Reaper Drone Captures the Groundbreaking Footage
Back on July 12, 2022, reports from the US military spoke of an unidentified metallic orb that was caught on tape by a circulating MQ-9 Reaper drone.
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The footage was later released at a gathering of the US Senate’s Armed Services Committee last April.
Bellingcat Investigates the Occurrence
After the footage was released, independent “open-source” investigative group Bellingcat decided to take a look at the metallic orb.
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However, they were quick to adjudicate the footage—the group claimed they had evidence against speculation that the orb was extraterrestrial in nature.
Nothing More Than a Balloon
Bellingcat’s researchers claim that the mysterious silver orb was nothing more than a balloon made of metallic plastic.
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The investigative group even released the orb’s flight path, northeast of the city of Deir ez-Zor in Syria, a detail the Pentagon had not released.
A Strategic Release?
Bellingcat’s team was then able to match the Pentagon’s orb video with satellite imagery.
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The results suggested that the object is around one-and-a-half feet in diameter and was likely released during Eid al-Adha, the second-largest religious festival celebrated in the Muslim world.
The Modest Dimensions of the Orb
Chrispoter Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Intelligence under the Clinton administration, agreed with the Bellingcat’s synopsis.
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“This confirms what many of us have suspected, given the small size and slow speed of the object,” said Mellon.
Forming a Task Force
Mellon was part of a small group that openly campaigned for the US government to investigate UFOs more seriously.
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The fruit of their labor led to the first short-lived Pentagon UFO task force in 2020 and, more permanently, the UFO office within the Department of Defense.
All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office a Work in Progress
Mellon hasn’t been entirely pleased with how the UFO Task Force, now called the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), has handled itself.
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He claims AARO took over a whole year to set up its public website, and it still lacks a formal section for military personnel to report UFO sightings.
Only Minimally-Compelling Evidence Released
The site was founded following a long and incredible sworn testimony by David Grusch centered on an illegally-operated UFO crash retrieval program.
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Mellon wrote, “It is hard to imagine AARO releasing anything but the weakest and least compelling UAP videos.”
AARO Works With Bellingcat
In reference to the metallic orb, Bellingcat researchers were able to decode the video with help from the AARO.
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They surmise that the UFO was filmed on July 12, 2022, by the Reaper drone in Syria.
Traveling at Top Speeds
During the investigation, some of the researchers said that the orb may have moved across the Syrian desert at more than 105 miles per hour.
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However, the Bellingcat team argued that this could simply be the result of an optical illusion.
Presenting the Footage to NASA
AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick presented the video to NASA’s UFO advisory panel last June.
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He described the metallic orb as “the typical example of the thing we see most of.”