Anchorage The mysterious flying object over northern Canada has been shot down by a US fighter jet. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday. “I have ordered the downing of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,” Trudeau wrote on Twitter. Shortly before, the North American Air Defense Command had informed Norad that the flying object had been spotted.
The US military shot down a flying object over the US state of Alaska on Friday. Much about the incident is still unclear. An F-22 fighter jet shot down the object at an altitude of about twelve kilometers on Friday, the US government said. The main reason for this action was the endangerment of civil air traffic.
However, it was initially unclear where the flying object had come from and what purpose it served. The incident was reminiscent of the Chinese balloon allegedly used for espionage purposes, which the US Air Force had brought down from the sky a week ago. It was initially unclear whether there was a connection between the two cases.
The flying object was sighted for the first time on Thursday evening (local time), said the communications director of the National Security Council, John Kirby. US President Joe Biden was informed immediately and gave the firing order on Friday morning. US fighter jets had previously approached the object.
The pilots would have ensured that the flying object was unmanned. It was shot down off the Alaskan coast near the Canadian border – not far from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government in Ottawa was also aware of the project. According to the military, the shooting down posed no major risk to people or buildings on the ground.
According to the US government, the object was about the size of a small car. This made it much smaller than the Chinese balloon, which was more like two to three school buses in size. According to the first findings, the object should not have been manoeuvrable itself.
“We don’t know who owns this property”
According to Kirby, it also flew much lower than the Chinese balloon – which was a good 18 kilometers high. Unlike the object that has now been shot down, the balloon was above the maximum altitude for civilian air traffic. CNN, citing a US government official, reported that the object appeared to have had no surveillance equipment.
A mystery was initially where the object came from. “I want to reiterate that we do not know who owns this object,” Kirby said. The US government also stressed that it did not know what the purpose of the object was.
“Last week we were talking about a surveillance object that was intentionally flown over the mainland United States,” Kirby said. This time it would be about an object about which one does not know much. However, it is clear that the object represented a “potential threat to the safety of passengers”.
The New York Times wrote that several US officials believed that the new object was also a balloon. However, a representative of the Ministry of Defense emphasized that the object broke into pieces when it hit the frozen sea.
Difficult recovery
The US government is now hoping for more information by recovering the rubble. After being shot down off the coast of Alaska near the Canadian border, parts of the object probably fell onto frozen water. The advantage is that the debris would not have spread so far due to the small size of the object, it said.
However, the salvage should still be difficult, wrote the Washington Post. A number of aircraft are deployed at the crash site. It becomes problematic if they cannot land on the potentially unstable ice to collect the debris.
Despite major differences, the incident is reminiscent of the launch of the Chinese balloon last Saturday. The US military let it hover over the American mainland for several days and then shot it down over the Atlantic off the coast of the state of South Carolina.
The United States accuses China’s government of using it to spy on military facilities. Beijing, on the other hand, spoke of a civilian research balloon that had gone off course – and described the launch as an “overreaction”. The incident caused additional tension in the already strained relationship between the two countries. US President Biden had been criticized by Republicans for being too hesitant in the case. Now some Republicans praised the Democrats for his quick action.
Unidentified flying objects are not uncommon
In 2020, the Department of Defense established a task force to analyze “unexplained phenomena in the air that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.”
Since then, the group has published reports on “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP) at irregular intervals – most recently a few weeks ago. It emerged that the US military has no explanation for numerous observations of unidentified flying objects.
Other sightings, however, were classified as “unremarkable” – they could be traced back to common objects in the air – such as drones, balloons and debris such as plastic bags, the report said. Reports of inexplicable celestial phenomena have increased. However, the Pentagon had made it clear that no evidence of extraterrestrial life had been found.
More: After the launch of the Chinese balloon in US airspace, the tones from Beijing have so far remained remarkably defensive. Nevertheless, the relationship with the USA is heavily burdened.