Jake Barber's "Egg" Crash-Retrieval Video

NewsNation said its record check confirmed that Jake Barber was a USAF airman and aerospace mechanic in the late 1990s, and that he was recruited into Air Force Special Operations combat control. It reported that he later worked "in a nonofficial capacity" for the DoD and intelligence community. Barber says he also flew as a contract helicopter pilot for a secret program that recovered downed craft. Some of them, he believes, are not of human origin.

January 18, 2025. 8 p.m. ET. NewsNation aired Hunting UFOs: The Crash Retrieval Whistleblower, hosted by Ross Coulthart.

Barber described one operation in detail. It was night. "I was operating at night when I finally came in to pick it up," he said. He was working under night vision goggles.

On the ground lay an object. "I saw an egg, a white egg." It was "like pearly white. Like, metallic pearly white." He put it at "approximately 20ft, plus or minus a little bit about the size of a large SUV." No seams. No markings. "There's no engine. There was no thermal signature."

He got within 150 feet of it, on a long line of 150 to 200 feet. He flipped his goggles up and down and looked at it a couple of different ways. "Just visually looking at the object on the ground, you could tell that it was extraordinary and anomalous. It was not human." His team, he said, "all knew we were dealing with something extraordinary."

Then came about 11 seconds of green night-vision footage. A smooth white ovoid hangs in a cargo net beneath a helicopter and is lowered toward the ground. Nick Pope said it was filmed via night vision from another aircraft. Who filmed it, when and where, has never been disclosed. Coulthart reportedly said the video came from the retrieval program, not from Barber, and that naming the source could "implicate the people who provided it."

DoD spokesperson Susan Gough said the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office "is aware of Barber's claims and is investigating them." AARO director Jon T. Kosloski said his office was talking to whistleblowers like Barber. The Pentagon's standing position is that it has found no "verifiable information to substantiate claims" of programs possessing or reverse-engineering extraterrestrial materials. Barber says he gave classified testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in late 2024. No finding has been published.

On Metabunk, analysts asked whether a Black Hawk's cargo hook could even lift an object that size. Some saw a miniature, perhaps a fishing rod and a lead sinker filmed off a monitor, while others suggested a plastic ball, a ship's fender or a partly deflated balloon. They pointed to a kink in the line, colored strobing, a haphazard net and rotor sound closer to a UH-1 Huey. One 3D model, though, found the rope length and camera "not totally crazy." In one X poll, 94% of more than 1,500 voters said the video did not meet expectations.

Barber's background drew scrutiny too. Critics say the Air Force has had no enlisted helicopter pilots since about the Korean War. Steven Greenstreet noted that Barber's company, Skywatcher, made its legal filing on November 27, 2024, and registered its website on December 6, 2024.

The egg joined a line of crash retrieval claims tied to David Grusch and Luis Elizondo. HuffPost compared it to the Tic Tac. By January 2026, commentators wrote of a "Skywatcher silence" because the promised data had not appeared. What remains is what there was on day one. Eleven seconds of footage, and one pilot's account.