A US warplane shot down an unidentified flying object near the Canadian border on Sunday, the latest of three mysterious devices spotted since military radar settings were adjusted in the wake of the downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
On Sunday the Pentagon admitted that it has no idea what the three most recent targets were. One was shot down on Friday over Alaska, one on Saturday over Canada's Yukon territory, and the latest on Sunday over Lake Huron.
These military actions come in the wake of an intensification of radar coverage of US airspace following the incursion ten days ago of an object believed to have originated in China
US military authorities said that the object downed Sunday had been tracked for nearly a day and did not resemble the alleged Chinese surveillance balloon that was destroyed off the Atlantic coast on 4 February after traversing the country.
President Joe Biden ordered an F-16 fighter to shoot down the latest object "out of abundance of caution," a senior administration official said.
The object was described by the official as an octagonal structure with strings hanging from it.
Drifting at about 6,000 meters over Michigan, it could have posed a hazard to civil aviation, the official said.
US Northern Command Commander General Glen VanHerck told reporters that after aircraft were sent up to inspect the newest object, they concluded that there was no indication of any threat, the same with the previous objects.
Blinken's Beijing visit shot down
The objects shot down since Friday were detected after US air defense adjusted radar settings to scan for smaller and slower-moving objects, said Assistant Secretary of Defense Melissa Dalton.
"In light of the People's Republic of China balloon that we took down last Saturday, we have been more closely scrutinising our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we've detected over the past week," she told reporters.
She said they are aware that there are objects drifting at such altitudes operated in the air by research institutes and private companies.
"But because we had not been able to definitively assess what these recent objects are, the president wanted to act out of an abundance of caution to protect our security and interests," she said.
Currently operations are underway to recover all four objects, said Dalton.
China has insisted that first object was a weather balloon blown off course.
The incident prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a long-planned diplomatic mission to Beijing.
China claims that US balloons have infringed Chinese airspace "more than 10 times" since January 2022.
