- [Tony] Tonight on "The Proof is Out There: Alien Edition".
Are government officials keeping secrets about UAPs?
- There's been a disinformation campaign
in place for the last 50 years.
- [Tony] Why did the White House order
a UAP shot down over Lake Huron?
- The military doesn't shoot things out
of the sky that it doesn't perceive as a possible threat.
- [Tony] A strange craft is spotted near
an Air Force base.
- [Man] What the **** is that?
- [Tony] Is the military
secretly transporting alien technology?
- We're seeing something
that we weren't meant to see.
- [Tony] And another Tic Tac sighting,
almost 20 years after the Nimitz encounter.
What does the Pentagon know about this UAP hotspot?
- You actually have whistleblowers
from the US Navy coming out and
talking about some of their experiences.
- [Tony] With UAP reports at an all-time high,
we're examining the most
compelling evidence caught on camera.
Tonight's focus, classified UAP cover-ups.
Our experts will analyze the evidence
and then pass a verdict.
- [Man] It's a splash - [Man 2] Splash.
- There were a lot of people
kind of speculating that this was a cover-up.
- "The Proof" starts now.
[upbeat music]
- Good evening and welcome to "The Proof is Out There".
Recently, UAPs have become the subject
of congressional hearings, government studies
and whistleblower claims.
But for decades before this, official answers were scarce.
And that silence fed a growing suspicion
that the government knew more than it was saying.
- The American people largely believe
that the government
has actively covered up the truth about UAPs.
- [Tony] So when did this all start?
Many believe it all goes back to one incident, Roswell.
It's July, 1947.
Something crashes in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico.
What was it? Well, it depends on who you ask.
- The initial report was that the military
had found a flying disc.
So it was picked up by newspapers across the country.
Then, pretty much immediately,
they retracted their story and said it
was a weather balloon.
And the change in the story led some people to think
that there was a little something fishy going on.
- [Tony] Many people believe the Roswell incident
was a cover-up.
And as UFO reports increased,
so did the suspicion that the government knew more
than it was letting on.
- The Air Force has been accused from time
to time of hiding information about the UFO.
What do you have to say to that kind of evidence?
- Well, these charges are absolutely untrue.
- There's nothing to hide? - There's nothing to hide
at all.
- [Tony] Nearly 70 years after Roswell,
New York Times journalist Leslie Kean uncovered something
that many UAP enthusiasts had suspected for decades.
- The Pentagon had a secret program
that started in 2007.
But sources have told me
that there were programs before that.
- [Tony] The program, known as AATIP,
or Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program,
had been secretly investigating UAPs.
Along with the article,
two Department of Defense videos
of unidentified objects were released.
- [Leslie] As far as I'm aware,
this is the first time actual government videos
have been released of UFOs.
- [Tony] The article stopped short
of calling these objects extraterrestrial,
but in the years that followed, one man did make that claim.
- I was informed in the course of my official duties
of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval
and reverse engineering program.
- [Tony] David Grusch, former military intelligence officer
turned Pentagon whistleblower,
came forward in June 2023,
claiming the government has been running
a secret UFO crash retrieval program
since at least World War II.
According to Grusch, the US is in possession
of downed alien craft, alien corpses,
and the US and other nations may even
have some kind of ongoing
diplomatic relationship with aliens.
- Do you believe our government
has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials?
- Something I can't discuss in public setting.
- I believe David's claims and the fact
that we are covering extraterrestrial craft
and extraterrestrial bodies
from the general scientific community and the public
at large, and there's been a disinformation campaign
in place for the last 50 years.
- It's very interesting to see someone with such
a credentialed background
as an intelligence officer make these claims in such
an official manner.
If he was lying, he could be held criminally liable.
That would suggest to me that he certainly
is not lying about what he's saying.
- [Tony] Now Pentagon whistleblower David Grusch
has claimed the US government is sitting
on much more UFO evidence than the handful of videos
that they have officially released.
Even if that's the case,
what we've seen so far is pretty compelling,
like this video
that's left top government investigators stumped.
July 12th, 2022, at an undisclosed location
in the Middle East.
An American MQ-9 drone observes a conversation
between two people on the street below.
As they walk away from a house,
a strange object comes into the sensor's field of view.
A shiny metallic ball darts diagonally across
the frame, prompting the camera to jolt away
from the people and follow the sphere eastward instead.
The sphere looks to be at least a few feet across,
and it shoots through the sky in what appears to be
a straight line.
The grainy video ends with the sphere in mid-flight
and center frame.
This object took on greater meaning when AARO,
the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office,
presented it to the public.
- Without sufficient data,
we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet
the high scientific standards we set for resolution.
And I will not close a case that I cannot defend
the conclusions of.
This is essentially all of the data we have associated
with this event.
It is going to be virtually impossible
to fully identify that.
- [Tony] That's right.
Unlike other UAPs it's looked into,
AARO still considers this video unresolved.
- Kirkpatrick was tight-lipped
about the exact origins of this object,
but he did acknowledge the almost inhuman speeds
at which it travels and the strange design.
He also identified
the Middle East region as a hotspot for UAPs.
- [Tony] Considering the ongoing conflicts
in the region, we have to wonder if these UFOs
are related to others that have turned up during wartime.
In 1951, during the Korean War,
a group of American GIs stationed
near Cheorwon encountered a mysterious glowing object
that floated to the center
of artillery explosions but took no damage.
One veteran later claimed the glowing craft pulsated
and changed colors.
In the following days,
the GIs fell sick with what some believe
was radiation poisoning.
Some theorize that this unidentified craft
and the hundreds reported by US troops since 2021
are attracted to military targets.
But why?
- [Eric] One explanation
is that they are actually alien probes measuring
our defensive or offensive capabilities.
In an optimistic view,
it's possible that they are simply trying to observe
our behavior and figure out why we are so often in conflict.
- [Tony] Whatever the reason,
this sphere sighting over the Middle East appears
to uphold the pattern.
A Pentagon report released in 2022 found evidence
that UFOs can inflict injuries, including radiation burns,
paralysis, and brain damage.
So while Kirkpatrick's office said this object wasn't
an apparent threat, we're inclined to take another look.
Could this be an advanced military drone?
- [Lt. Tim] This doesn't match any type of technology
that we're aware of.
I don't see any obvious signs of propulsion.
I don't see any wings.
So all the necessary components
for a typical aircraft,
you'll notice we can see other features
in the terrain, which is below this object really clearly.
So you would be able to definitely see
if there were wings, there were rotors,
any of those features on it.
- [Tony] So it's a spherical object in the sky
without apparent means of propulsion.
Could it just be a balloon?
- [Lt. Tim] It certainly could be a balloon of some sort.
Particularly in the Middle East there
have been very crude, airborne improvised explosive devices.
So you attach some sort of explosive to a balloon
in hopes that it collides with the aircraft.
The key piece of missing evidence here
is we would wanna know the wind direction
and wind speed here.
- [Tony] That info has been redacted.
Otherwise, we could determine whether wind
is with or against this object.
And if it's against, then this can be no balloon.
- [Lt. Tim] I think that's what makes this interesting
for me because the Pentagon has listed
this as unidentified, but they have access
to that information.
So they should have been able
to better narrow down it being a balloon.
- [Tony] Then could
this really be some kind of alien probe?
- [Lt. Tim] Though this video is definitely intriguing,
we also don't see any real extreme flight characteristics
that require the existence of aliens or some type
of advanced physics.
- [Tony] That means this UFO isn't displaying
the hallmarks the US military has cataloged
on other UFOs, including instantaneous acceleration,
hypersonic velocities, cloaking and trans-medium travel,
the ability to fly into and out of the water.
Nor does it convince McMillan that UFOs
are particularly interested in human conflict.
- [Lt. Tim] There are more pilots being perceptive
of their surroundings in a war zone.
So I think it gives us that idea that perhaps UFOs
are interested in human conflict when, in fact,
what it is is we're paying more attention
to the skies during human conflict.
- [Tony] Our verdict?
We're calling this a possible UFO.
On one hand, it has no wings or obvious propulsion,
which is very UFO-like.
There is a chance it's a balloon pushed by a stiff wind,
but you think AARO would know that by now.
If we get more information, we'll let you know.
- [Tony] The Roswell incident helped fuel suspicion
that the government was hiding something.
In the years that followed,
some UFO researchers claimed
that President Eisenhower secretly
visited Edwards Air Force Base,
possibly to view recovered wreckage,
and later even met with extraterrestrials
in a top-secret meeting at nearby Holloman.
So could the photograph in our next story be evidence
of that alleged alien encounter or merely a coincidence?
It's October 16, 1957.
Ella Louise Fortune, a nurse
at the Mescalero Indian Reservation in New Mexico,
is driving north on Highway 54
when she sees something hovering in the sky
over Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo.
She happens to have her camera with her,
so she pulls the car over and photographs this.
A glowing, white, elongated,
oval-shaped object is floating above the desert landscape.
You can see why this photo caused such a stir.
Just look at how bright it is, even in broad daylight.
Check out the sharpness of the edges here, there,
and then you have this soft wisp.
Is that exhaust? How would you fake that if you wanted to?
- This photo is a classic
in the UFO community that most people consider
a genuine photograph that was not hoaxed.
- [Tony] Not only has the photo earned a place
in UFO history, it ties into one of the most astonishing
and durable stories of the UFO canon,
allegations that Holloman Air Base was the site
of an interstellar summit where aliens forged
an alliance with the US government.
- [MJ] There's a story that circulates
within UFO circles that President Dwight D. Eisenhower
secretly met with aliens,
and this alien gets shuffled into a back room
and the president is flown in to specifically meet
with this creature.
So we have a lot of strange stories out there
of secret meetings between presidents and aliens
from other planets.
- [Tony] Now, according to some,
during these secret meetings,
President Eisenhower brokered a deal to allow the aliens
to abduct humans in exchange
for extraterrestrial black technology that would lead
to developments like the B-2 stealth bomber.
Is the photo we have here evidence
of that advanced alien tech?
We asked our experts to decide.
Is it possible that white color
and shape match something you'd expect to see near
an Air Force base, namely a parachute?
- [Lt. Tim] Nothing about it is consistent with a parachute.
In particular, you don't see a payload.
The shape of it is inconsistent
with what you would expect for a parachute if it
is being weighted down by a payload.
- [Tony] Some have speculated it could be a balloon
or blimp, but McMillan doesn't see it.
- [Lt. Tim] It doesn't resemble any obvious shape
of a balloon.
Also, it definitely appears to be extremely bright,
and so it would have to have some type of light source.
- [Tony] This thing is white and in the sky.
Could it just be a cloud?
- It takes very strong winds to create
that kind of like sharpness to the edges and creating
the saucer-like look to it
because it doesn't even match what you would expect
with the upper band cirrus clouds.
So I don't see this as a cloud whatsoever.
- [Tony] Instead, Hoffman believes
with some calculations,
he can narrow down the possibilities.
- [Rich] It was roughly around 10,000 feet,
and roughly they assumed it was 15 miles away.
You do trigonometry.
You're able to determine that it's roughly just
over a mile long.
- [Tony] If Hoffman's numbers are correct,
he says we can eliminate several other possibilities.
- [Rich] I would never go to the point of saying
that this is a plane.
The size makes no sense.
It's a mile wide, and it's not a UFO.
No object, especially one a mile long,
would not have gone undetected by the people
that are positioned there monitoring that part of the sky.
- [Tony] So what could it be?
Hoffman says location is the key.
- [Rich] If there's one important thing
that you need to know.
Holloman Air Force Base was to the position
of the witness's left.
The vast majority of this area you're looking at
is White Sands Missile Range.
The fact that this is conveniently positioned right
at 10,000 feet would probably make it very likely
that it's a missile test of some sort.
- [Tony] McMillan agrees and believes
the photo reveals an important clue.
- [Lt. Tim] There appears to be a contrail behind
the object which suggests that the object is moving
and leaving a vapor trail that would be consistent
with solid fuel burning.
- [Tony] A large vapor trail could also explain
why this object looks a mile long when in fact
it's much shorter.
- [Lt. Tim] The US at the time.
was engaged in significant rocket testing
and especially were in the height of the space race
between the United States and the Soviet Union.
- [Rich] There were a whole variety of missiles
that were being tested.
It could have been fired from an aircraft or something
that would have created a kind of plume
of smoke like this.
- [Tony] But if this mile long object is really just
a trail of missile exhaust, we continue
to ask ourselves, why do the edges look so distinct?
Not to mention, a speeding missile doesn't match
the eyewitness story.
This thing had to hang in the air long enough for Ella
to see it, park her car, get out, and take a photo.
We can't help but feel we're still missing a piece
of this puzzle.
Our verdict? Still an unidentified object.
Our experts bring up great points,
but even if the contrail points to a chemical fuel burn
and the missile range was a short 30 miles away,
the image itself just doesn't give us enough info
to definitively call it a missile or anything else.
That keeps it a UFO in our book, for now.
- [Tony] There's no public evidence to support
the claim that President Eisenhower ever saw Roswell
wreckage in 1954.
But whistleblower David Grusch told Congress
that the government does have UAPs in its possession.
And he says he knows where.
- Mr. Grusch, finally, do you believe that our
government is in possession of UAPs?
- Absolutely, based on interviewing
over 40 witnesses over four years.
- And where? - I know the exact locations
and those locations were provided
to the Inspector General and some
of which to the Intelligence Committees.
- [Tony] So where are they?
Our next video may provide a clue.
September 2021.
An anonymous source
at a construction site near Edwards Air Force Base
in California spots an unusual structure being towed
by a large truck.
- What the...
- [Tony] The video shows
what appears to be a UFO-like craft
being transported on a flatbed trailer.
Let's take a closer look.
At first glance, the shape
of this mysterious object seems reminiscent
of the curved contours of a B-2 stealth bomber.
But upon closer examination,
it doesn't seem capable of flight.
People tracked down the location of the video soon
after it was posted online.
- Internet sleuths were able to determine
that it was taken at Skunk Works.
Skunk Works is where Lockheed Martin
was designing spy planes back in the '50s and '60s.
So it's possible that we're seeing something
that we weren't meant to see.
- [Tony] In 2021, former Nevada Senator Harry Reid,
whose state is home to Area 51,
made an even more shocking claim
that the defense contractors
at Lockheed Martin may also be in possession of fragments
of a crashed UFO.
- [Amy] A lot of conspiracy theorists will say
that aliens are drawn
to the desert out in California or Nevada.
So this is an area where they will land or will crash.
And that opens the door for engineers
to then collect them and then reverse engineer
and understand what technology aliens are dealing with.
- [Tony] Many believe that one
of these alien technologies could have led
to the development of what's known on Earth as meta-metals.
- [Amy] There's a type of material called meta-metals.
It absorbs light and electromagnetic radiation
and any kind of radio waves,
which would theoretically make it almost
an invisible metal.
Because it would be unable to be seen on radar.
It could even be slightly invisible to the naked eye
if it's refracting light in a certain way.
- [Tony] We know that a former Skunk Works director
has teamed up with a private research group to study
an exotic metal object
that was recently purchased for $35,000.
The person who sold
the possible meta-material claims it came off of a UFO
that crashed in New Mexico's
White Sands Proving Grounds in 1947.
So, could this footage show something similar?
After this video is posted,
a reporter asked the Lockheed Martin executive in charge
of Skunk Works if he was able to tell us anything
about what we saw.
He simply replied, "I can't."
So the truth may be out there,
but Lockheed Martin isn't talking.
Let's see if our experts can crack the case.
- [Lt. Tim] At first glance, it definitely looks like a UFO.
If we were gonna draw an alien spacecraft,
we might draw something like this.
- [Tony] Still, McMillan has his doubts
that we could be looking at a recovered UFO.
- [Lt. Tim] One of the first things that says
that this is probably not a UFO is if they're going
to move it in the daytime,
they're gonna do it in a manner where it
is completely sequestered.
- [Tony] So it seems strange they would transport
a UFO out in the open.
But it sure doesn't look aerodynamic
or like any sort of aircraft we fly here on Earth.
And since we can't test for metametals,
it's hard to confirm its material.
So then what are we looking at here?
Mick West spots a detail that could shed some more light.
- [Nick] This structure in the background,
it looks like some
kind of perhaps massive radar installation.
I think it's a big clue
as to what this facility actually is.
- [Tony] On a hunch, we geo-located the structure.
Using an open source intelligence comparison
of the scaffolding, buildings, and foliage,
it is possible to pinpoint the exact spot
where this incident took place.
The Helendale Radar Cross Section Facility.
- The testing facility
is where the military tests
what their planes look like on radar.
Sometimes they just build parts of the plane
and they'll look at it with radars
from different directions.
And they want to see how much this one part
of the plane actually contributes
to the radar cross-section.
- [Tony] Based on its shape,
West speculates that this is the fuselage
of a novel future stealth fighter with a curved rather
than an angular profile,
and without a tail section or stabilizers.
Our verdict?
This model certainly pinged our radar,
but in the end it was simply a prop
for radar testing being done in the area.
Military leaks happen all the time though,
so keep your eyes to the sky
and you might just see something you weren't supposed to.
Navy aviators from the USS Nimitz encountered this UFO
about 100 miles off the coast of California.
That video was shot from the left wing camera
of an F/A-18 Super Hornet,
and the pilots who saw it up close say it looked like
a giant Tic Tac.
It produced years of speculation,
even government hearings.
- I would like to say that the Tic Tac object
we engaged in 2004 was far superior to anything
that we had on time, have today,
or are looking to develop in the next 10 years.
- [Tony] Fravor says there was no follow-up
after the encounter, so why the silence?
- Excessive secrecy has led
to grave misdeeds against loyal civil servants,
military personnel, and the public,
all to hide the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos.
- [Tony] And now, another Tic Tac video has emerged.
It is just past 7 PM on February 15, 2023,
and the Navy's USS Jackson combat ship is just off
the coast of San Diego, California,
not far from the site of the 2004 Tic Tac encounter
in a special-use airspace area known as W-291.
- An operations specialist on board
the ship, Alexandro Wiggins,
observed something unusual on radar,
and he took to the deck to make an observation
with the naked eye,
and he witnessed some kind of structure
or light emanating up from the waterline.
- Watching this light emerge from the water
at a distance and then go into the air
with a solid light, no blinking or anything,
I've never witnessed that ever in my life.
- [Mitch] Wiggins went back inside the control room
to check his radar screen,
where he and other sailors witnessed four objects,
at which point they began recording
with the SAFIRE system.
- [Tony] The SAFIRE, an infrared sensor
that detects heat, focuses on two of the objects flying
from right to left in perfect synchronicity.
The monitor punches in on one of the objects,
revealing the familiar Tic Tac shape,
apparently hovering over the ocean.
Moments after the video ends,
Senior Chief Wiggins says the watch team zooms out
on the monitor just in time
to see all four objects shoot off simultaneously.
Though odd, the objects show no hostile intent,
so it goes unreported until April 2025,
when investigative journalist Jeremy Corbell gets a hold
of the video and releases it to massive media coverage.
- [Mitch] The video just caused astonishment
because these things have been a repeat presence
in those waters, including the original Tic Tac video.
And Jeremy Corbell also released the USS Omaha video,
which captured one of these objects splashing down.
- What was that? - It splashed.
- [Tony] In fact, original reporting
on the History Channel series,
"Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation",
revealed that the 2004 Tic Tac was even seen on sonar.
- Sonar said they got a hit.
According to one of the sonar guys,
they were going 70-plus knots under the water.
- We've known that the Navy
has been dealing with these USOs now for decades.
In fact, there's some reporting that's come out
where you actually have whistleblowers
from the US Navy coming out and talking about some
of their experiences, most notably the USS Hampton
that was in the late 1990s during an operation
had detected something moving very, very fast.
And some of the individuals actually on that submarine
who detected this estimated the speed was faster
than the speed of sound.
- [Tony] The location of that incident
has not been disclosed.
But are these repeated incidents, all
in the same area,
evidence of something greater than just
a few flying objects?
- [Mitch] These are all just theories,
but one that makes the rounds among naval personnel
is the potential existence of an underwater base
from which these objects emerge and return to.
It's, of course, just a speculative hypothesis,
but these objects have been variously recorded
or witnessed emerging from the waters off the coast
of San Diego.
The collective details are just extraordinary.
- [Tony] This new Tic Tac video hasn't just wowed
the American public.
It was even shared with Navy aviator David Fravor,
who encountered the first Tic Tac back in 2004.
He said he was stunned by the similarities.
Let's see if our experts have the same reaction.
This was February 2023,
just days after a Chinese spy balloon crossed America,
setting the nation on edge and ultimately leading
to a shoot down just off the East Coast.
Could these be intelligence gathering inflatables?
- [Rich] I took a look at the weather on that day,
and you had winds from the west at about 6 miles an hour.
So if they were balloons,
you would see the balloons going with the wind
in one direction, and it doesn't do that.
- [Tony] That still doesn't rule out
a foreign incursion, though.
We know drones have been an issue over military bases
and US soil, and the suspicion is that they are the work
of adversarial nations.
Is this video proof they might be toying with our Navy, too?
- [Rich] I will point out
that the motions you see could be done by drones,
including the synchronicity, but you also
have a situation where these people described it
as being that they instantaneously shot off.
And they were talking about a really,
really incredibly fast speed.
And so that doesn't sound like a drone.
- [Tony] Since this is special use airspace,
could these be special aircraft,
perhaps part of a secret military test?
- Could they be doing a test
that the Jackson wasn't aware of?
Yeah, maybe.
We have signal transmedium type things.
Submarine-launched ballistic missiles do that.
But if it was a missile, it would be moving fast.
And then the size of that object would get smaller
and smaller and smaller
until it was gone.
Right? That would have happened very quickly.
And in this case, it didn't go away.
- [Tony] With those possibilities eliminated,
the question becomes, were these UFOs?
- [Rich] Well, I believe that they saw the Tic Tac.
Because you had a very clear observation
by a witness visibly, that it was being picked up
on radar, it was also being picked up
in this thermal imaging system.
All those things combined put it into a very strong case
of being an unknown.
- [Tony] Our verdict? Genuine UFO's.
Remember, even though
the video mostly focused on one Tic Tac,
all four of these things were seen shooting off almost
instantaneously, making them
all unidentified flying objects.
The release of these Tic Tac videos could be
having an impact.
Recently, the US National Archives opened the floodgates
on decades' worth of UFO documentation.
- [Tony] We've seen the military track strange objects
on video and then let them go.
[pilots shouting]
But over the Great Lakes,
something triggered an immediate response.
Why?
We don't have any photos or video,
but a recorded verbal description of it helped lead
the US president to order it shot out of the sky.
Have a listen.
It's February 12, 2023, above Lake Huron,
near the Canadian border.
The US military sends two F-16 fighter jets to investigate
a TOI, or Track of Interest.
That's pilot speak for an airborne object that poses
a potential threat to national security.
We obtained recordings of the cockpit conversations
that took place during this incident.
As the pilots make their way up to 20,000 feet,
they discuss the mission.
- [Tony] But once they arrive,
what they find is hard to describe.
- [Tony] Whatever it is,
after meeting with military experts,
President Biden orders the craft shot down.
Journalist MJ Banias recalls following the event
as it unfolded.
- The newsroom kind of erupted
as we were trying to figure out what was happening.
It was pretty chaotic.
Allegedly, the reason for shooting it down
was because it posed a hazard to flight safety.
- [Tony] And Banias says
the speculation immediately centered around one thing.
- [MJ] This incident came off the back
of a Chinese spy balloon that was shot down,
so there was already heightened stress
that there could be other spy balloons.
- [Tony] But was it just a balloon?
Unlike other recent run-ins with military jets,
like the infamous Tic Tac and gimbal UAPs,
the government hasn't released any gun camera videos
of this incident.
US officials are simply calling it an unidentified object.
- [MJ] There were a lot
of people kind of speculating online
that this was a cover-up, that these were actually UFOs.
There were a lot of people claiming
that this was some sort of alien invasion.
- [Tony] The US and Canada would join forces to try
and locate the wreckage, but none was ever found.
- [MJ] To this day,
no country or organization has claimed responsibility.
It still remains a bit of a mystery.
- [Tony] At the time of this incident,
General Glen VanHerck was the head of NORAD.
That's the agency responsible
for overseeing North American airspace.
When the media first asked him about these events,
he refused to rule out extraterrestrial forces at play.
That was later walked back by officials,
but it hasn't prevented
the UFO community from suspecting a cover-up.
What will our experts think?
Is it possible this object was another plane?
- Based on what the pilots are describing,
the object is not moving very fast at all.
It makes it incredibly difficult to really get a handle
on it, because any time you get close to it,
it whizzes past you.
- [Lt. Tim] A plane is gonna stall out at that speed.
It's not gonna be able to maintain
that type of slow speed.
So, we can really just rule out plane easily.
- [Tony] Could this be some kind of drone?
- [Lt. Tim] The pilots observed it
at around 20,000 feet,
that it's much higher
than any commercial drones would be able to achieve
under normal circumstances.
And when you're talking about military grade
or really professional grade drones,
when you see they have wings, they have control surfaces,
so those would be really easily identifiable.
- [Tony] So what could drift about 20,000 feet
in the air and isn't a plane?
- [Marc] The first conclusion
that I started leaning towards was,
is it possible this was another spy balloon of some kind?
- [Tony] Spy balloons, like the one from China,
have what's called a payload attached to the bottom
of the balloon that contains
the actual surveillance equipment.
But then, D'Antonio says he hears a clue in the audio
that shuts down his theory.
- [Marc] The pilot said it had strings hanging down.
What the pilot didn't see was the small payload.
It tells me that this was probably a normal balloon
of some type that was shot down.
- [Tony] So if it was octagonal,
was it a group of balloons tied together?
All we know is a national security spokesman says
the object did not match
the Chinese spy balloon shot down over the Atlantic coast.
And after that spy balloon shoot down,
the radar used by NORAD,
the North American Aerospace Defense Command,
had been adjusted to detect these kinds of aerial objects.
Our verdict?
Because the pilots mentioned strings,
we're going with balloon in this case.
Admittedly, it's impossible to determine
that definitively without the recovery of the object.
But we do know that it cost more than $400,000 to fire
the missile that brought the thing down.
With that price tag for taxpayers,
you'd think we'd be able to know what we hit.
three videos shot in Arizona were leaked to the public.
Without the leaks, these Homeland Security videos may
have never been made public.
So why the secrecy?
We've investigated two of these cases before.
Here is the latest clip.
April 14th, 2021, east of Tombstone, Arizona.
It's shortly after 11 PM and an agent
with the Department of Homeland Security
is tracking an A-10 Warthog plane.
He's operating a forward-looking infrared camera,
or FLIR, mounted atop a truck.
The A-10 appears silhouetted because with this camera,
hot objects are black while cooler objects appear white.
The leaker didn't elaborate on why this plane is flying
over Arizona or why a DHS agent would be filming it.
But it's in our hands because nobody expected what
happened next.
A spherical object appears to be chasing the fighter jet.
Like the A-10, the object's heat signature
is also black hot.
But when the agent changes to a different setting,
the UAP shows up like a bright orb trailing the A-10.
At times, the light is traveling so fast,
the FLIR operator has problems following it
and keeping it in frame.
This video remains secret until it was sent
to UFO investigator Andy Marcial.
- When I saw this and I realized
that this was real, I understood that, you know,
what I got my hands on was a big deal.
- [Tony] For some, this Arizona sighting falls
in line with much of what we've heard about UAPs
from other government sources.
- [Amy] At an April 2023 congressional hearing,
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of AARO,
testified that 52% of all UAP cases it has investigated,
the objects are spherical,
most measure between 1 and 4 meters across.
- [Tony] Orbs like this one,
uncovered by investigative journalist Jeremy Korbel.
This unidentified object was photographed over Mosul,
Iraq in 2016.
- [Amy] And usually, their method of propulsion
is never immediately obvious.
This sighting falls into all of the major categories.
- [Tony] Teitel notes they've seen some similarities more
concerning than others.
- [Amy] Kirkpatrick also presented a number of cases
where spherical UFOs are seen trailing military planes.
The video shows that the object is keeping up
with the A-10 Warthog like it's nothing.
This has led some people to wonder whether these spheres
are actually aliens tracking our military technology.
- [Tony] There are many reasons
why extraterrestrials might be interested
in our military: surveillance, curiosity...
One former NASA astronaut has even claimed
that aliens prevented a nuclear exchange during the peak
of the Cold War.
So were aliens really monitoring the A-10 Warthog
or was this something else flying in the plane's airspace?
After releasing the footage,
Andy Marcial went to his friend David Falch for answers.
Falch is a FLIR technician and operator who works
with the exact same cameras our video was shot on.
The first question is, could this be much ado about nothing?
Are we simply looking at a bird?
- [David] It appears that the object is flying around
the same speed as the aircraft,
which is traveling about 340 to 350 miles an hour.
I don't know any birds that fly 350 miles an hour.
- [Tony] If it's not a bird,
could it be another object seen
over the Arizona desert nowadays?
- [Rich] Within the last year alone,
there's been about maybe 2,200 incidents reported
by Homeland Security of drones being used
to carry drugs across the border and into US territory.
However, a drone wouldn't be changing the shape.
This particular object doesn't remain round.
In fact, we don't know of any technology
that changes shape like this as it flies.
- [Tony] What kind of airborne
object can change its shape?
Perhaps a balloon in the process of deflating?
- [Marc] Could it be a balloon?
Probably not, based on the speed of its motion.
It looks like it's something that's moving along
under its own power fast enough so that it can stay
in the field of the A-10.
Now, it's still possible it could be caught
in the fast-moving wind column.
- [Tony] The winds in jet streams, on average,
reach speeds of about 110 miles per hour.
But if a balloon was caught in that stream,
how could it keep up with the Warthog,
which typically flies at 350 miles per hour?
So with no earthly explanation for this object,
could we be looking at something truly extraterrestrial?
- [Marc] It's changing it's size.
We don't know any craft or any objects that can do that.
- [Tony] Our verdict?
We're calling this one a genuine UFO,
and it's worth noting,
we see striking similarities here
to other government released videos like
the infamous USS Nimitz Tic Tac.
But let's be cautious here.
We're still uncertain this object is of alien origin.
In any case, Andy, keep 'em coming.
The greatest mystery may not be what's seen in the sky,
but what's been kept from view.
And as questions grow louder,
we'll continue searching for what's really out there.
Thank you for watching this special episode
of "The Proof Is Out There".
Please send us any videos, images,
or sound that you think we should investigate
and remember to keep those cameras rolling.
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