WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” over Lake Huron on Sunday on orders from President Joe Biden. It was his fourth downing in eight days and the latest military strike in an unusual string of events over the United States that Pentagon officials believe are unprecedented in peacetime.
Part of the reason for the repeated downings is the “alert status” after Chinese reconnaissance balloons appeared over the United States in late January, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command General Glenn Vanherk told reporters in a briefing. said in
U.S. officials have made it clear that they constantly monitor for unfamiliar radar signals, and it is not uncommon to close airspace as a precautionary measure to assess them. But the unusually confident response cast doubt on whether such use of force was justified.
A Pentagon official said they were trying to pinpoint what the object was, and considered using jet cannons instead of missiles, but that proved too difficult. We made a clear distinction between the three balloons launched over the weekend and the one from China.
Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz tweeted that airmen from the 148th Fighter Wing, the State Air Force fighter unit based in Duluth, shot down an object over Lake Huron. The latest crash, first spotted in Montana on Saturday night, was initially thought to be an anomaly. It caught it again and said it flew over Lake Huron.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials were still trying to identify two other objects shot down by F-22 fighter jets and were working to determine whether China was responsible.
The object shot down over Canada’s Yukon Territory on Saturday was a much smaller balloon than the one attacked by a missile on February 4, US officials said. The object that landed on Alaska’s remote north coast on Friday was described as being rather cylindrical and an airship of some sort.
The three objects were much smaller, differed in appearance, and flew at lower altitudes than the spy balloons that were suspected of crashing into the Atlantic Ocean after a US missile attack.
The official said his three other objects do not match China’s fleet of aerial surveillance balloons, which target more than 40 countries and date back to at least the Trump administration.
China’s foreign ministry said the unmanned balloon was off course by a civilian weather airship. Beijing said the US had “overreacted” by shooting it down. Then on Friday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (a joint U.S.-Canadian organization that jointly defends the airspace of the two nations) spotted an object near Alaska’s sparsely populated Dead Horse, shot down.
Later that night, NORAD spotted his second object flying over Alaska, US officials said. It crosses Canadian airspace and was over the remote Yukon when it was shot down by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday.
In both incidents, the objects were flying at approximately 40,000 feet. The object Sunday he flew at 20,000 feet. The incident heightened diplomatic tensions between the United States and China, raised questions about the extent of U.S. surveillance by Beijing, and sparked days of criticism from Republican lawmakers over the administration’s response.
