What’s up with the unidentified objects that US fighter planes keep taking down?

An unidentified object was shot into Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday afternoon, the third time in three consecutive days. A US jet shot down a flying object over Canada on Friday, and a US fighter brought down another over Alaska.

According to Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the object captured on Friday and Saturday is likely a Chinese balloon, “smaller” than the one shot in the waters off the US coast in South Carolina. last week. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) temporarily closed its airspace Montana is thereand Lake Michigan Sunday “during NORAD operations.”

Debris from the three objects was still being found on Sunday. Officials in the Biden administration have been cautious about linking the latest object to a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, which officials say has gathered limited intelligence on US military installations.

“We’ll probably be able to put all these surveillance balloons together, and know exactly what’s going on,” Schumer said of the balloons shot down last weekend.

US officials have only discovered China’s hot air balloon surveillance program for the past year, though the program dates back at least as far as former President Donald Trump’s administration. “We didn’t detect the threat and that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to address,” General Glen VanHerck, head of the US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a joint operation with Canada, told reporters. Monday. The U.S. intelligence community was informed by NORAD that the balloons were a threat, but VanHerck did not specify whether U.S. intelligence knew about the balloon program, or how they discovered the information.

US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered Canadian and US fighters – whichever is better – to retrieve the object on Saturday. US F-22s using Sidewinder missiles shot down the object, and Canadian aircraft joined US jets on Friday to track the object as it transited from US airspace to Canada.

“Canadian forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object,” Trudeau said wrote in a Twitter post.

“You don’t know” about China’s balloon surveillance program until now, Schumer said Sunday, even though the device crossed into US airspace at least three times under former President Donald Trump, and similar devices have been spotted. over 40 countries on five different continents, according to Axios.

A US program studying UFOs may have helped detect the Chinese balloon program

It is not clear how extensive the Chinese program is; The US system often encounters “unexplained anomalous phenomena” as the government calls these objects, and the objects that have been identified are usually alien intelligence gathering or man-made debris.

The US government has a UAP study program in the Department of Defense called the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group. The Pentagon and the intelligence community coordinate through this group to “detect, identify and link objects of interest in Special Use Airspace and to assess and mitigate threats related to aviation safety and national security.”

US programming to study UAP is not new; former Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) urged Congress to fund the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the predecessor to the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, beginning in 2007. Although the Pentagon claimed to have shut down the effort in 2012 and actually reportedly cut funding at that time , the New York Times reported in 2017 that the program was continuing.

ABC’s Luis Martinez reported on Tuesday that information from the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, as disclosed in a report to Congress, is one of the programs used to help identify China’s balloon surveillance program. Many of the latest incidents of UAPs that the group has tracked have been found to be balloons or balloon-like objects.

The incident could lead to greater conflict between the US and China

“All countries spy on each other, and the US and China are no exception,” Vox’s Jen Kirby wrote last week, “and they have a variety of techniques and tactics to do so, many of which are less intrusive and more precise than a large balloon.” Given that, the balloon – and potentially three objects down on the weekend – may have other purposes, or tell the story of what China and President Xi Jinping are doing.

There are legitimate security concerns about China’s surveillance tactics, and what it does with the information it collects — but honestly, the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t need balloons, just your cell phone. And it is still not clear why China will let this balloon go to the US during the meeting with Blinken. Some theories may include bureaucratic slip-ups or miscommunications, which could reveal disorganization in China’s government, and raise questions about Xi’s competence. These signs of dysfunction are also troubling, as they increase the likelihood of more serious miscalculations that could lead to more serious confrontations.

In addition to national security concerns, the objects recently dropped by the US raise questions about the fragile relationship between the US and China. Last week, after the news of the first object now determined to be a Chinese surveillance balloon burst, Secretary of State Antony Blinken decided to postpone his trip to China, indicating the deterioration of relations between the two countries.

“While the ‘balloon’ sounds trivial – even laughable – the reality is that it is a very sophisticated surveillance and collection system designed to remain in highly sensitive military facilities,” said Danny Russel, Vice President of International Security and Diplomacy at Asia Public Policy. Institute (ASPI), told Vox via email last week. “The idea of ​​the Secretary of State visiting Beijing while this slow-moving platform is still flying in the United States must have been a factor in the decision to postpone the trip, as well as the recognition that the incident will dominate the agenda and many people’s strategic problems.”

China responded to the downing of what it claimed was a civilian weather monitoring balloon, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry saying in a statement, “For the United States to force the use of armed forces is clearly an overreaction that violates international conventions.” So far, China has not responded to the downing of the object in on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.