- Gareth Evans
- BBC – Washington
Naval forces recover part of the wreckage of the Chinese airship
US fighter jets shot down an unidentified flying object flying at a high altitude over Lake Huron, near the Canadian border, in the fourth incident of its kind this month.
And US President Joe Biden issued his order to drop the object.
The US Air Force and National Guard shot down the unknown object on Sunday, according to Congresswoman Elisa Saltkin.
“A great job on the part of everyone involved in this mission,” she said.
The Pentagon confirmed in a statement that the object could have affected commercial air traffic, as it was flying at an altitude of about six kilometers above sea level.
She added that the body was located for the first time, on Saturday, over military sites in Montana.
But the object was not classified as a military hazard . Pentagon officials said there was no one on board, it was octagonal, and it was shot down by a missile from an F-16 fighter.
The incident raised questions about the series of UFOs shot down over North America this month.
And the United States shot down a “spy balloon” near the coast of South Carolina on the fourth of this month, after it flew for days over the country.
US officials said the balloon came from China and was used to monitor sensitive sites.
China denied using the balloon for espionage purposes, stressing that it was prepared for weather monitoring purposes, and that it had lost control of it.
This caused political tension, and an exchange of statements and accusations between the United States and China.
A Pentagon official said Sunday that the United States had contacted China about the first balloon, after several days without receiving any clarification from Beijing.
After this incident, American fighters dropped 3 more objects in 3 consecutive days.
Washington is still on high alert, militarily, since the shooting down of the “espionage” balloon.
And Biden issued orders on Friday to drop a strange flying object over Alaska, and another object Saturday over the Yukon, northwest Canada.
Officials have not yet determined the origin of these flying objects, nor their purpose. The United States and Canada are cooperating in collecting the debris, but the process is going very slowly, due to bad weather.
“These flying objects, they don’t look very similar, and they were much smaller than a balloon, and we’re not going to rush out until we can collect the debris,” John Kipri, a national security spokesman, said at the White House.
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Chronological For events:
February 4: The US military shot down a balloon suspected of carrying out espionage, near the coast of South Carolina, after it had flown for several days over US territory.
February 10: The US shot down another object over Alaska that officials said did not have any navigation, guidance or motion control systems.
February 11: An American fighter dropped an “object flying at a high altitude” over the Yukon of Canada, 160 km from the US border, and was described as cylindrical in shape and smaller than the first balloon.
February 12: An American fighter shot down a fourth object, flying at a high altitude, near Lake Huron, “out of caution.”
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Later, Sunday, Gen. Glenn Vanherk, who is in charge of the North American air region, did not rule out any scenario.
In response to a question about aliens, Vanherk said, “I will leave the clarification to intelligence and counter-reconnaissance, and I do not rule out any scenario.”
image copyright Getty Images
Fighters were used to shoot down UFOs flying at great heights
A senior US administration official told ABC that the last three objects that were shot down were mostly weather balloons, not spy blimps.
But that contradicts what a senior congressional official said hours earlier.
“Yeah, they think they’re balloons,” Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, told ABC, expressing his belief that they are “much smaller than the first balloon, which was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.”
“The bottom line is that we didn’t know anything about these balloons until a few months ago, and we will probably be able to collect information from these observation balloons, to know exactly what is going on,” he added.
Debbie Dingell, a congresswoman for the Democratic Party, joined the demands for the White House to release all information related to these incidents, after she was among the applause for the American forces after the downing of the balloon.
Debbie said, “We want the facts, about the origin of these flying objects, what is their purpose, and why is their pace accelerating”?
As for Democratic Senator John Tester, he told CBS that “what has happened over the past two weeks, or so, cannot be described as anything less than insane, and the military needs to look for a plan that aims not only to find out what is going on, but also to confront the dangers.”
Republicans have repeatedly criticized the current administration for its handling of the balloon crisis.
The balloon was being tracked in the United States for several days before it was shot down, which drew a lot of criticism from the Biden administration.
As for Biden, he confirmed that he decided to postpone the shooting down of the balloon for several days, in order to avoid any harm to civilians, in the event that it was dropped over a residential area.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said his country would conduct security reviews after the recent events in the United States and Canada.
“This development is another indication of how the global threat picture is turning for the worse,” he said.
