US fighter jets shot down an “unidentified object” over Lake Huron on Sunday at the behest of President Joe Biden. It was the fourth drop in eight days and the latest military strike in an extraordinary chain of events in US airspace that Pentagon officials believe has no peacetime precedent.
Part of the reason for the repeated firing was “heightened vigilance” after a spy balloon from China appeared in US airspace in late January, General Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and US Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.
Since then, fighter jets have also shot down objects in Canada and Alaska last week. Pentagon officials say there is no security threat, but little is known that Pentagon officials have not ruled anything out — not even UFOs.
“We’ve been doing more research on our airspace at this altitude, including improving our radar, which at least explains the increase,” said Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense.
US authorities have made it clear that they are constantly monitoring the unknown radar, and it is not uncommon to close their airspace as a precaution to evaluate it. But the overwhelmingly assertive response has raised questions about the use of the power, especially since administration officials have said the object was not a national security issue and fell due to lack of caution.
VanHerck said the U.S. is adjusting its radar to track slower objects. “With some adjustments, we can now get a better categorization of radar tracks,” he said, “and that’s why I think you’re seeing this, there’s also a higher signal to look for this information.”
He added: “I believe this is the first time in the airspace of the United States or America that NORAD or the United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an aerial object.”
Asked if officials have ruled out extraterrestrials, VanHerck said, “I haven’t ruled anything out at this point.”
Pentagon officials said they were still trying to determine what the object actually was and said they were considering using a jet gun instead of a missile, but it was proving difficult. He made a strong distinction between the three shot down this weekend and the balloons from China.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz tweeted that airmen in the 148th Fighter Wing, a combat unit of the Air National Guard in Duluth, shot down an object over Lake Huron.
The extraordinary air defense activity began in late January, when a white orb that officials said was from China appeared over the US and hovered above the country for several days before a fighter jet came down off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The event was played via livestream. Many Americans have been fascinated by the drama that plays out in the sky as fighter jets struggle to shoot down objects.
The latest drop was first detected last night in Montana, but was initially thought to be an anomaly. The radar picked up again Sunday hovering over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and it is going over Lake Huron, Pentagon officials said Sunday.
US and Canadian authorities have restricted some airspace over the lake on Sunday as planes scrambled to intercept and try to identify the object. According to a senior administration official, the object was octagonal, with a string hanging from it, but there was no identifiable payload. It was flying as low as about 20,000 feet, said an official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Meanwhile, US officials are still trying to precisely identify two other objects shot down by F-22 fighter jets, and trying to determine whether China was responsible amid concerns over what Washington says is Beijing’s large-scale aerial surveillance program.
The object shot down over the Canadian Yukon was described by US officials as a balloon significantly smaller than the balloon – the size of three school buses – hit by a missile on February 4.
Both are believed to have payloads, either mounted or suspended from them, according to officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Officials could not say who launched the object and are trying to determine its origin.
The three objects were smaller in size, looked different and flew at a lower altitude than the suspected spy balloons that fell into the Atlantic Ocean after a US missile attack.
The official said the other three objects were inconsistent with China’s aerial surveillance balloon fleet targeting more than 40 countries, at least to the Trump administration.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC’s “This Week” that U.S. officials are working quickly to recover the debris. Using shorthand to describe the object as a balloon, he said US military and intelligence officials were “focused like lasers” on gathering and gathering information, then compiling a comprehensive analysis.
“The bottom line is that until a few months ago, we didn’t know about this balloon,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the spy program that has been linked to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military. “It’s a wild thing we don’t know.”
Eight days ago, an F-22 jet shot down a large white balloon that had been hovering over the US for days at an altitude of about 60,000 feet. US officials immediately blamed China, saying the balloons were equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals and could maneuver on their own. White House officials say better surveillance capabilities help detect them.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the unmanned balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that exploded. Beijing said the US “overreacted” by firing.
Then, on Friday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint US-Canada organization that provides airspace defense in the two countries, detected and shot down an object near Deadhorse, Alaska.
Later that evening, NORAD detected another object, flying high above Alaska, US officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Friday and over the Yukon, a remote area, when it was ordered to be shot down by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In both cases, the object flew at about 40,000 feet. The object on Sunday flew at 20,000 feet.
The case has heightened diplomatic tensions between the United States and China, raised questions about Beijing’s level of American surveillance, and prompted criticism from Republican lawmakers about the administration’s response.