A high-altitude unidentified flying object was shot down by the US military over Lake Huron on Sunday. This was the fourth such operation in the last eight days over North America.
A formidable F-16 fighter plane shot down the object off the shore of Michigan when it tried to fly close to the Canadian border at an altitude of 20,000 ft. The US military also shot down unidentified objects over Canada’s Yukon on Saturday and over Alaska on Friday.
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A statement by the North American Defense Command (NORAD) reads, “At the direction of President Biden, and based on the recommendations of Secretary Austin and military leadership, an F-16 fired an AIM9x to successfully shoot down an airborne object flying at approximately 20,000 feet altitude in U.S. airspace over Lake Huron in the State of Michigan. Its path and altitude raised concerns, including that it could be a hazard to civil aviation. The location chosen for this shoot down afforded us the opportunity to avoid impact to people on the ground while improving chances for debris recovery. There are no indications of any civilians hurt or otherwise affected.”
The US had shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina, roughly a week before these three incidents took place. China insists that the balloon had travelled across US and Canadian airspace to conduct meteorological research only and that it was a civilian aircraft.
These additional incursions US airspace will ignite again criticism against the Biden administration for being unable to detect and stop such incidents from happening in the first place and also for not being transparent with the public about it. The citizens of Montana had already spotted the Chinese spy balloon in the sky and published it on the social media before the US government confirmed its presence.
It has not been identified publicly by the U.S. government as to what they were and where those objects originated.
The US and Canada are investigating the incidents but have not collected sufficient data to determine the origin of those objects, about which it is said that they travelled at the speed of wind and were similar in size as observed by VanHerk.
China has insisted that the balloon spotted in the US skies and shot down on 4 February by a US F-22 jet off the South Carolina coast was just carrying out weather research. It wasn’t a spy balloon and all this is just futile conundrum over nothing.
“If a person picks up something on the street and knows who the owner is, he should return it to the owner,” said Lu Shaye, the Chinese ambassador. After the spy balloon was shot down by the US, China demanded that the US return the debris as, according to Lu Shaye, it was Chinese property.
“If the US is unwilling to return it, that is their business. This shows that they are dishonest”, he added .
Then on 10 February, the US took down another flying object off northern Alaska. This time too, an F-22 fighter jet shot down the object “at 1.45 pm within US sovereign airspace over US territorial water.”
And the very next day, a US F-22 jet, acting on US and Canadian orders, downed a “high-altitude airborne object” over Canada’s central Yukon territory.
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