Ex-Military Ammunition Expert Analyzes Viral UAP Hearing Video

As I've just mentioned with Dan, folks, I've got joining me on the line just now, one of the listeners to the podcast from the Discord chat. And I'm going to introduce him, I've never done this before, anonymously, as S. So S, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Listen, now, just for context, folks, in the Discord yesterday, I was watching the hearings live and had the Discord chat open. Lots of podcasts, listeners and viewers were in there chatting as we watched the hearings. Things, video came up that Eric Burleson showed that has really grabbed a lot of the headlines and initial reaction was really positive from everyone. I think I even commented in the Discord to say, I can't wait for someone to come along and debunk this and ruin it for me because this looks really good. And lo and behold, S came along and done that. And like I say, folks, this isn't a, this is the explanation, but I've got someone here who I'm going to allow to kind of explain their expertise and their background as best they can. And obviously, I think it's fair to ask why you're doing it anonymously. But S, do you want to crack on and let us know a little bit about you as much as you can? Yeah, so basically, my background is I was an ammunition technician in the British Army towards the front end of last decade. Ammunition technicians are basically the Army's experts on all things explosive. So that's from your smallest 2.2 caliber round to the largest of guided missiles. We have to basically extensively study the joint service publications, which are like the technical documents on every single bit of ammunition within land service. So I've got quite an extensive bit of knowledge. It's a very hard course to pass, really high failure rate. And yeah, it's, it's, we are the subject matter experts, basically on explosives. And listen, I can't vet that. I don't have the means or, you know, the wherewithal to do that. So we're very much taking you at your word for this and the listeners and viewers. I just want you to let you know that from my point of view as well. But what we'll do, S, is basically go into the video got played yesterday. There was a lot of excitement around it. I was also very excited. Do you want to talk us through what your thoughts were when you saw the video and then maybe start to explain what your thinking is when you see this and what you heard? Yeah. So, I mean, initially, I think I probably had the same reaction of a lot of people is that it seemed anomalous. It's a very visually striking video instantly captures your attention. And it wasn't until I started looking more clearly, and especially after the mention of Hellfire, which is a weapon system I've been extensively trained in, I started to look in a bit further detail. And for me, that's just when the cracks started to really show. Once kind of my own personal hype had died down, I could look at it a bit more objectively. I just realized, long story short, in my opinion, it is a test firing of the Hellfire Romeo, which is the American version used on the MQ-9 Reaper. It is a primarily air-to-ground missile. However, it can still travel at Mach 1.3, so supersonic speeds, and it can also damage, it can attack air targets, aerial targets. So, in my opinion, I think this is what they were testing. They were seeing the aerial capability of the Hellfire. Okay. So, on the video, you've got, Eric Burleson explains, you've got one drone looking down at the object. We're assuming looking down at the object. For me, it looks like you've got the object in the middle, tic-tac-y looking. He doesn't say tic-tac. He says orb or an object like that. I think his exact words are, I want to queue up a video I've been given. It's of an orb or an object off the coast of Yemen. That's what he says. He mentions that a missile will then come in out of the side view of the video, but you don't see from another drone. But you do see the missile. And then he kind of says, well, we'll let you see what happens from there. So, as that comes in, what it looks like initially to myself, and I'm just, again, my take was, this thing gets hit. The missile goes off. I wasn't really paying attention to the missile. I just then see this thing not explode. No big explosion you would expect. Because we've seen lots of these videos or types of videos from the Russia-Ukraine situation recently. And you always see an explosion normally. And then, you know, the target's no longer there or in pieces. What looks like it happens here is the object manages to keep traveling, albeit with some bits breaking off of it. But the angle then changes to a wider shot of what looks like the object still, which appears to travel at speed over the water. So, can you talk us through maybe why you think the object is either stationary or going really slow? And then what happens when the actual missile appears to hit it or not? Yeah. So, I mean, to start off with, I think it was stationary or at least moving very slowly, i.e. with the wind. More than likely stationary. Why does it look like that then? So, actually, according to the video, when you first view it, it looks like the object is moving. But what I did was I looked at basically the turret slew, which there's a top compass rose on the video. And it gives you an angle of which way the turret's looking in degrees. On a very small part in the bottom right of the video, it also gives the range to target. And then using maths, you can figure out the speed, the trajectory. And basically what I got was, which I've shared the maths in the Discord as well, if anyone wants to check it out, is it was traveling around 212 knots, which is essentially the cruise speed of the MQ-9 Reaper drone. So, it's parallax. The object has to basically be stationary because all the movement you are seeing is completely from the turret slew, the turret turning and rotating as the Reaper flies in its pattern. Okay. Again, even like the math and stuff, I want people who know what they're talking about to look at that. I don't understand that. So, I'm taking S's. I'm taking your word for it. I'll be very busy. It's hard to be completely accurate without... You know, I get the gist. Yeah. And I totally get the gist of what you're saying. But you know when someone gives me the numbers, I can't work out if that's right or not. School was a long time ago for me, and I'd done maths to a basic level. So, I'll let folks who understand that stuff look at it more. And already online they are. So, then that's your understanding there. You've done the math behind it, which is always helpful. You believe the object is stationary or going incredibly slow. The speed is from the drone filming above. So, then, regarding the missile strike, can you talk us through that? Yeah. So, initially what you see is the missile coming from the top left of the screen. And it looks, from that angle, basically a head-on hit. But what you're actually seeing is if the commentator was correct in saying that it's two separate drones. The way the Hellfire works is on something called semi-active laser homing. So, a coded laser gets painted on the target. And the missile has a targeting pod at the front of it that basically just seeks it. All it cares about is where is that laser? How do I get to that laser? So, it basically follows a very guided trajectory. When that missile comes in, all it cares about is punching into that target and then exploding. The reason why it didn't explode is, unfortunately, quite boring. It didn't have enough force on impact, which tells you that the object is extremely soft, light, and basically didn't overcome the safety mechanism, which is it has to hit a certain deceleration, which is a certain amount of G, we call it setback force, to basically prime the fuse and detonate the warhead. So, all that tells me is the target is extremely soft, or light. Now, let me ask you then, can I just follow up on that, sorry, to interrupt your train of thought. But while I remember, I had seen other people post online to say that a version of that missile is one that doesn't explode, but has barbs or sharp points. Yeah, so that's the... And that would be a reason. That's the R9X. Basically, that is what we would call an inert version. Well, the warhead would be inert. It still has a rocket booster to get itself onto target and guidance. But that's basically a weapon system designed so that it minimises collateral damage. It basically, for lack of a better term, shish kebabs the enemy on target without exploding. So you can target a specific person or a specific vehicle without injuring civilians around it. So that is an also... That's a possibility as well. You'd need a much higher resolution video, I think, to be able to see if it was that variant. But at the core of it, both missiles would act in exactly the same way. It's just one is designed to detonate, the other isn't. But the Hellfire is designed to hit tanks and armoured vehicles. So when it impacts the target, it's a hell of a lot of setback force. And that's what overcomes the safety features to detonate it. If it's hitting a light target or pushing something like this or punching through, it's not going to get that deceleration force to detonate the munition. OK. And then when it does make the impact that it does, there appears to be... And this was something we couldn't quite see at the time. Remember, folks, when we saw this for the first time, they showed it in the hearing on the screen. That was the first time anyone had saw it. They didn't keep replaying it over and over again. They went back to the hearing. So we didn't get much of a glance at it. As people began to pull it apart and rip the video, a lot of folks pointed out a couple of objects, more orbs, seem to appear to come off it as it's hit and carries on. And that was something I thought looked really interesting. But again, you've got an explanation or possible explanation for that. Yeah. So this links back to what I think the actual scenario for the video is, the reason the video exists, is that it's a test mission. The missile is heading towards a target. It's an aerial target. That is the test. So they'd more than likely be gathering telemetry, sensor data, figuring out the force and impact. And they'd have different sensors inside the balloon. That all takes electricity at function, which would heat up the balloon, which is one reason we could also see that it's white hot on the FLIA image. The other explanation for it being so bright on the FLIA is you've got the sea in the background, which is cold. The way this camera works is it basically measures the difference in temperature. So if you've got a cold background and even a slightly warm object in front of that, it'll light up white or black, depending on what mode you've got it on. So this is lighting up white. The sun is also a possible explanation. It could just be warming up an outer skin of envelope. But basically some energy heat transferal has to be taking place on that object. One thing is when the object is struck and whatever it is that comes off of it, we don't have much left of that shot of the video before it then changes to a different view. So if these were three objects trailing it, we get a very, very, very short couple of seconds at most. So if it was debris falling or rising or floating, it's hard to tell either way. Or if it is indeed three defense orbs coming off of a UAP, because you don't then see them in the next part of the video, or I can't certainly make those out anyway. If you take an isolation, I think if you don't get any explanation, if this wasn't set up and given in this UAP hearing, I honestly, I'll try and be unbiased here, if someone just showed me the clip of the close-up of the missile going through the object, the couple of seconds, and then it turned off, it would look like a balloon being punctured. Yeah. With some stuff, material floating up. It's hard to work out size of the object, the balloon material, all that kind of stuff. But it's the rest of it that causes some interesting kind of conversation. Marek von Renningkamp, who I was messaging last night, and actually I was sending him over your explanations, because Marek does some really good work on this kind of stuff, and he knows what he's talking about. He mentioned just before the missile impacts, or has any kind of contact, if you can call it an impact, he sees the object as rotating. Again, is it then, from a layman's point of view, you would say that if it is some kind of balloon, or targeting balloon, it's just rotating because it's sitting in the wind? Essentially, yeah. I mean, I'm not a video analysis expert. My whole expertise is based around the weapon systems, the missiles, the munitions. But from, I don't know, an analytical point of view, if that is just floating in the air, or it's attached to a rope or something to the ground to keep it stable, the wind is going to affect it, and plus you've got a drone moving, extremely zoomed in as well with the camera, moving at 200 knots. It's going to show some weird effects due to perception moving at that speed. So it could just be a case of the parallax again, or it is just tilting in the wind. The wind is pushing it a certain direction. And regarding the missile itself, a lot of folks I've seen arguing online, it seems a very expensive exercise to fire a missile that we see go from the hundreds of thousands to millions of pounds at a balloon. Yeah, that's... That is almost a bit of a waste. It is, but if you think you do this testing beforehand, it'd be much more expensive to fire this missile at live targets in combat, and you're not guaranteed to hit, and you don't know what the outcome should be. Whereas if you do the testing beforehand, you know what the likely scenario is going to be when you launch that missile at this specific type of target. So this would be a test for a slow-flying, smaller target, like maybe a drone. See if the MQ-9 Reaper can actually take out other drones. That would be a valid test. And then you save yourself that money in the long run by just meaninglessly firing all these expensive missiles at live targets. And I suppose, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you would point to in this video that may, from your point of view and with your expertise, and I appreciate you saying you're not a video analysis expert, but you're coming at it from a weapons point of view, anything at all that is curious or would point to something potentially anomalous from your point of view? I don't think it's anomalous. I think everything I've seen, especially with the way the missile acts, is completely normal. The one thing I have seen people mention online is the deflection. That it seems to... The object seems to be so hard it deflects the missile into a different direction. What I would like to clarify on that is the way that the system works. So it is following a guided pattern onto target. It sees this laser. It wants to hit that laser. As soon as that laser no longer exists, it doesn't know where it is anymore. It doesn't know where to go. So at the last few moments before it impacts, it's doing loads of course corrections, really trying to nail on that target. And then straight after it punches through, the missile goes dumb. So it's following two different paths, one before the impact, one after the impact. The second dumb impact is basically just a straight line. So it's came in at a curved angle, it's meeting the target, and then just flies completely straight. So there may be some people listening who are thinking, that's complete bollocks, you're just, you know, trying to disprove this and debunk it. Maybe they're right. There's other folks who are going to be listening thinking, actually, that makes some sense. Maybe they thought otherwise. And then you're going to get folks who will be nodding along and agreeing with you, thinking, well, this is what I thought already. You'll know in this topic, there are a lot of different camps when it comes to this kind of stuff. And especially so soon after the hearings, emotions are quite high with people. What is your interest generally in the UFO topic? And do you just, one, enjoy debunking stuff? Or two, is there some stuff out there you think, this is really interesting? Oh, no, I'm not a debunker. This is just, happens to be one thing I actually have some knowledge about. I was very eager to put my opinions across when people were basically saying incorrect facts about the missile system. No, when I was, I've always been obsessed with space and astronomy from when I was younger. And one of the aspects of that is rockets. When I went into the army, I basically looked for something where I could play with rockets and see missiles. And basically anything that goes bang or has a lot of energy behind it was kind of just piqued my interest. That led on to a pretty unremarkable career in the army, to be honest. It was very standard. But after I left, I actually had an experience of my own. It was last year, actually. It was on my stag do just before I got married. Me and three friends went to Pickering in Yorkshire. And we were camping out for the night before we were heading out for the rest of the weekend. And it was a completely clear night. Clouds had all parted. You could see the stars, satellites, planes, all the regular things. And then as we were looking up, my two friends next to me, we started going crazy, saying, what the hell is that? What are we seeing? And it was, I didn't see this, but it was a satellite doing, basically doing zigzags. I couldn't spot it no matter how hard I tried. So then I just kind of fixed, looked at the sky. I was staring at the sky for maybe the next 30 minutes. Then all of a sudden, there were three really bright flashes in the sky. And it was almost synchronized. It was maybe like 0.1 of a second after each other. And then straight down from the center point of the flashes, an orb descended. And I mean, this thing was rapid. It was unbelievably fast. It seemed to stop. I can't tell you an altitude above me, but it was relatively far away still. But it just stopped dead. Blinked in and out for a few seconds, then just disappeared. The strange thing was, is my friends are into UFOs. I had a side interest, but not my main focus. And they didn't react at all, which I found extremely strange for them. They had to have seen it. It was impossible not to see it. And then they seemed to be very dismissive of even talking about it or talking about what we saw. Even the next day, I was saying, we saw something really weird last night. Have any ideas what it is? And they just refused the conversation, which I know my best friends, that's not like them at all. And unfortunately, a couple of months after, one of my best friends who was there at the time passed away. We still don't know the cause, which is, it's so strange. But he literally just dropped dead. The doctors can't find a reason. Sorry to hear that. Yeah. No, it's been a rough one. But the strange thing is, is at his funeral, his dad mentioned to me that he'd talked about the UFO he'd seen privately with him. But it was almost like, it seemed, this is getting into kind of strange territory, but everything about that situation after the event was completely abnormal for them. But it was nice to know that at the end of his life that my best friend had acknowledged that it was real because I thought I was going crazy. But yeah, I've been especially locked in since then on this subject. No, and I appreciate you sharing that, especially with it. You've got quite an intense experience there with what happened afterwards as well. And for you, I suppose, then, because obviously, I didn't know this before we recorded that you'd had that experience. You know, I thought you were just coming on to share the kind of analysis. So I appreciate that, definitely. And people will appreciate that, I'm sure. Has it, have you found you've had any experiences or changes based on it, other than the interest in the topic? Not really. I'd say it's just, I'm definitely looking at the sky more. I've been out skygazing, sky watching with my wife and desperate to see something again, really. It's kind of, it has affected me in the fact that I think it's just due to the close link with my friend that it's kind of always on my mind right now. So this is why I was quite frustrated when I debunked this video because I really wanted it to be real. Like, I want the proof more than anyone, I think. And it's disappointing for me to be able to say that these are the reasons that I'm 99% sure that this is not an actual anomalous event. Because, like I said, because I want it to be real as well. Yeah, and I'm with you on that. And I would love any and all videos like this that come out to be truly anomalous. But I would rather know sooner than later, if it's not, than bury my head in the sand. And like you say, I'm really open to seeing some other experts give their analysis on this. My concern, and I'm going to share this, no doubt, on the recording with Dan as well. So many of the clips I'm watching, the interviews with congressmen and women, with journalists afterwards, with people who were there, with UFO names. Every piece is showing the video over and over and over. Now, I'm going to be showing it as we discuss this as well. Well, my concern is for the mainstream, if indeed this video is shown to be just a balloon, then it can take away massively from the great work of a Borland, a Wiggins, an App, a Spielberger, a Nusitelli. Because a lot of great things happened and were said in that room and a lot of great actions can come for it. And it just takes one thing like this, and obviously we have to mention afterwards, Representative Eric Burleson mentioned in interviews afterwards, it was dead dropped to him. It was given anonymously. There's no chain of custody. There we go. And that's something I really wish we had known before it was shown. It's so disappointing that that wasn't done beforehand. I mean, I said this to you, they're not just providing data on behalf of the Americans, they're providing data on one of the biggest questions humanity has. And they are falsely, I don't even think it was intentional, I just think it was either incompetence or the lack of due diligence, which we live in a world of lies with this specific subject. Like, why can we not be the ones that are focused on just the truth? Yeah. And don't give the gatekeepers and the secret keepers more ammunition. And I think my ask would just be, and again, I'm not telling anyone to believe what this video is or isn't. I would love for me to be able to reply to US in a couple of days' time and say, Ah, you missed this, turns out this was right, or we got some data from it. And someone like yourself, no doubt, would go, Ah, shit, well, that changes everything. I would love for this to be a missile bouncing off of some orb, three other defensive orbs come off of it, and it carries on at a great speed. But we need to kind of wait and see the other side of that argument emerging or not, and that it doesn't do damage and detract. Because if I was a gatekeeper, and I had thrown this video in there knowingly that it was going to detract or take away or be easily debunked, then I would be laughing and clapping my hands just now. And I just wish, and I think it will die down, the UFO community who are getting really up in arms about it, don't tear each other to pieces, because that doesn't help anyone at all. So, and ultimately, listen, S, thank you so much for coming on and doing that and sharing your expertise. Folks, I appreciate I don't do that very often, but work with my gut on this one, and I appreciate that. And also, we got a really interesting experience out of it as well. And obviously, again, apologies, you lost your friend months afterwards as well. But yeah, thank you so much for sharing. No, thank you for having me. And one thing I'd like to say just to maybe provide me a bit more credibility is I'm more than happy to share my credentials with you, Andy, privately. The reason I'm being anonymous is just the ammunition trade was so small that I believe there was less of us than the SAS. And I'd be very easily identifiable if I'd given any information. I'm just not interested in being out there. And also for things like security clearances and things like that, I still need to get them for career prospects. So I just don't want to be publicly tied to this subject, if that makes sense. And do you know what? Just to add, when you look at what Dylan Borland said yesterday, who has come out of this with flying colours and so much credibility and so many people commending what he said, you've got a gentleman sitting there saying he's unemployed. He's on unemployment benefits now. His career ambitions and prospects are poor to none because of what he has said, because of what he has done, because of coming forward in March 2023 to Arrow. And in sitting at that hearing, you've got a guy who's literally unemployed and struggling financially, potentially. I don't know the ins and outs of his situation. But so I appreciate anyone coming forward in any way, shape or form to kind of share their views on this, mate. So thank you very much. Thanks for having me. That is all for this episode. Thank you very much for tuning in. Don't forget to leave the podcast a review on your chosen platform. 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