US military missed first shot at object downed over Lake Huron
Mike Brest
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The U.S. military missed its first attempt to take down the object hovering over Lake Huron, Michigan, a top-level defense official confirmed on Tuesday.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed to reporters that the object hovering over Michigan, which was shot down over the weekend, was taken down on its second attempt, adding that the missed shot landed “harmlessly” in the lake. He also confirmed that the three previous instances in recent weeks of the U.S. downing aerial objects were successful on their first attempts.
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“On the balloon shot, yes, the first shot missed on the fourth balloon. So we’re talking about the balloon that was downed over Lake Huron,” he said, adding that the object is now “a couple hundred feet” below the surface in the lake. “We tracked it all the way down and we made sure that the airspace was clear of any commercial, civilian, or recreational traffic.”
National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters moments later the same account for the shot that missed.
The U.S. has only begun recovering the first object — which has been confirmed by U.S. officials as a Chinese surveillance balloon, which the military took down off the coast of South Carolina. The other three objects that have been shot down are in locations that make recovery efforts much more difficult.
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“The second one off the coast of Alaska, that’s up in some really, really difficult terrain in the Arctic Circle,” the chairman continued. “With very, very low temperatures in the -40°s. The second one is in the Canadian Rockies in Yukon, very difficult to get down and the third one is in Lake Huron. It’s probably a couple hundred feet deep so we’ll get them eventually but it’s gonna take some time to recover those.”
U.S. officials confirmed last week that the balloon that was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, 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. U.S. officials have declined to make the same claims about the three more recent objects shot down.