A third 'unidentified object' has been shot down from above the United States and Canada in as many days. It comes eight days after a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was shot out of the sky.
The latest object was was shot down with a missile by US fighter jets on Sunday (February 12) over Lake Huron, near the border with Canada. The news comes as US officials are still trying to identify objects that were shot down from above Yukon, in Canada, on Saturday and Alaska on Friday.
US officials say the latest object shot down was believed to be the same one that had been tracked over Montana and monitored by the government on Saturday night. Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin tweeted that 'the object has been downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard', with the news confirmed by four US officials.
Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” following a spy balloon from China that emerged over US airspace in late January, General Glen VanHerck, head of Norad and US Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.
Asked if officials have ruled out extra-terrestrials, Mr VanHerck said: “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”
US authorities have made clear that they constantly monitor for unknown radar blips, and it is not unusual to shut down airspace as a precaution to evaluate them.
“We have been more closely scrutinising our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase,” Melissa Dalton, assistant defence secretary for homeland defence, added.
But the unusually assertive response was raising questions about whether such use of force was warranted, particularly as administration officials said the objects were not of great national security concern and the downings were just out of caution.
Mr VanHerck said the US adjusted its radar so it could track slower objects.
“With some adjustments, we’ve been able to get a better categorisation of radar tracks now,” he said, “and that’s why I think you’re seeing these, plus there’s a heightened alert to look for this information.”
He added: “I believe this is the first time within United States or American airspace that Norad or United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an airborne object.”
Earlier objects in Alaska and Canada were shot out of the sky because they were flying at altitudes that posed a threat to commercial aircraft, according to the officials. US and Canadian authorities earlier on Sunday restricted some airspace over Lake Huron, as aircraft were scrambled to intercept and try to identify the object.
Officials have been working to determine whether China was responsible for the two objects blown from the sky above Alaska and Yukon by F-22 fighter in recent days. Concerns have escalated about what Washington says is Beijing’s large-scale aerial surveillance programme.
The object shot down Saturday over the Yukon was described by US officials as a balloon significantly smaller than the one hit by a missile on February 4 while drifting off the South Carolina coast after traversing the country. A flying object brought down over the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday was more cylindrical and described as a type of airship.
Both were believed to have a payload, either attached or suspended from them, according to the officials. They were not able to say who launched the objects and were trying to establish their origin.
US officials said the two more recent objects were much smaller in size, different in appearance and flew at lower altitudes than the suspected Chinese spy balloon that fell into the Atlantic after the US missile strike. They said the Alaska and Canada objects were not consistent with the fleet of Chinese aerial surveillance balloons that targeted more than 40 countries, stretching back at least into the Trump administration.
That large white orb first appeared over the US in late January, and since then Americans have been fixated on the sky above them. US authorities made clear that they constantly monitor for unknown radar blips, and it is not unusual to shut down airspace as a precaution to evaluate them.
On Sunday, the US briefly closed the airspace over Lake Michigan and on Saturday night over rural Montana. Officials said they were no longer tracking any objects over those locations.
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