Other unidentified objects have been downed in Alaska and Canada
(Picture: AP)American fighter pilots last night shot down a fourth suspected spy balloon in just over a week.
The object was “decommissioned” near the Canadian border over Lake Huron, Michigan congressman Jack Bergman said.
US and Canadian authorities had restricted airspace over the lake as planes were scrambled to intercept and try to identify the object on Sunday.
The octagonal object was reportedly flying low at about 20,000ft when it was shot down.
The air strike came as the remnants of a third object were being hunted. Norad, the North American Aerospace Defence Command, a US-Canada organisation, spotted the third craft at 40,000ft before it crossed into Canada on Saturday.
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau spoke to US President Joe Biden and jets from both countries were scrambled. A US F-22 shot down the small cylindrical object in central Yukon.
It came after the destruction of two other “balloons” that may have been Chinese spy aircraft.
The first - which was 200ft tall - was taken down over the Atlantic, near South Carolina, just over a week ago.
A second was destroyed over Alaska on Friday and a third after it wandered into Canadian air space on Saturday.
Intelligence agencies are searching for wreckage of the objects to see if they also carried surveillance equipment like the first one.
The White House said that two of the balloons were much smaller and different to the original one. A spokesman said: “These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the [Chinese] balloon and we will not definitively characterise them until we can recover the debris.”
China has denied that the first suspected surveillance balloon - which first entered US airspace on January 28 - was used for spying purposes, saying it was a drifting weather device.
