The US on Sunday shot down an “unidentified object” over Lake Huron in North America, the fourth such downing in just eight days.
The latest military strike in an extraordinary chain of events over US airspace has no peacetime precedent, Pentagon officials say.
One reason for the repeated attacks is “heightened alert” after a spy balloon from China appeared in U.S. airspace in late January, Gen. Glen VanHerke, head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, told a news briefing.
Since then, fighter jets have also shot down targets over Canada and Alaska last week. Pentagon officials said they didn’t pose a security risk, but so little was known about them that Pentagon officials didn’t rule anything out – not even UFOs.
“We are taking a closer look at our airspace at these altitudes, including improving our radar, which could at least partly explain the increase,” said Melissa Dalton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense.
US authorities have made it clear that they are constantly monitoring unknown radar signals and it is not unusual to close airspace as a precaution to assess them.
But the unusually assertive response raised questions about whether such use of force was justified, especially as administration officials said the facilities posed little national security risk and the downings were purely precautionary.
VanHerke said the US has tuned its radar so it can track slower targets. “With some adjustments, we were able to better classify the radar tracks,” he said, “and so I think you see them, plus there is increased anxiety to look for this information.”
“I believe this is the first time in United States or American airspace that NORAD or the United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an air object,” he added.
When asked if officials were ruling out the existence of aliens, VanHerke replied, “At the moment, I’m not ruling anything out.”
Pentagon officials said they were still trying to determine what the objects were and said they were considering using rocket-propelled guns instead of missiles, but that proved too difficult. They made a clear distinction between the three shot down this weekend and a balloon from China.
The extraordinary air defense activity began in late January when a white balloon that officials said was from China appeared over the US and hovered over the country for several days before fighter jets shot it down off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This event was broadcast live. Many Americans have been fascinated by the drama that plays out in the sky as fighter jets try to shoot down objects.
The latest downed plane was first spotted Saturday night over Montana, but was initially thought to be an anomaly.
Radar picked it up again Sunday as it hovered over Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and it flew over Lake Huron, Pentagon officials said Sunday.
Earlier Sunday, U.S. and Canadian authorities restricted airspace over the lake as planes took to the air to intercept and try to identify the object.
According to a senior administration official, the object was octagonal, with dangling strings, but had no appreciable payload. It was flying low at about 20,000 feet, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
Growing concerns
Meanwhile, U.S. officials were still trying to positively identify two other sites shot down by F-22 fighter jets and were working to determine if China was responsible, as Washington’s concerns about what Washington said was a large-scale aerial Beijing’s surveillance intensified.
The object, shot down over Canada’s Yukon on Saturday, was described by US officials as a balloon much smaller than the balloon – the size of three school buses – hit by a rocket on Feb. 4. Flying object shot down over the remote northern coast of Alaska Friday was more cylindrical and was described as a type of airship.
Both were believed to have had a payload attached or suspended from them, according to officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Officials were unable to say who launched the objects and tried to find out their origin.
The three objects were much smaller, different in appearance and flew at lower altitudes than the alleged spy balloon that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean after a US missile strike.
Officials said the other three sites did not match a fleet of Chinese balloons that have targeted more than 40 countries since at least the Trump administration.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC’s This Week that U.S. officials are working quickly to recover the wreckage. Using shorthand to describe the objects as balloons, he said US military and intelligence officials were “focused like a laser” on collecting and accumulating information, and then on compiling a comprehensive analysis.
“The bottom line is we didn’t know about these balloons a few months ago,” Schumer, DN.Y., said of the spyware that the administration linked to China’s People’s Liberation Army. “It’s crazy that we didn’t know.”
Eight days ago, F-22 fighters shot down a large white balloon that had been hovering over the US for several days at an altitude of about 60,000 feet (18,288 meters).
US officials immediately blamed China, saying the balloon was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals and could maneuver itself. White House officials said improved surveillance capabilities helped locate it.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the unmanned balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that went off course. Beijing said the US “overreacted” by shooting it down.
Then on Friday, North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S.-Canadian organization that provides joint air defense over the two countries, located and shot down an object near sparsely populated Deadhorse, Alaska.
In the evening of the same day, NORAD detected a second object flying at high altitude over Alaska, US officials said. On Saturday, it crossed Canadian airspace and was over the Yukon, a remote territory, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered it to be shot down.
In both cases, the objects were flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet. The object was flying at 20,000 feet on Sunday.
The cases have heightened diplomatic tensions between the United States and China, raised questions about the extent of American surveillance of Beijing, and sparked days of criticism from Republican lawmakers over the administration’s response.
