New Footage Shows Mushroom-Shaped UFO Making Apparent Sudden Acceleration, Echoing CIA Director’s Warning to Defense Secretary
Written by Christopher Sharp - 8 February 2026
On a bitter Sunday morning in January 2023, as New York sat cold and dry beyond the Fox & Friends studio walls, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said something that should have sent a chill through the American national security apparatus.
He put it bluntly: mysterious Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) represented:
"Objects that demonstrate technologies that seem to defy the law of physics and capabilities that we don't have as the world's superpower."
He added:
“Our role in the federal government is to provide for the common defense and we can’t do that if someone else has technologies that are better than what we have.”
Looking back, it is hard to believe the words were spoken at all. John Ratcliffe, now Director of the CIA, sat before three hosts, among them Pete Hegseth, now Secretary of Defense, and said with quiet certainty that there are mysterious objects that the world’s superpower does not possess.
And all of it was spoken, astonishingly, between the men who now stand at the helm of the CIA and the United States Department of Defense.
For years, claims like that lived mostly in testimony. There was military imagery, sometimes compelling. But nothing publicly available matched it for clarity or evidentiary weight in showing extreme capabilities.
That may have changed on 3 February 2026. Investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp released footage showing an unidentified, mushroom-shaped object. It appears to execute instantaneous acceleration.
Until now, that performance signature has largely existed in testimony, not in public imagery.
Debuted on the WEAPONIZED podcast, the 2021 clip appears to show the object being tracked by an MQ-9 Reaper operating under U.S. Air Force direction along the Syria–Jordan border.
Above, the coordinates indicate the Reaper drone’s position, with its camera pointed roughly due north while observing the UAP along the Syria - Jordan border
The timing matters. The clip dates to 2021, when coalition forces in Syria were facing persistent drone threats. In December that year, an RAF Typhoon destroyed a hostile drone near the At Tanf base.
It was the first time the British military had brought down an enemy aircraft since the Falklands War, nearly 40 years earlier.
Two years later, Knapp and Corbell released footage they alleged showed the object that was shot down. Like this week’s clip, it presents a mushroom-like profile, or as Knapp put it, a ‘mushroom cloud’.
It didn’t look like a drone.
Above: The alleged drone engaged over Syria by the RAF in December 2021 and later classified as UAP by a Five Eyes Intelligence Report.
According to Corbell, a Five Eyes intelligence report generated months following the event classified the object as UAP.
It’s also important to note that it doesn’t carry the same weight as the most recent footage released by Corbell and Knapp, and the object’s profile is not a clear match.
Corbell said the report - focused on UAP - described an uptick in encounters over Syria and Iraq, involving the United States Air Force, the UK Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the militaries of Russia and Syria.
The context for this seemingly remarkable footage matters. It shows a similar-looking UAP executing instantaneous acceleration at a time when allied bases were being targeted regularly by terrorist drones.
The greater point is this: Ratcliffe’s warning was about capability. If the footage shows what it appears to show, the United States is watching technology it cannot match.
The footage was captured using a thermographic Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) sensor, as the object was observed and actively tracked by the Reaper from Jordanian territory. On-screen symbology suggests the system achieved what is described as a weapons-quality lock.
Moments later, the object abruptly departs, appearing to accelerate rapidly and potentially change direction. The apparent performance is notable because the object shows no visible wings, control surfaces, or conventional propulsion during the manoeuvre.
Speaking to Liberation Times about the footage, Jeremy Corbell stated:
‘I’m excited to present this new piece of evidence - strengthening the expanding body of military-filmed UAP imagery entering the public domain.
‘This footage is unique, in that George Knapp and I are presenting the official analytical product prepared exclusively for internal consumption by U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of War.
‘This footage was evaluated in depth because of its unmistakable exhibition of instantaneous acceleration - one of the established UAP observables.
‘Compared to all the other military-filmed UFO footage George and I have obtained and released over the years - this one stands apart as exceptionally compelling evidence. It holds the potential to shift paradigms.’
Marik von Rennenkampff, a former analyst at the U.S. Department of State and an Obama-era appointee at the Department of Defense (now known as the Department of War), urged caution and independent analysis but, after an initial assessment, stated that ‘on its face, this is the most extraordinary UAP footage that I have seen.’
Speaking to Liberation Times, von Rennenkampff soberingly put it:
‘If further analysis establishes that this object exhibited the extraordinary technology required to accelerate instantaneously without wings or discernible means of propulsion, the implications would be profound.
‘It would suggest that either a nation-state has developed an astounding advantage over its adversaries or objects of unknown origin are demonstrating truly perplexing capabilities in our skies.’
He added:
‘While this footage will undoubtedly be subject to extensive open-source analysis in the coming days and weeks, a preliminary assessment suggests that the object demonstrated instantaneous acceleration, an extreme performance capability that many witnesses have described over the decades but which, to date, has not been observed in verified or vetted footage. In short, the object’s apparent rapid acceleration does not appear to be an artifact of the operator moving the camera rapidly or a change in the camera’s tracking settings.
‘Moreover, the object appears to demonstrate this perplexing capability, as well as a potential direction change, despite the apparent absence of wings, control surfaces, or conventional means of propulsion - all while appearing much colder than its surroundings. This is certainly intriguing footage that should have been made public years ago.’
When asked to confirm whether the Pentagon’s UAP-dedicated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) possessed the video, a Department of War (DoW) spokesperson answered, ‘We have nothing to provide regarding the alleged Syria UAP video.’
Corbell and Knapp’s release echoes footage described to the Daily Mail in 2022 by a source within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The source told the Daily Mail that there are dozens of classified UAP videos on government servers filmed by MQ-9 Reaper drones abroad. The source added:
'These drones operate 20-25,000 feet up in the air and they're flying around. We're keeping an eye on bad guys all over the world.'
'An operator will be zoomed in looking at a town in Syria. And all of a sudden, a little orb will go flying through the viewfinder.
'The operator's like, ''What the hell?'' And so he starts focusing on it and he just watches the orb for a while. We might get it for 30 seconds, we might watch it for 10 minutes. And then it will do something remarkable, like suddenly bolt off the screen.'
The source added:
'But there are s***loads of classified videos that are pretty profound and pretty clear.
'They don't want to talk about this stuff, because they really, really don't know what the hell they are. That's the truth.'
Speaking about the potential reasons for the U.S. government withholding such footage, von Rennenkampff told Liberation Times:
‘Speaking in my personal capacity, with countless military infrared videos in the public domain - including from the same aircraft and sensor system that recorded this particular video - along with the fact that it’s no secret that U.S. assets monitored contested areas of Syria five years ago (a country which also saw a change in leadership in 2024), I cannot see how the public release of this or similar footage causes any discernible damage to national security.’
Jeremy Corbell told Liberation Times that the U.S. government, which allegedly holds the footage, never intended to release the footage, stating:
‘The public was never supposed to see this footage and analysis - owing to the longstanding and sustained restriction on such material by U.S. intelligence agencies and allied entities.
‘Yet now, for the first time in our shared history, the public can see an unequivocal demonstration of a UAP executing abrupt directional change with apparent instantaneous acceleration, recorded on a military-grade weapons and optics system. It is direct and incontrovertible.’
Instantaneous acceleration is one of six observables associated with UAP - in full, they include:
Instantaneous Acceleration - Objects change velocity or direction abruptly at rates far beyond human or known technological tolerances (e.g., thousands of Gs, no visible propulsion or inertial effects)
Hypersonic Velocity with Signatures - Sustained speeds above Mach 5 (hypersonic) with no sonic booms, thermal signatures, heat plumes, or aerodynamic drag indicators
Low Observability - Objects appear difficult to detect on radar (cloaking/stealth-like properties), visually faint, or partially transparent despite being solid and manoeuvrable
Transmedium Travel - Seamless movement between all-domains: air, water, space/vacuum, or other, without performance loss or visible transition effects (e.g., entering/exiting water at high speeds without decreased velocity or splash)
Positive Lift / Anti Gravity - Hovering, rapid manoeuvres, or flight with no apparent wings, rotors, exhaust, or lift-generating surfaces (propulsion without visible means)
Biological Effects - Close proximity sometimes causes radiation-like symptoms, burns, disorientation, electromagnetic interference, or other unexplained physical health or neuropsychological effects on observers.
Like the probable impact of Ratcliffe’s comments on that January day in 2023, Corbell and Knapp’s latest release may have sent a chill through the American national security apparatus.
And there may be more to come. Corbell told Liberation Times:
‘This release should dispel stigma, inform relevant academic disciplines, and rouse the broader scientific community. It should instil a drive for rigorous examination, given the prospect of profound discovery. This should spur the scientific community to engage in UAP investigation at scale.
‘Ultimately, it remains my journalistic obligation to present the strongest available information and evidence. George Knapp and I are committed to this aim and our reporting together.
‘The barriers are giving way. This evidence will - and must - transform how science approaches the UAP enigma.
‘Progress unfolds gradually - yet we must hasten our engagement, for humanity stands to gain immeasurably.’
UAP stories of new footage appear to languish at the bottom of the news agenda now. Some videos are proven and will continue to be proven prosaic.
But this video, alongside GOFAST, GIMBAL and ‘Tic Tac’, drags Ratcliffe’s warning out of the abstract and into view. While the world fixes its gaze on Iran, the deeper issue is capability.
If these clips show what they appear to show, then the world’s dominant superpower may not be an Earthly nation at all.
