A member of Congress is gaining widespread attention after claiming that extraterrestrial beings are operating from underwater bases near the United States coastline.

Representative Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who serves on the House Oversight Committee, which is responsible for reviewing UFO reports, made the striking assertions during a recent interview.

Speaking with UFO researcher and filmmaker Red Panda Koala on September 17 — in a post that has garnered more than 2 million views — Mr. Burchett suggested that alien civilizations have established underwater facilities in earth’s oceans, potentially operating undetected for generations.

“What if these are entities that are here on this earth, that have been on this earth, who knows how long?” he asked as he walked along a sidewalk near the Capitol. “We think they’re coming in from way out. Maybe they did millennia ago, but they’re here, and they’re in these deepwater areas.”

“We have naval personnel telling me we have these sightings, these underwater craft they’re chasing, that are doing hundreds of miles an hour, and the best we got is something that does maybe a little under 40 miles an hour,” Mr. Burchett said. “So I got a lot of questions about that stuff.”

The congressman pointed to multiple deep-sea locations where unidentified craft have been repeatedly observed, emphasizing the vast, unexplored nature of earth’s oceans compared to other celestial bodies.

“That’s why, like we say, we know more about the face of the moon than we do what’s going on there. We have a higher propensity of sightings around these five or six, I believe, deepwater areas. And so, to me, it just creates a question there,” he said.

An author specializing in extraterrestrial research, Michael Salla, has identified potential locations for these alleged bases. He specifically highlighted a region in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas as a site of significant interest.

“Just to the right of it is Tongue of the Ocean, which is a very deep part of the ocean there in the Bahamas. It drops off immediately around 3,000 feet,” Mr. Salla said during a September 19 appearance on the “Redacted” podcast. “So that’s ideal for a submarine, but it’s also a place where people have seen many UFOs, many underwater craft coming into and leaving the water. So, there have been a lot of UFO sightings in that area.”

Mr. Salla noted the proximity of the Atlantic Undersea Testing and Evaluation Center, a classified American Navy facility he compared to Area 51, operating in the same region.

Critics, though, point to the absence of verifiable physical evidence such as artifacts or clear footage to substantiate claims of alien underwater bases. Skeptics argue that reliance on anecdotal reports without peer-reviewed scientific backing raises questions about the validity of such assertions.

Despite the lack of tangible proof, congressional interest in UFO phenomena continues to grow. A September 9 hearing featured new whistleblower testimony, including reports of orb-like objects demonstrating unusual flight characteristics.

Three military veterans appeared at that House hearing, detailing their experiences with UFOs — as well as what they claim is a systematic campaign to silence those who dare speak up about the encounters.

The hearing delivered the kind of disclosures that conspiracy theorists have been waiting for: purported footage of a UFO shrugging off a direct hit from a Hellfire missile like it was a paper airplane.

Representative Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican, showed the never-before-seen footage from October 30, 2024, of a U.S. military drone firing its 100-pound precision weapon at a mysterious orb off the coast of Yemen. The missile bounced harmlessly off the craft, which continued its high-speed journey as if nothing happened.

“Exceptional evidence,” declared a former Air Force military police officer, Jeffrey Nuccetelli, one of the day’s witnesses.

However, a journalist and consultant for a UFO sightings alert network, Alejandro Rojas, called the hearing “frustrating” because witnesses did not actually provide any scientific evidence that the video was real. 

“We have years of anecdotal sighting reports and claims of hidden government knowledge about alien visitation. What we need is evidence,” Mr. Rojas said.