A newly leaked video from the U.S. navy appears to show an unidentified flying object diving into the ocean off the coast of San Diego in 2019, in a clip that officials say is authentic.
The clip was released last week by documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who also published leaked UFO videos and photos from last month. The Pentagon has confirmed that all of Corbell’s leaked footage to date is authentic.
A spherical unidentified flying object (UFO) hovers in midair, moves side to side like a ball in the “Pong” video game and then seems to dive into the ocean, in footage that was recently released online by a filmmaker who produces documentaries about UFOs.
Though a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the U.S. Navy did capture the footage, the spokesperson did not comment on where and when it was filmed.
The new footage shows a dark spherical object flying over the ocean as seen through an infrared camera at night. The sphere appears to move rapidly across the screen before stopping and slowly easing down into the water. Corbell says the footage was recorded off a monitor inside the USS Omaha‘s Combat Information Center, and a few military members can be heard remarking on the object in the video.
“It took off. It’s booking it,” one person says at the beginning of the clip, as the UFO moves from left to right on the screen. The object then stops and steadily moves downward.
On May 14, Jeremy Corbell described the mysterious object on his website, writing that “the US Navy photographed and filmed ‘spherical’ shaped UFOs and advanced trans-medium vehicles” — craft that can travel through air and water — in 2019. Corbell also shared the footage on Instagram and YouTube.
In the clip, which appears to have been shot off a monitor and has several edits, a dark, round blob sits above the horizon. Male voices are audible in the footage; one says “took off, bookin’ it,” as the object moves horizontally in the screen’s crosshairs. The scene “reached a crescendo” with the blob entering the water, and one of the off-screen voices says, “Whoa, it splashed!” as the UFO disappears, Corbell wrote.
According to Corbell, the footage was filmed on July 15, 2019, at approximately 11 p.m. PDT, from within the USS Omaha’s Combat Information Center, near the coast of San Diego. Radar images of the UFO show a solid ball, measuring about 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter, flying at speeds of 46 to 158 mph (74 to 254 km/h). Its flight lasted over an hour, culminating with the sphere vanishing beneath the waves. No wreckage was found at the location where the object went down.
The observers can be heard remarking on the choppy waves on the ocean as the object descends.
“It splashed! It splashed!” one person says as the object goes below the surface of the water.
Corbell says the footage was recorded on July 15, 2019, during an extended period in which members of the navy saw several Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) — the Pentagon’s term for UFOs. There were at least 14 solid objects measuring about two metres wide, and they moved at varying speeds between 74-254 kilometres per hour, according to an intelligence briefing obtained by Corbell from last year.
He says the object in the video appeared to be capable of travelling in air and water, and that a submarine search of the area found nothing.
“No wreckage found. None of the unknown craft were recovered,” Corbell said.
“A submarine was used in the search and recovered nothing,” Corbell wrote. “We do not know what, if anything, the Navy or Pentagon might be willing to say about the USS Omaha incident, but we are confident the incident is a legitimate mystery and look forward to whatever information might be forthcoming,” he wrote on Instagram.
Corbell says a still image from the video was originally shared at an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) briefing on May 1, 2020, and later leaked to him. He worked with Las Vegas-based reporter George Knapp, who has covered UFOs for decades, to verify the footage.
The Pentagon has confirmed that the video is real in a statement to various outlets, including NBC News and The Debrief.
“I can confirm that the video was taken by Navy personnel,” spokesperson Susan Gough said. She added that the footage is under review by the UAP Task Force, the Pentagon’s recently launched team dedicated to investigating such incidents.
However, Gough did not comment on any of the other UFO details that Corbell included in his writeup, The Debrief reported. The footage is not classified, and stills of the spherical UFO were previously included in a UAPTF intelligence briefing from May 1, Corbell wrote in a tweet on May 14.
Last month, Corbell released footage of several triangle-shaped UFOs as seen from the deck of the USS Russell at night in July 2019. It’s unclear if that footage was from the same alleged incident as the one involving the latest video.
The clip emerged just ahead of a sweeping UFO-related episode from CBS’ 60 Minutes over the weekend. The show spoke to three former U.S. navy pilots who claim to have seen these phenomena firsthand.
Two of the pilots spoke at length about an extended encounter with various UFOs off the coast of San Diego in 2004. They said they saw a “Tic Tac” shaped object hovering over a seething patch of water, and that it accelerated so quickly that it seemed to disappear. A warship detected the object a second later at a distance of about 100 km from the sighting, they said.
The Pentagon has previously confirmed that footage from that incident is also authentic.
U.S. officials have taken a more open approach to so-called UAP encounters in recent years, amid concerns that the mysterious objects might pose a security threat. They’ve declassified several videos, acknowledged the authenticity of others and have generally started to encourage pilots to report strange incursions into restricted airspace.
Various explanations have emerged to try to explain the phenomena, including the possibility that they might be drones, weather balloons or unknown technology used by China or Russia. Alien enthusiasts have speculated that the objects might be extraterrestrial, although their true origin and purpose remain unknown.
Congress is expected to receive a sweeping unclassified report on UAPs sometime next month, as part of a mandate included in the U.S. government’s COVID-19 relief bill.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told 60 Minutes that he hopes the report will encourage lawmakers to take the issue more seriously as a potential security threat.
“I want us to have a process to analyze the data every time it comes in …. until we get some answers,” he said. “Maybe it has a very simple answer. Maybe it doesn’t.”
