UAP Hearing New Video - Yemen Orb

[flarkey]

Please link to these rumors.

It does not seem logical to me. Warfare drones are generally either for surveillance or kamikaze attacks. A balloon is not stealth. Docking would not help surveillance as you'd still need to get the drone back, and you can't really steer balloons, and it's not needed for kamikaze.

There are a number (at least one) of proposals on the net for the use of a light balloon to increase the flight time (or range) of quadcopter drones.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...sted_Hybrid_Drone_for_Flight_Time_Enhancement

In this paper, a new design of a helium-assisted hybrid drone is proposed for flight time enhancement. As is widely known, most of the drones with a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) feature have a short operation time, limiting their capability to carry out sustainable operations for the given missions. Thus, with the clear goal of enhancing the flight time, this study aims to develop a hybrid drone system, where a helium balloon is used to provide a lifting force for this purpose

Warning - speculation:
If something like that that was created using multiple drones with 4g or 5g cell connectivity for control & video, their range could be greatly increased. This is just the sort of thing that we're seeing in Ukraine at the moment, so there's a possibility of the concept being used in other small wars (citation needed).

Cell connected 5g Drones exist and are available on line:
https://www.modalai.com/pages/5-thi...H0bOdAGFRKjGSlPMhTMz2g1uK77BZjZXLVHZP4WrYb5mj

I'm not completely sold on the idea that the debris/'orbs' are quadcopters, but it does look like their movement after the missile collision is not ballistic, ie it is under some sort of control (whether that be string or blades yet to be determined, if at all) - but I'm also well aware that the appearance of movement in these sort of videos can be very difficult for brains to comprehend.

Also, is the debris partially visible in the WFOV shot? These are at 35s and 41s. Although it could be a video artefact.

 

[BoulderRiver]

This apparatus, appointed by Flarkey, was my impression of what I'm seeing from the footage.

The 'UAP' hit shows signs of a very soft body object that is ripped open by the object. The smaller UAPs don't come from inside, but from underneath. This speculation is based on the context of the heat signature, flight pattern, and how it behaves after being hit.

 

[NorCal Dave]

This apparatus, appointed by Flarkey, was my impression of what I'm seeing from the footage.

But thee doesn't seem to be any evidence that an apparatus like this actually exists and is employed by the Houthis, assuming the general information about this video is at all reliable.

The shapes are similar, but as pointed out up-thread, there is so much compression and artifacting in this video it's a stretch to assume these contrasting white and black blobs in any way are an accurate shape.

IF we knew balloon delivered multi drone setups were a real thing, and IF we knew the Houthis used these set ups, and IF any of the information about he time and location of the is video were accurate, then we might speculate that's what were seeing.

But in this case it seems we're speculating about a very poor video showing a drone delivery system that might or might not exist, that may or may not have been from the time and location given. Having speculated about the device on the screen, do we now succumb to a case of pareidolia?

This video, like the hearings it was presented at, is a microcosm of UFOlogy today. A military video of dubious origin presented as a UAP with no context or relevant information, some Congress people looking to up their public profile, a series of exciting but ultimately useless anecdotes, including 2nd hand ones, and a UFO expert/celebrity in the form of Knapp tying it all together. Big on hype and mystery and completely lacking in any form of meaningful evidence.

 

[jdog]

Other notes from a discussion on /r/airforce:

• 19TDG2000617078
  
  
  •2d ago
  Aircrew
  
  
  • It's a balloon.
  • It's not moving very fast, it's a visual parallax effect.
  • It doesn't deflect the missile, the missile pierces through and keeps going because the fuse didn't trip
  • The missile is actually coming from the direction of the camera and curving, what you're seeing is the back of the missile not the side.
  • The balloon isn't still flying, its falling at a rate you'd expect deflated mylar to fall (hint: it's not fast)

So this person contends that, while we're looking from top-down from the targeting drone (the Reaper recording the video is designating the target with a laser), the missile we see entering the frame at upper left isn't coming in horizontally, but also from higher altitude.

Which could explain why the missile looks "slow" for a Hellfire missile that supposedly can go 1,000mph -- it wouldn't be crossing the width of the screen, it would be descending along a diagonal from a launch point closer to the location of the camera to the target two miles below.

So (some) apparent military suggestions as to what we're seeing are:

• Kinetic strike on actual Houthi drone (potentially to see if that's enough to take them out, since Hellfires weren't designed for air-to-air use, but that's what the Reapers carry).
• Weapon range test shot on a balloon or balloon-carried target.
• Hellfire hitting some sort of balloon / balloon platform and failing to detonate since the target is soft.

I don't see any pushback on the idea that the U.S. drones involved are Reapers and that's a Hellfire missile being used.

 

[Mick West]

So this person contends that, while we're looking from top-down from the targeting drone (the Reaper recording the video is designating the target with a laser), the missile we see entering the frame at upper left isn't coming in horizontally, but also from higher altitude.

Which could explain why the missile looks "slow" for a Hellfire missile that supposedly can go 1,000mph -- it wouldn't be crossing the width of the screen, it would be descending along a diagonal from a launch point closer to the location of the camera to the target two miles below.

That makes a lot of sense!

I think it's natural to interpet the line as the shape of the missile and assume it's perpendicular to the camera. But that would seem to make it too slow. A much steeper angle still gives you the lines due to motion blur.

Also, the camera drone is painting the target with a coded laser designator. Standard procedure is for the shooter to be on the same side as the painter, to avoid the missile seeing the laser directly.

And perspective compression will amplify the curving motion of the missile, which is probably fairly minor angular course corrections, but going very fast. Then after it hits it's not sure where to go.

 

[Klein]

I wonder if hellfire missiles only operate at 450m/s, or that there is a range of speeds it can work with (likely).

It pushes to Mach 1.3 in a few seconds, then glides the rest of the way. It shouldn't drop below mach 1 in its operational range. Assuming the drone shot it from a close distance, it should still be close to peak speed. It's solid state fuel, i don't think it does variable burns.

I'd like to see a speed estimate for the presumed balloon. Keep seeing claims it's one of those "tictacs" going at "impossible speeds" which is distracting. Showing it's slow stops a lot of speculation.

 

[Dad_SB_83]

Via X from @DavidLWindt:

This clip from the 2024 Yemen video shows the movement in slow motion of the three small "fragments" relative to the larger UFO after missile impact. There may also be a fourth "fragment" (yellow circle) apparently only visible in some video frames.

The Reddit post about it claims, "Debris field from Burlison video consists of three identical objects leaving the orb in succession"

This comment is interesting:

I'm late to the party… my comments will be buried.

I can analyze this because I am familiar with these systems.

I saw this video months ago on the DoD's SIPRnet Intelink iVideo site. Only people with secret clearance can access this site, and only from specific workstations, and SCIFs.

There's only one debris that falls away with the momentum of the craft.

The rest are artifacts from IR multipath interference from a pitted lens housing and/or lens of the camera, where after a certain heat threshold and angle of the source to the sensor, the IR signal takes multiple paths to the sensor due to lens housing having defects on it.

That makes it look like multiple pieces of debris "following" the drone.

That's what's happening here.

Source: Military contractor, and I've been verified by the mods

It's fun to see things get real explanations like this.

 

[boguesuser]

There are a number (at least one) of proposals on the net for the use of a light balloon to increase the flight time (or range) of quadcopter drones.

The days of the Zeppelin have returned!

 

[Tim Blevins]

Via X from @DavidLWindt:



The Reddit post about it claims, "Debris field from Burlison video consists of three identical objects leaving the orb in succession"
View attachment 83900

This comment is interesting:



It's fun to see things get real explanations like this.

A very similar comment from Reddit was posted here yesterday and addressed. Post #86.

 

[davidanielan]

I'm sorry if bringing ChatGPT into the mix is bad taste, but I did a bit of an interrogation regarding how the explanation provided by DanTMWTMP could work since to the average person (like me) the debris clearly looks like 3 distinct objects moving independent of one another. But his suggestion that "There's only one debris that falls away with the momentum of the craft. The rest are artifacts from IR multipath interference from a pitted lens housing and/or lens of the camera..." seems very plausible. It accounts for why they look nearly identical (which is of course partly what leads people to jump to the conclusion that they're more than debris). But the debris happened to sit in the "sweet spot" for multipath reflections, while the *mothership* and the missile's plume and trajectory didn't line up to produce visible duplicates.

 

[Giddierone]

Odd analysis by Avi Loeb here. It's almost like he's not watched the video, because he thinks it's a Samad (fixed wing) drone being hit.

Source: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/did-a-hellfire-missile-hit-a-samad-drone-launched-by-the-houthis-on-october-30-2024-fad0bacbda0b

Given the known length of the Hellfire missile, the UAP in the video can be inferred to be a few meters in size. This happens to be comparable to the scale of the Samad drones used by the Houthis. The mass of a Samad drone is about 200 kilograms, about 4.4 times larger than the mass of the Hellfire missile. A peripheral impact on the tail or wings of the drone by the side or the wings of the Hellfire missile moving at a speed of 440 meters per second, could have broken off pieces of the drone without triggering detonation of the Hellfire warhead.

During the encounter, the Hellfire missile is moving about 6 times faster than the target in the video's projection. The known speed of the Samad drones goes up to about 70 meters per second, which is about a sixth of the speed of a Hellfire missile.

The agreement between the expected size and speed of the UAP and the properties of Samad drones suggests that the UAP in the video was launched by the Houthis rather than extraterrestrials. The Hellfire missile must have grazed the drone through a minor encounter that did not trigger detonation of the Hellfire warhead. The Hellfire missile only mechanically broke off some peripheral pieces of the Samad drone.

 

[Harabeck]

Odd analysis by Avi Loeb here. It's almost like he's not watched the video, because he thinks it's a Samad (fixed wing) drone being hit.

How sure are we that the shape in the footage is actually the shape of the physical object? I've been convinced by Mick and others that GIMBAL does not in fact show a rotating pill shaped object, which is the result of optical effects. Can we confirm that nothing like that is happening for this video?

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

Odd analysis by Avi Loeb here. It's almost like he's not watched the video, because he thinks it's a Samad (fixed wing) drone being hit.

Source: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/did-a-hellfire-missile-hit-a-samad-drone-launched-by-the-houthis-on-october-30-2024-fad0bacbda0b

Its speed prior to impact is 440 meters per second, namely 30% faster than sound (supersonic) or equivalently Mach 1.3.

Uh.. how does he know this??

During the encounter, the Hellfire missile is moving about 6 times faster than the target in the video's projection

How does he know this?

 

[NorCal Dave]

It's fun to see things get real explanations like this.

Already discussed and probably not a very good explanation. See post #86 where this was already presented. Post #91 has the Redditor claiming filters keep the defects from being seen all the time:

Great question. Because it only appears after a certain heat threshold on the sensor. That filter can be adjusted to filter out noise.

Sounds a bit sketchy. If the lens is pitted enough to create defects and noise, one would think the defects would always show up. Mick had his own take in post #96:

Filter out noise? You've got the hottest object in the middle, then some less hot images of that, and you've got everything else in the image of varying hotnesses. How exactly do you filter out these blobs of slightly-less-hot? It would A) leave holes, and B) filter out all kinds of other stuff.

This sounds implausible, verging on BS.

 

[Mick West]

How does he know this?

He seems to be using the on-screen speed after impact. It's ridiculous.

 

[Dad_SB_83]

Already discussed

Sorry... I'm still getting used to the forum format again. It's been ~20 years. I haven't read every post.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I haven't read every post.

Every post. Every thread. There will be a test later

 

[Greene]

Why does it have to be a ballon?

Is Yemen currently fielding any drones with parachute recovery systems?

 

[JMartJr]

Why does it have to be a ballon?

Is Yemen currently fielding any drones with parachute recovery systems?

I don't reckon it HAS to be, but to my eye the resemblance to the Chinese spy balloon shot down off Myrtle Beach is striking.

 

[Mick West]

Marik raised the issue of the three largest bits of debris looking very similar.

I think it's just image artifacts from much smaller heat sources.

There's not a lot of MQ-9 footage, but I found something similar:

 

[MyMatesBrainwashed]

A missile hitting an orb suggests some kind of Intel.

Who's identified the tictac as a missile?

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

If key shape details are artifacts from edge enhancement and compression, around small objects, it makes sense that they would look similar. The statistical reasoning leveraged by Marik and others to create a sense of incredulity is very often misplaced and missing/ignoring other factors. And in the case of long range radar and infrared imagery, benefits from the fact that there simply isn't a lot of comparison footage, because of obvious reasons. You get the same thing with the "an aircraft cannot possibly show up in IR as an oval" and "lens flares cannot happen on IR cameras" assumptions he has tried to insist upon for other cases, in order to prematurely rule things out.

 

[NorCal Dave]

The statistical reasoning leveraged by Marik and others to create a sense of incredulity is very often misplaced and missing/ignoring other factors.

What is Marik inferring? The pieces of debris are drones of some sort? Or that when an alien UAP is struck it sends off uniform pieces of debris. Or just that it looks unusual and the unusualness is statistically unlikely, so aliens?

For anyone that thinks this is a UFO, they need to think about what they're seeing. We have an MQ9 drone, a design dating back to the early '00s as a upgrade to the MQ1 Predator which was a design from the '80/'90s:

On 1 May 2007, the U.S. Air Force activated its 432nd Wing to operate MQ-9 Reapers and MQ-1 Predators at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA) was awarded a contract to develop the Predator in January 1994, and the initial Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) phase lasted from January 1994 to June 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator

The MQ9 used a Hellfire II, an air-to-ground anti-armor missile, designed in the '80/'90s:

The Hellfire II, developed in the early 1990s is a modular missile system with several variants, and entered service with the U.S. Army in 1996.[17]​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire

It would appear the UFO was no match for some unclassified bit of kit developed 25+ years ago. No need to call out an F35 or even a TRB3 Aurora and other classified supposed super aircraft to battle the NHI that threatens our skies. A loitering Reaper improvising with an air to ground missile is all that's needed. If this is true, we should be blasting these things out of the sky constantly.

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

A possible factor to consider is if the sharpening mask is being applied to a digital video stream that is not "raw" but rather has a lossy digital codec (e.g. h264) applied then the sharpening will be applied to the output of that encoding, which typically use square blocks of pixels as units of compression. That compression will unavoidably add straight edges where none exist, because this is inherent to how lossy block-based compression works, you lose fidelity within blocks, so artificial edges between adjacent blocks arise. If we had the truly original video file we could look more into pixels and alignments of edges but that is probably a pointless exercise on this re-recording of a handheld recording of a recording.

The larger object in frame 678 has similar square-ish corners added and enhanced with the darker pixels.

Plus there are at least three other small dots in there, possibly quite a lot more that are just too small for the camera to see (terrible resolution)

I imagine the sharpening software is having some trouble finding where edges actually are and it frequently omits an edge on all 4 of the main visible debris objects (and you noted before, there seem to be at least a couple other small pieces of debris too that do not ever get detected by the sharpening process) and in those cases the shape is much more blobby, not a well-defined shape.


E.g. below from frame 645 where one of the small objects that usually has the black edge enhancement added, loses the edge enhancement and turns into a blob. There may also be brightening and additional contrast happening as part of the edge enhancement too, below there are pretty different numbers of white pixels within the object circled in red. Frame 645 (no edge enhancement) displays that object as much smaller than the same object in frame 641 (with edge enhancement).

Compare to frame 641:

 

[MapperGuy]

Marik raised the issue of the three largest bits of debris looking very similar.

View attachment 83933

I think it's just image artifacts from much smaller heat sources.

There's not a lot of MQ-9 footage, but I found something similar:

View attachment 83934


View attachment 83935

I think this is just the result of several small (less than a pixel) very bright objects being processed through the same system and software. The results will be similar for all of them because there really isn't enough information for the system to differentiate between them. In this situation, with the systems and situation involved, this is just what a small very bright object looks like.

 

[Ann K]

Marik raised the issue of the three largest bits of debris looking very similar.

What are the odds that any random three pieces of debris are identical in shape...

What are the odds that any random three pieces of debris fly apart after a missile strike, yet maintain identical orientations? Artifacts can do that a lot easier than actual objects can.

 

[Giddierone]

Retired F-16 pilot Chris Lehto says it's "obviously a balloon." (not a fixed-wing drone like Avi Loeb concluded).
object "going with the wind, could be stationary" "parallex"
"easily debunkable"
"did not do anything anomalous"
[Remarks from around 15:30]
Source:
Source: https://x.com/LehtoFiles/status/1966607721077047335

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

Retired F-16 pilot Chris Lehto says it's "obviously a balloon." (not a fixed-wing drone like Avi Loeb concluded).
object "going with the wind, could be stationary" "parallex"
"easily debunkable"
"did not do anything anomalous"
[Remarks from around 15:30]
Source:
Source: https://x.com/LehtoFiles/status/1966607721077047335

Another interesting thing is that Matt Ford, who frequently promotes bunk videos including the ones of the "orbs" from a Bledsoe prayer session the night before the Congressional session in which this Yemen video was shown, also said he'd come to the conclusion it was a balloon. And he did so really fast too, the same day it was released. I wonder if some of these people's inside sources gave them the heads up that the context available on the video service in the DoD that this is from is enough to prove it being bunk.

 

[MapperGuy]

While looking at this video again I am wondering are there any time stamps on the video segments (that could not be faked)?
Looks to me like the first segment, where the object is hit and starts to tumble is probaly the LAST video to be collected.
The long segment, zoomed out, was collected earlier, while the object was being tracked. And while the Hellfire shot was being set up.

When tracking you stay zoomed out, so you don't lose the target if it changes course, and to see if any other objects are nearby.
When you launch the Hellfire you zoom-in to better observe the results of the strike.

The zoom-in section ends quickly, so you don't see the object tumbling and hitting the water.
A little bit of edit can turn the picture around, not an object being hit with no effect, but an object being tracked and then hit, then fade-to-black so the truth is obscured.

 

[FatPhil]

Marik raised the issue of the three largest bits of debris looking very similar.

View attachment 83933

I think it's just image artifacts from much smaller heat sources.

Technically, he's almost right.

What are the chances of three random pieces of debris being identical in signiture?
Low...
... unless there's something simple we're overlooking.

I think we can all agree on that, up to definition of "simple".

Let's bifurcate:
Path 1)
Q: Why would three random pieces of debris have a similar signature?
A: Because they're similar enough, with differences not much greater than the noise floor, and the optical pipeline they're being processed through is identical - and the evidence that supports this is that it's a low-information signal and the optical pipeline they've been processed though is identical.

Path 2)
Q: Why would three random pieces of debris have a similar signature?
A: Because they aren't random, there must be something special about them - and the evidence hat supports this is that they all have a similar signature - check mate, skeptics!

As always, I'm on Team Ockham.

 

[Mick West]

Looks to me like the first segment, where the object is hit and starts to tumble is probaly the LAST video to be collected.
The long segment, zoomed out, was collected earlier, while the object was being tracked. And while the Hellfire shot was being set up.

There is nothing to indicate that. The angle of motion only works if the segments are in order. There's no real cut between them, just a zoom change.

 

[doctorpangloss]

Is there a way to simulate IR camera artifacts?

Is there a large library of footage that aligns IR to visible light video? It would be interesting to diffuse IR into optical as a solution. "Control net" for IR. Maybe I can get a NGA grant for it…

 

[boguesuser]

Is there a large library of footage that aligns IR to visible light video? It would be interesting to diffuse IR into optical as a solution. "Control net" for IR. Maybe I can get a NGA grant for it…

Like this?

I'm new to thermal imaging and got a Flir C3 off ebay.
Realised that there are so much limitations on the FLIR software. It's hard to batch process files; can't really align the visible image with the thermal one; limited blending options etc.

So I've decided to make my own pipeline using Python and Blender (Actually, a special build of it that allows me to add my own Python script to the compositor: https://github.com/bitsawer/blender-custom-nodes):

With Blender I can create my own image processing pipeline. With 100s of images I can keyframe how much displacement there is between the thermal and visible image, colour curves, and adjust alpha value between the visible image, edges detection, and thermal image.

Given the poor thermal resolution of the camera I've made it such that edges are own shown at the warm bits of the images.
In the example above, you can just about see the edges of people carrying a rowing boat on their shoulders into a boathouse.

 

[rmoore]

I wonder if hellfire missiles only operate at 450m/s, or that there is a range of speeds it can work with (likely).

What I have read indicates that the speed depends on propellant, how it's launched, trajectory, atmospheric conditions, etc., but the speed seems off by a factor of about 40 and I doubt that a Hellfire missile can fly at 25 mph.

 

[Mendel]

What I have read indicates that the speed depends on propellant, how it's launched, trajectory, atmospheric conditions, etc., but the speed seems off by a factor of about 40 and I doubt that a Hellfire missile can fly at 25 mph.

When the trajectory is 1.5 degrees off the camera's line of sight, the speed will appear approximately 40 times slower.

 

[Matzor]

I wonder if hellfire missiles only operate at 450m/s, or that there is a range of speeds it can work with (likely).

It's a solid rocket motor, once lit it burns at full power until it runs out. Which in the case of the Hellfire is 2-3 seconds. After that it's just gliding, adjusting course with its fins. So it could be going slightly slower, but I think what we're seeing is just perspective - i e it's going 450 m/s, just not straight across the frame.

The more I watch this thing, the more I think it's simply what it appears to be: A Hellfire blowing straight through a balloon of some sort. Either a Houthi spy balloon, or a training target. We have no idea where or when this took place, so it could simply be a weapons test conducted years ago.

 

[Giddierone]

I thought a table of the current differing opinions might be useful. Perhaps it can be added to.

Expert	Opinion		Key Reasoning
Avi Loeb (Harvard Astrophysicist, UAP Researcher) ​	Comparable with a Samad Drone​		See link in #133
Chris Lehto (Retired F-16 Pilot, UAP Analyst)	"Obviously a balloon" "Nothing anomalous"		Slow-moving, soft target consistent with FLIR footage; missile slices through without explosion (possibly kinetic variant like AGM-114R9X); debris is balloon fragments. Dismisses as non-anomalous distraction from better cases.
Mick West (UFO Skeptic)	Something like a balloon. Nothing amazing.		Missile flies through soft target, causing it to fragment; "bouncing" illusion from low-res IR artifacts and sharpening; three identical "debris" orbs are hot fragments in missile wake/turbulence; no anomalous speed or deflection—object sinks at wind speed post-impact.
George Knapp (Investigative Journalist, Podcaster)	Anomalous UAP (likely non-human intelligence tech)		Inferred from co-hosting discussions with Corbell; emphasizes need for full footage release and notes historical UAP shoot-down attempts; views as part of broader secrecy pattern, not conventional.
Jeremy Corbell (UFO Filmmaker, Podcaster)	Anomalous UAP (possibly deploying smaller probes/orbs)		Debris emerges in succession (not random kinetic scatter), inconsistent with simple balloon/drone hit; part of pattern of UAP engagement videos; calls for subpoenas on related secrecy; "fascinating" and worthy of deeper investigation.
Marik von Rennenkampff (Former DoD Official)	Anomalous UAP (structure unknown)		Three debris orbs emerge sequentially from inside UAP, defying kinetic impact physics; suggests internal deployment, not random breakup—calls for further scrutiny.

 

[John J.]

I came across this interesting podcast interview with an anonymous guest who says he is a former British Army ammunition technician. [Spoiler alert] In a nutshell, he thinks it's probably a missile test on a balloon.

That was interesting, but I don't think it's likely that a weapons system would be tested for a relatively novel application (e.g. assessing Hellfire AGM in an air-to-air role) by the US, or a US ally, off the coast of Yemen.
It would make much more sense to conduct such trials or training in one of the training areas/ ranges where such things usually take place, and where there might be a suite of monitoring equipment.

The Yemeni coast might be a hostile environment, and putting (admittedly uncrewed) resources in harm's way for a weapons test seems unnecessarily risky. It would also require a (presumably manned) platform or location to release the balloon.

 

[Ravi]

That was interesting, but I don't think it's likely that a weapons system would be tested for a relatively novel application (e.g. assessing Hellfire AGM in an air-to-air role) by the US, or a US ally, off the coast of Yemen.
It would make much more sense to conduct such trials or training in one of the training areas/ ranges where such things usually take place, and where there might be a suite of monitoring equipment.

The Yemeni coast might be a hostile environment, and putting (admittedly uncrewed) resources in harm's way for a weapons test seems unnecessarily risky. It would also require a (presumably manned) platform or location to release the balloon.

I don't doubt they test their stuff.
Hmm, isn't it is an advantage being able to test a weapon in the same environment as your enemy operates? I think you underestimate the size-area of Yemen? I don't see any problem in heaving some area in control by the US.
On the other hand, how sure are we it is filmed in Yemen?

 

[boguesuser]

On the other hand, how sure are we it is filmed in Yemen?

Because Burlison said so. That's it. No other proof except that.