Top 10 Moments From The Sept 9 2025 UAP Hearing

Top 10 Moments From The September 9th UAP Hearing

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the top 10 moments from the September 9th, 2025 UAP hearing that have everyone talking!

#10: Setting the Tone

The goal of the latest UAP hearing was “Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection,” and it seems they might just be on the right track. Kicking off the hearing was a powerful opening statement by Representative Anna Paulina Luna. Representative Luna declared the UAP phenomenon is neither science fiction nor speculation. She reported that Congress has recently seen evidence of technologies that are beyond our known capabilities. She highlighted the pushback she and her colleagues got while investigating UFO activity at Eglin AFB, the suspicions of flytrap operations, and the need for transparency and better congressional oversight.

#9: Bipartisan Push for Transparency

The push for UAP disclosure has always been a bipartisan issue. After all, who hasn't wondered about aliens at least once in their life? The creation of the Task Force on Declassification and Transparency is no different when it comes to being a bipartisan effort. It's something everyone has in common; we all want transparency from our governments. So it's no surprise that the Task Force hosted this bipartisan hearing on UFOs. Luna even showed interest in the UAP Disclosure Act of 2025, an act proposed by Senator Chuck Schumer from the opposite side of the political aisle, in hopes that it will help restore public trust in the government if passed. It just goes to show, EVERYONE is interested in UFOs.

#8: The Alleged Cover up and Intimidation

For years, officials have alleged a massive cover-up of a decades-long UFO crash retrieval program. Since the days of Bob Lazar and the outing of Area 51, the world has heard countless stories of the so-called “Legacy Program,” a secret program run by the United States military-industrial complex that locates and retrieves crashed flying saucers. This supposed cover-up was brought up again at the most recent UFO hearing where, once again, another new whistleblower spoke out about uncovering this program and the retaliation they faced for reporting it.

#7: Calls for Whistleblower Protections

Witness Joe Spielberger focused on the importance of whistleblowers in any aspect, let alone UFOs, highlighting that they are the first line of defense for exposing wrongdoing. He pointed out that whistleblowers play a vital role in both Democratic and Republican administrations, helping to identify and understand what government corruption looks like and what to look out for. Spielberger reiterated how whistleblower disclosures fuel investigations and allow us to address wrongdoing. Most importantly, he emphasized that targeting whistleblowers for the corruption they expose wastes agency resources and allows that corruption to continue unaddressed—a terrifying outcome that is all too real.

#6: UFO Sightings at Vandenberg AFB

Former military police officer Jeff Nuccetelli recalled his own startling accounts from 2003-2005, where he investigated multiple UFO events at Vandenberg Air Force Base. In one incident in October of 2003, Boeing contractors reported a glowing red square hovering over two missile defense sites. That same night, another group witnessed a football-sized triangular craft hovering near the facility. Nuccetelli stated that official Air Force records of these incidents are in the possession of both AARO and the FBI. Since Vandenberg is home to the national missile defense project, any unauthorized craft overhead is a big deal—let alone a mysterious UFO.

#5: Allegations against AARO and Former Director

AARO, the Pentagon's UAP office, was created in 2022 to investigate these phenomena. But from day one, it’s had an awful reputation, being labeled as a flytrap operation by multiple whistleblowers and even having its former Director Sean Kirkpatrick labeled a “documented liar” by Representative Luna in the hearing's opening statements. The congresswoman warned that if offices such as AARO can just become catch-alls where these stories and events go to die rather than to get investigated, then Congress is not doing its job.

#4:Thread 3

In 1993, journalist George Knapp went to Russia shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. There, he uncovered documents from "Thread 3"—possibly the largest UAP study ever conducted. Sokolov, the colonel in charge, had allegedly gathered UAP information from all across the USSR military, and used that data to try and build their own UFOs. Knapp spoke briefly about this program under oath and submitted the full set of documents into the congressional record.

#3: New Whistleblower Goes Public

Former USAF intelligence specialist Dillon Borland testified about his own first-hand encounter with technology of unknown origin. From 2011-2013, Borland was stationed at Langley AFB. Borland stated that during the summer of 2012, he saw a 100-foot equilateral triangular craft with a golden, “lava or plasma-like” fluid swirling around it, departing from near the NASA hangar. Some years later, Borland was exposed to classified information from a UAP legacy crash retrieval program and has been receiving reprisals ever since. These reprisals convinced him to become a whistleblower in March of 2023.

#2: UFO Gatekeepers Named

Since the first modern sightings in 1947, the UFO phenomenon has remained an enigma, shrouded in secrecy. Over the years, rumors have persisted of a small group controlling the information—secret holders known in the field as “gatekeepers.” Well, at the hearing, George Knapp, under oath, named two of these alleged gatekeepers. One was the late Jim Ryder, a former vice president of, at the time, Lockheed Martin Space Systems; the other was Glenn Gaffney, former Director of Science and Technology at the CIA.

#1: Hellfire Missile hits UFO

In 2017, The New York Times presented three videos of UAPs, later confirmed by the Pentagon to be authentic. Well at this hearing, we got another one—and it's even clearer and more shocking. Toward the end of the hearing, Representative Burlison presented a video of a UAP being struck by an American Hellfire missile. The UFO can be seen on an MQ-9 Reaper drone’s camera, rotating over the water before being struck. If the thought of shooting a UFO with a missile wasn't crazy enough, the video then reveals that the unidentified object continues to fly on, seemingly unaffected by the powerful weaponry.

Did you watch the latest UFO hearing? If so, what was something we missed? And what would you like to see come out of UFO hearings in the future? Let us know in the comments!