White House says flying objects present ‘real potential risk to civilian air traffic’
Joel Gehrke
Video Embed
President Joe Biden ordered the downing of a series of mysterious “objects” in U.S. and Canadian airspace in part to avoid the risk of a midair collision with passenger jets, according to a senior White House official.
“There was a very real potential risk to civilian air traffic,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday afternoon. “The second purpose … was even though we had no indications that any of these three objects were surveilling, we couldn’t rule that out.”
The spectacle of an apparent Chinese spy balloon in the skies of Montana earlier this month has given way to a flurry of military sorties to shoot down other “objects” over the United States and Canada. Kirby emphasized the differences between these unidentified objects and the balloon that captured U.S. attention in the first week of February by noting that the more recent objects operated at a much lower altitude than the balloon and did not carry the surveillance technology that U.S. officials have said was attached to the balloon.
“We also know that a range of entities, including countries, companies, research and academic organizations, operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious at all, including scientific research,” Kirby said. “That said, because we have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are, we acted out of an abundance of caution to protect our security, our interests, and flight safety.”
WHITE HOUSE FAULTS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FOR NOT DETECTING CHINESE SPY BALLOONS
The downed objects were unmanned and uncontrolled, moving based on “atmospheric conditions” at altitudes of 20,000 feet and 40,000 feet, Kirby said. They were detected, according to Pentagon officials, due to the recalibration of radar capabilities following the earlier appearance of the Chinese spy balloon. One of the objects was shot down over the Yukon in coordination with the Canadian government.
“This is a very serious situation that we are taking incredibly seriously. The actions we’re taking to protect North American airspace, the actions we’re taking to recover and analyze these objects, the importance of defending our territorial integrity, our sovereignty, has rarely been as important as it is now,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Monday. “There is much analysis going on at the highest levels of NORAD.”
Kirby declined to try to describe the objects and suggested that additional details about their nature may come only after a complicated recovery process.
“I think we all need to be humble here in terms of what our ability is to positively identify stuff from fighter aircrafts that are going several hundred miles an hour past, essentially, in terms of relative motion, a stationary object that was not very big,” he said. “So, we don’t know what this exactly looked like and, again, we’re still not sure exactly what the purpose of it was or who owned it.”
Trudeau surmised that “obviously, there is some sort of pattern” to be discerned in the recent incidents.
“The fact that we are seeing this in a significant degree over the past week is a cause for interest and close attention, which is exactly what we’re doing,” the Canadian leader said.
Kirby hesitated to “take a swing at” elaborating on Trudeau’s comments, which he said he’d not heard.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“These objects were not being maneuvered. They did not appear to have any self-propulsion, so the likely hypothesis is that they were being moved by the prevailing winds,” Kirby said. “And maybe perhaps that’s what the prime minister is talking about, and I don’t want to speak for him.”