What we know about the uptick in mystery objects being shot down from U.S. airspace
Emily Jacobs
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Americans spent Super Bowl weekend anxiously watching the skies as the U.S. military shot down a series of unidentified flying objects over the U.S. and Canada.
The Pentagon oversaw the shooting down of three unidentified objects in as many days — the first on Friday over Alaska, the second on Saturday over Canada’s Yukon territory, and the third on Sunday over Lake Huron. The chaotic series of events came just over a week after the U.S. downed a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic coast.
U.S. officials confirmed last week that the balloon, which traversed the continental U.S. before being shot down just off the coast of South Carolina, was designed as part of a wider surveillance program, something China disputes.
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Two top Pentagon officials — Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, and Melissa Dalton, the assistant defense secretary for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs — spoke to reporters on a call Sunday evening, but the briefing seemed to produce more questions than answers.
Here are the top takeaways from what was discussed:
Why more objects are being spotted now
Dalton explained that the uptick in unidentified flying object spottings was a result of the Chinese spy balloon. U.S. air defense officials, she said, adjusted radar settings to begin scanning for smaller and slower-moving items in North American airspace.
“In light of the People’s Republic of China balloon that we took down last Saturday, we have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we’ve detected over the past week,” Dalton said.
What we know about those objects
VanHerck and Dalton couldn’t offer many details on the latest three downed objects, as all are still being collected. In the case of the craft downed over Alaska on Friday, crews have yet to even locate the object.
“We’re actively searching for that object right now. I’ve got a Navy P-8, which is surveilling the area, with helicopters as well,” VanHerck said. “Once we locate that object, we’ll put an Arctic security package in there and begin the analysis and recovery, but we don’t have it right now.”
Dalton added that officials could not “definitively assess” what the three objects were, so they “acted out of an abundance of caution to protect [U.S.] security and interest” and shot all of them down.
“These most recent objects did not pose a kinetic military threat,” she explained. “But their path and proximity to sensitive DoD sites, and the altitude that they were flying could be a hazard to civilian aviation and thus, raised concerns.”
Asked about the physical characteristics of the three objects, VanHerck struggled to offer specifics.
“I’m not going to categorize them as balloons,” he said. “We’re calling them objects for a reason. I’m not able to categorize how they stay aloft. It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure or it could be some type of a propulsion system. But clearly, they’re able to stay aloft.”
VanHerck also cautioned reporters against assuming that the three items, like the Chinese spy balloon, were a product of Beijing, saying, “I would be hesitant and urge you not to attribute it to any specific country. We don’t know.”
What about the object that was spotted in Montana?
VanHerck said officials believe the object shot down over Lake Huron on Sunday is likely the craft that was spotted in Montana on Saturday before disappearing from their radars.
That same craft then reappeared on radars late Sunday, first in Montana, then in Wisconsin and Michigan. It then drifted toward Lake Huron, at which point Pentagon officials ordered an F-16 jet to shoot it down.
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“It’s likely, but we have not confirmed, that the track that we saw in Wisconsin was likely the same track in Montana,” VanHerck said. “We monitored the track of interest as it passed over Lake Michigan. We assessed that it was no threat, physical threat, military threat … to critical infrastructure. That’s my assessment and continues to be today.”