The US has shot down an unidentified object that flew over Canada at high altitude, in the second incident in two days that came a week after the Pentagon shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the US coast.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday afternoon said he had ordered the shooting down of “an unknown object that violated Canadian airspace” and that the target was taken out over the Yukon.
American F-22 fighter jets shot down the object as part of an operation conducted by the North American Aerospace Defense Command. [Norad]a joint US-Canada command responsible for defending the continent.
“I spoke with President Biden this afternoon. Canadian forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object. Thank you to Norad for keeping North America safe,” Trudeau wrote on Twitter.
On Friday, the US military shot down a “tall object” the size of a car off the coast of Alaska. The two incidents come as Washington and Ottawa remain on high alert following a recent week of attacks on US and Canadian airspace by large Chinese spy balloons.
A US F-22 last Saturday shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon, which China asserted was a civilian aircraft carrying out meteorological research.
The Biden administration on Friday placed six Chinese groups allegedly linked to China’s spy balloon program on an “entity list,” effectively banning American companies from providing U.S. technology.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident on Saturday.
Norad and the US Northern Command said on Friday that the US military was conducting a recovery operation near Deadhorse, Alaska, along with the FBI and local police to recover the remains of the object that was shot down on Friday. In a statement, they said search and rescue operations were facing arctic weather conditions.
Northern Command also continued rescue operations off the coast of South Carolina where a Chinese balloon landed last Saturday after being hit by a Sidewinder missile. He said the FBI is holding debris recovered from balloons brought down by Navy divers and underwater unmanned vehicles.
The discovery, and subsequent shooting down, of the spy balloon has disrupted efforts to stabilize US-China relations that have sunk to their lowest level since the two countries normalized diplomatic ties in 1979.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a visit to China at the last minute in response to the Chinese balloon, and the fact that Beijing refused to admit it was a spy ship. The Pentagon later announced that China had flown three balloons over parts of the US during the Trump administration and one balloon over US airspace early in the Biden administration.