USS Russell pyramid-shaped UAP footage (2019)

In July 2019, sailors aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Russell recorded night-vision video of several triangular or pyramid-shaped objects moving near the ship off the Southern California coast. The footage shows objects that flash as they move. The case is one of a cluster of Navy and Marine encounters from 2019 that became public only after the Pentagon's UFO programme was brought into the open.

Background and release

The video was not released by the military. Investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell obtained it and, together with reporter George Knapp, published it in April 2021 as part of a 'data dump' that first ran through Mystery Wire. FOX 11 Los Angeles reported that pilot photographs from March 2019 were released alongside the video. Gizmodo's account says the recording was most likely made by the ship's SNOOPIE team, a shipboard imaging and examination unit.

The Navy had earlier confirmed the existence of three 2004 and 2015 Hornet-pilot videos, known as FLIR, GIMBAL and GO FAST, which were released in 2020. The USS Russell footage is one of several 2019 Navy recordings that later came under the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF); the public record does not say exactly when it was handed over.

Official response

In April 2021 a Pentagon spokesperson told the Daily Telegraph: 'I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel.' The statement, reported by 1News, added that the UAPTF had included the incidents in its ongoing examinations, and that some had only been 'initially designated' as unidentified. The Pentagon declined to discuss details, citing operational security.

The confirmation confirmed authorship, not content. Fox LA noted that the statement was unattributed and that no expert analysis accompanied the video. Later, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) published its 2024 historical report. Its conclusion stated that 'AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology.' That finding covers UAP reporting generally; the report's conclusion does not single out the USS Russell footage.

Case for and against

Supporters point to the professional sourcing: Navy personnel recorded the video with military equipment, and the Pentagon confirmed the recording's origin. Several sources state that the objects did not behave like known drones or balloons, though that claim comes from Mystery Wire and has not been verified.

Skeptics raise several objections. The footage is a night-vision recording, and the glare, halo and flashing lights could be optical artefacts or image-intensifier effects, as Gizmodo and other commentators noted. The objects are not identified in the official confirmation. Corbell, who supplied and framed the footage, is an advocate of UFO disclosure rather than an independent analyst. Some fringe websites claim the objects were also picked up on radar; no primary source supports this, and it is treated here as unverified.

No official study has published a finding on the USS Russell footage as a discrete case. Its status therefore rests on the authenticity of the recording and on the unexplained shape and behaviour of the objects.

Current status

The footage remains unexplained in public records. It is one of several 2019 Pacific Navy cases reviewed in the UAP programme's successor work, and it is discussed alongside the 2017 New York Times report on AATIP that first brought Navy videos to wide attention. As with other Navy videos, the official record confirms the recordings but does not state what the objects were. Credibility is contested: the source is authentic, but the identity and nature of the objects remain unestablished.