Most UPAs turn out to be “balloons, aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomena or other readily explainable sources,” Kirkpatrick added.
Wednesday’s hearing and presentation was only the second public government meeting about UFOs in the last 50 years, according to Fox News.