Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

Pentagon Says Latest Shootdowns Result From Increased Caution. Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

* Military Acknowledges It Doesn’t Know What Latest Objects Are
* Closer Scrutiny, Enhanced Radar Cited By Defense Officials

The decision to shoot down three aerial objects in recent days stemmed from a decision to pay closer attention to North American skies and take a more cautious stance toward intrusions after US forces brought down an alleged Chinese spy balloon on Feb. 4, the Pentagon said.

The Defense Department doesn’t yet know what the additional objects are, but they approached sensitive military sites and posed a potential threat to commercial aviation, according to Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs.

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After downing the Chinese balloon “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 in a briefing Sunday.

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

She said countries, companies and research organizations send up objects at those altitudes “for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate research.” She said the objects were shot down out of “an abundance of caution.”

A US F-16 fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Lake Huron in Michigan earlier on Sunday, the fourth time in eight days a high-flying balloon or other craft has been brought down over the US or Canada.

The US general in charge of NORAD said he hasn’t ruled out any possibilities on the source of three objects shot from the skies over the US and Canada — including that they might be of extraterrestrial origins.

“I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out,” General Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said when asked Sunday if the US had excluded the possibility that the objects shot down over Alaska, Canada and Michigan were “aliens or extraterrestrials.”

“I haven’t ruled out anything at this point,” he said.

By contrast, the Biden administration said the high-altitude craft brought down on Feb. 4 was a Chinese spying balloon, which China denies, saying it was a weather balloon that went adrift.

US Fighter Jet Downs Fourth Aerial Object Over North America

* Biden Gave Order As Flight Path Raised Concern, Pentagon Says

* Eight-Sided Object Brought Down Over Lake Huron In Michigan

A US F-16 fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday, the fourth time in eight days a high-flying balloon or other craft has been brought down over the US or Canada.

The latest object was flying at a lower altitude than the alleged Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by an F-22 off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, or the other objects targeted over Alaska and Canada on Friday and Saturday, two people familiar with the situation said.

President Joe Biden ordered the object shot down after its path and altitude raised concern, including that it could be a hazard to civil aviation, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Biden gave the order out of an abundance of caution at the recommendation of military leaders after it was detected over Michigan’s Upper Peninsula at about 20,000 feet and heading out over the lake, a senior administration official said.

While the administration has no indication that the craft had surveillance capabilities, it also can’t rule that out, the official said. It appeared to have an eight-sided structure with strings hanging off, but no discernible payload.

The latest sighting caused confusion after military officials detected a radar contact over Montana on Saturday but ruled it an “anomaly” after sending fighter aircraft to investigate. Radar contact was re-established on Sunday over Wisconsin and Michigan, leading to the shootdown.

North American Aerospace Defense Command detected the object Sunday morning and maintained visual and radar tracking of it. “Based on its flight path and data, we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana,” according to the Pentagon.

Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, said the object was brought down by US Air Force and National Guard pilots.

“We’re all interested in exactly what this object was,” she said on Twitter.

“I appreciate the decisive action by our fighter pilots” Representative Jack Bergman, a Michigan Republican, said on Twitter. “The American people deserve far more answers than we have.”

The object has been downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard. Great work by all who carried out this mission both in the air and back at headquarters. We’re all interested in exactly what this object was and it’s purpose. 1/ https://t.co/LsjwtjntCv

— Rep. Elissa Slotkin (@RepSlotkin) February 12, 2023

The US has claimed the balloon shot down last week was part of a global Chinese surveillance program, which China has denied.

Officials have not said what the other three objects, where they came from or if they had any link to China.

US Hasn’t Ruled Out Alien Origins For Latest Objects Shot Down

General Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, made the comment when asked Sunday if the US had excluded the possibility that the objects shot down over Alaska, Canada and Michigan were “aliens or extraterrestrials.”

“I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out,” VanHerck told a briefing. “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”

Although the US says the large balloon that it shot down off of South Carolina on Feb. 4 was a Chinese spying platform, which China denies, Pentagon officials acknowledged Sunday that they don’t know who was behind smaller objects downed since then. They said the US military has increased scrutiny of items in US airspace and the sensitive of radars that search the skies.

US Fighters Down More Objects As Tension Ratchets Higher

* Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US, China
* Politicians In US Call For Improved Surveillance, Readiness

Three flying objects were downed over North America in as many days and another was reportedly spotted over a Chinese port city, showing how “unidentified aerial phenomena” are keeping the world on edge since entering the international mainstream last week.

US fighter jets brought down objects over Alaska and Canada on Friday and Saturday, and another was taken down on Sunday over Lake Huron in Michigan. While the Biden administration said the high-altitude craft brought down on Feb. 4 was a Chinese spying balloon, details on the latest objects remain sparse.

With shootdowns over the US and Canada coming at a pace of one per day, the incidents prompted renewed pledges by lawmakers in Washington to seek greater US readiness against the overflights and a measure of bipartisan praise for the Biden administration’s military actions.

The White House said Sunday it’s too early to definitively describe the second and third objects. The one taken down over Canada appeared to be a small, cylindrical object, Defense Minister Anita Anand said.

Both were flying at about 40,000 feet, while the latest object was spotted about at 20,000 feet — altitudes that were assessed to pose risks to civilian flights. Authorities are working to retrieve the debris from all three downings.

In China, the news outlet The Paper reported Sunday that authorities were ready to shoot down an unidentified object over waters near Qingdao, home to the Jianggezhuang Naval Base. It hosts ballistic and nuclear attack submarines, the country’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, and is the command headquarters of the country’s North Sea Fleet.

The incidents are adding tension to US-China relations, which spiked after the Biden administration said the balloon shot down off the South Carolina coast more than a week ago was traversing the US on a spying mission. China says it was a weather balloon blown off course.

On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Congress should look into why “it took so long for us, our military, our intelligence to know about these balloons,” adding that the US “got enormous intelligence information” from tracking the Chinese balloon.

“We can’t just have a cold war with them,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “We have to have a relationship with them.”

Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat of Connecticut and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there may be other reasons for the proliferation of unidentified flying objects.

“There is a lot of garbage up there,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“The truth is that that most of our sensors, and most of what we were looking for, didn’t look like balloons,” he said. “Now of course we’re looking for them. So I think we’re probably finding more stuff.”

US radars and other sensors had most likely previously not been optimized to detect extremely slow-flying objects above 50-60,000 feet, said Charlie Moore, a retired lieutenant general, the former vice director of operations at NORAD who is now a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University.

“Since we’ve seen the development of these balloons over the last couple of years, we’ve had to go back and look at all the sources and methods we might use to detect their launch, monitor their movement and then obviously be able to track them as they approach the United States and Canada.”

Turning Point

Representative Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said the US should see the incidents as a turning point that leads to more investment in the defense of US airspace.

“What’s become clear in the public discussions is that we really don’t have adequate radar systems,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

A US intelligence report released in January said reporting of unidentified aerial phenomena has increased, as the stigma surrounding claims of aerial sightings lessens and awareness increases about the threats such objects may pose.

“In the absence of information, people’s anxiety leads them into potentially destructive areas,” Himes said. “So I do hope that very soon, the administration has a lot more information for all of us on what’s going on.”

U.S. Military Shoots Down Fourth High-Altitude Object Over North America

Action comes amid stepped-up defense of airspace, closer examination of raw radar data.

The U.S. shot down a fourth flying object Sunday afternoon at 20,000 feet above Lake Huron, the Pentagon said, underscoring heightened concerns over North American airspace after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was found traversing the U.S.

An F-16 jet fighter shot down the object on orders of President Biden at 2:42 p.m., the Pentagon said, using the same kind of missile used in the previous three shootdowns, an AIM-9X Sidewinder.

The U.S. wasn’t tracking other objects as of Sunday night, said Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at a news conference late Sunday.

The U.S. Coast Guard is searching for the object, which was shot down over Michigan but appeared to land in Canadian waters, officials said.

Pentagon officials said none of the objects shot down appeared to pose a military threat, but that officials couldn’t rule out additional takedowns of unidentified objects in U.S. airspace.

The U.S. shot down the object out of “an abundance of caution,” Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, said during a news conference late Sunday.

In a statement released earlier Sunday, the Pentagon said the object “was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities.”

Asked by a reporter if extraterrestrials might be involved, Gen. VanHerck responded that he would leave that to intelligence agencies to address but that “I haven’t ruled anything out.”

Anita Anand, Canada’s defense minister, said both U.S. and Canadian jet fighters were dispatched to investigate the object, which was flying near the Canadian border.

“We unequivocally support this action, and we’ll continue to work with the U.S.” to defend North America, she said.

The U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Atlantic coast Feb. 4. Military jets shot down unidentified objects over Alaska on Friday and over Canada’s Yukon territory Saturday, both of which were described by U.S. and Canadian officials as balloons.

Officials have yet to determine who launched the objects and their purpose.

The Pentagon said it began tracking the latest object over Montana. Earlier this weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration said it temporarily closed airspace to civilian operations over Montana, and later over Lake Michigan, to support Department of Defense operations.

The airspace was later reopened. After the first closure, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, said it detected a “radar anomaly” and sent jet fighters to the area, but no object was found. It didn’t immediately respond to a request of comment on Sunday’s incident.

In the wake of the objects shot down Friday and Saturday, U.S. officials have reached out to research agencies to determine whether the high-altitude craft might be related to their work, U.S. officials said. But the U.S. hasn’t ruled out that they might be of foreign origin, they said.

The suspected Chinese balloon that traveled over the U.S. led Norad to more closely examine raw radar data, the officials said, leading to the discovery of radar signatures previously unseen. The data has led to a constellation of newly discovered objects that the U.S. is determining how to deal with in real time.

“What we are doing is changing how we visualize the raw radar data,” one of the officials said.

With the new raw data, which in some cases also includes photos, intelligence and assessment of debris, the U.S. is hoping to refine its approach to these objects, the officials said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said he was briefed on the matter Saturday evening by Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser.

“Until a few months ago we didn’t know of these balloons. Our intelligence and our military didn’t know,” Mr. Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week” television show.

While Mr. Schumer didn’t speak directly to the origin of the objects shot down Friday and Saturday, he said China has sent spy balloons around the world.

“They’re not just doing the United States. This is a crew of balloons. We saw one in South America,” he said, adding that now Chinese officials will have to reconsider those actions. “I think the Chinese were humiliated. I think the Chinese were caught lying. And I think it’s a real step back for them.”

China has said the balloon shot down Feb. 4 was for research, not espionage.

Mr. Schumer said U.S. officials are now focused on a comprehensive analysis of the balloons.

“You can be sure that if any, any American interests or people are at risk they will take appropriate action,” he said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sunday that recovery teams are in the Yukon to find and analyze debris from the object shot down on Saturday.

“We have to do everything necessary to protect the integrity of our territory in North America,” Mr. Trudeau said before boarding a plane to the Yukon on a previously scheduled trip to participate in an indigenous ceremony. “There is still much to know about it, and that’s why the analysis is going to be very important.”

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau ordered Saturday’s shoot down of an object flying at about 40,000 feet above the Yukon territory on grounds it had violated Canadian airspace.

On Friday, the U.S. shot down an object flying over Alaska that the Pentagon said had posed a threat to civilian aviation.

Recovery operations for the object shot down Friday are taking place under severe weather conditions and limited daylight near Deadhorse, Alaska, Norad said in a statement on Saturday.

“We have no further details at this time about the object, including its capabilities, purpose or origin,” Norad said.

Ms. Anand told reporters Saturday night that the object over the Yukon was cylindrical. Ms. Anand said she wouldn’t speculate on where it originated.

“The importance of this moment should not be underestimated. We identified the object together, and we defeated this object together,” Ms. Anand said of the joint U.S.-Canada mission.

She said this marked the first time in the history of Norad that jet fighters shot down an object. Norad was a central part of the U.S. and Canadian militaries’ Cold War deterrence strategy against the former Soviet Union.

Canada, under pressure from the Biden administration, last year revealed plans to spend tens of billions of Canadian dollars over the next two decades to improve the military’s capacity to detect and track military threats from Russia and China in the Arctic.

Updated: 2-12-2023

US Fighters Down More Objects As Tension Ratchets Higher

* Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US, China
* Politicians In US Call For Improved Surveillance, Readiness

Three flying objects were downed over North America in as many days and another was reportedly spotted over a Chinese port city, showing how “unidentified aerial phenomena” are keeping the world on edge since entering the international mainstream last week.

On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Congress should look into why “it took so long for us, our military, our intelligence to know about these balloons,” adding that the US “got enormous intelligence information” from tracking the Chinese balloon.

“We can’t just have a cold war with them,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “We have to have a relationship with them.”

Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat of Connecticut and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there may be other reasons for the proliferation of unidentified flying objects.

“There is a lot of garbage up there,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Turning Point

“What’s become clear in the public discussions is that we really don’t have adequate radar systems,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

China Ready To Down Object Flying Near Naval Base: Paper

China is getting ready to take down an unidentified object flying over waters near the port city of Qingdao, which is home to a major naval base for the People’s Liberation Army, Chinese news outlet The Paper reported.

An employee at the marine development authority of Qingdao’s Jimo district said “relevant authorities” are preparing to bring down the object, the report said. The employee was not informed about what the object was.

The Jianggezhuang Naval Base, located about 15 miles east of Qingdao, hosts both ballistic and nuclear attack submarines and the country’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. It is the command headquarters of the country’s North Sea Fleet.

An unidentified flying object was reportedly found in the waters near Rizhao, E. China’s Shandong Province and was about to be shot down. This year can be called the year of UFO. It’s so mysterious.

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) February 12, 2023

The US and Canada brought down three high-altitude airborne objects this month, including one Washington said was sent deliberately by China for surveillance. Beijing countered that it was a harmless weather-monitoring device that blew off course.

“China reserves the right to use necessary means to deal with similar situations,” China’s Defense Ministry spokesperson Tan Kefei said in a statement on Feb. 5, after the US shot down the first of the devices off the South Carolina coast.

The White House said on Sunday it’s too early to characterize the two latest objects shot down by US fighter jets over North America after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said they are believed to have been high-altitude balloons.

The objects were shot down on Friday over Alaska and on Saturday over Canada.

Updated: 2-13-2023

These Are The $439,000 Missiles The US Is Using To Shoot Down Mystery UFOs

As mysteries continue to swirl around the balloon and three other so-far-unidentified objects shot down by the US in recent days, at least one thing has been clear: the weaponry used to knock them out of the sky.

Be it the original, alleged Chinese surveillance balloon downed off South Carolina, or the objects targeted over Alaska, Michigan and Canada, all have been shot down by the same type of missile — the AIM-9X Sidewinder.

Here’s What You Need To Know About It:

Who Makes And Uses Them?

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

Raytheon Technologies Corp. produces the missile, which comes from a broader class of weaponry that has been in the US arsenal for decades. While the weapons are primarily manufactured for US forces, the missile is also sold in large quantities to a range of American allies.

Raytheon says that it has 31 foreign military sales partners, with countries including South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia having purchased the missile.

Mainly conceived as an air-to-air weapon, the latest AIM-9X version is one that can also be used from the ground and against land-based targets. It is widely deployable in a range of modern aircraft including the F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-22 Raptor aircrafts.

This versatility has allowed it break records by helping the advanced F-22 fighter jet score its first air-to-air kill.

The US does not disclose the exact number of such missiles in its arsenal, but it’s likely to be significant with the US Air Force receiving its 10,000th such missile in 2021.

Why Are They Being Used To Shoot Down UFOs?

Using a missile helps minimize the risk to the pilot of the jet fighter by allowing them to stay at a much larger distance from the target, according to Iain Boyd, the Director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado.

“It would have to go much closer to the target to use a cannon and there have been reports of the aircraft sensors being interfered with,” he said.

While the Sidewinder wasn’t designed for shooting down flying objects like balloons, they are cheaper and less likely to destroy payloads on the flying object that officials want to recover, unlike a radar-guided weapon like the AIM-120 AMRAAM medium-range missile, said retired US Air Force Colonel Michael Pietrucha. Their heat-seeking abilities may also make them more well-suited for doing so, he said.

“You’ve got two conditions. In the daytime, you have the sun heating the balloon — you’re shooting from up-sun because it sees this giant sunlight reflection and will absolutely guide on that.

And at night the balloon is warmer compared to the night sky,” said the former irregular warfare operations officer and electronic warfare instructor who flew 156 combat missions in F-4G and F-15E jets.

Even if the flying object does not generate heat, the missile will still be able to find it as “it’s the relationship to the background that matters more,” Pietrucha added. “The way you shot down balloons back in the day was incendiary ammunition against a hydrogen balloon. But that was 100-plus years ago.”

How Much Do They Cost?

The US Department of Defense is seeking to procure 255 of the missiles for $111.9 million in the 2023 financial year. That comes out to a cost of $439,000 each.

But there are significant discounts involved and other countries will usually need to pay for associated equipment, parts and training costs as well.

Malaysia sought to procure just 20 AIM-9X-2 missiles for an estimated $52 million in 2011, for example, after including such secondary costs.

How Do They Work?

The AIM-9X Sidewinder is a heat-seeking, supersonic, short-range missile. Its main components include an infrared homing guidance section, an active optical target detector, a high-explosive warhead and a rocket motor.

The infrared in particular allows the missile to home in on targets in a range of settings at any time of the day. The 186-pound (84 kg) device is powered by solid fuel, and it has a length of 9.9 feet (3 meters).

The so-called Block II variant of the missile has enhanced features, including a lock-on-after-launch capability so the pilot shooting the device does not have to rely on just visual aiming.

When a pilot aims an AIM-9X, he or she will see a circle on the target on the heads-up display and hear a “growl” in the headset, said former US Air Force fighter pilot Pietrucha: “If you get a good growl, you’re locked.” The person shooting the missile will have a feedback loop that allows them to assess the quality of the shot.

What’s Their History?

Sidewinder missiles have a long history in the US military. They were first developed in the 1950s by the US Navy before being adapted by the US Air Force. It was the first heat-seeking guided missile to become operational. Early variants could only be used at very close range and could not be deployed at night.

But subsequent improvements made it an ideal weapon for a variety of situations, and a later version of the missile was used during the Vietnam War.

The missile is said to be the most proliferated air-to-air missile in the West with over 100,000 in circulation, according to the University of Colorado’s Boyd. The AIM-9X is the latest iteration of the Sidewinder and began to be deployed in 2003.

Still, defense officials acknowledge their use against unidentified flying objects such as balloons is novel.

The military concluded that its smaller warhead and its shorter range allowed the AIM-9X to be deployed more safely and effectively compared to other missiles like the AIM-120, General Glen VanHerck, the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command, told reporters on Feb. 6.

Updated: 2-13-2023

US Shoots Down Fourth Object As China Flings New Accusation

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

* Beijing Says US Balloons Trespassed More Than 10 Times
* US Commander Said He Hasn’t Ruled Out Extraterrestrials

The US military had never shot down an object in American airspace before taking out a Chinese balloon off South Carolina earlier this month. Now it’s becoming a near-daily occurrence.

The sudden spate of US jets blasting unidentified objects of mysterious origin from the skies has provoked so much befuddlement — not to mention panic — that Pentagon officials were forced to field questions about the issue Sunday night, just as Americans were tuning into the second quarter of the Super Bowl. One reporter even asked if it was possible the objects-turned-targets were sent by extraterrestrials.

“I haven’t ruled out anything at this point,” said General Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

In reality, the answer is probably more mundane. Officials said they had started watching the skies more closely in the days since the alleged Chinese spy balloon traversed US territory, provoking both a national uproar and a new round of tensions with China.

That resulted in the US shooting down smaller objects over Alaska on Friday, northern Canada on Saturday, and Michigan on Sunday.

Locations of Objects Shot Down by the US Military

Fighter pilots have shot down four objects over the US and Canada.

“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,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Melissa Dalton told reporters.

The growing number of incidents is raising more questions about the direction of relations between the world’s two largest economies, especially now that the Biden administration is hyper-alert about the threat it says is posed by a global Chinese military-backed surveillance program spanning more than 40 countries — a claim Beijing has rejected.

China also stepped up accusations against the Biden administration, saying on Monday the US sent balloons over its territory more than 10 times since the beginning of 2022.

Over the weekend, a Chinese news outlet, The Paper, said China was getting ready to take down an unidentified object flying over its waters near the port city of Qingdao.

“It is nothing rare for US balloons to illegally enter other country’s airspace,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters at a regular briefing in Beijing on Monday. “We reserve the right to take necessary means to deal with relevant incidents.”

National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson called reports of it using surveillance balloons over China “false” and turned the accusation back on China.

“This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control,” she said.

While each incident in the US may have a reasonable explanation, questions persist for the Biden administration. The most immediate: Will the Pentagon send up fighter jets every time it spots some new object — be it a weather balloon, a hobbyist’s craft or a drone — if it potentially threatens civilian aviation or drifts near one of many military sites scattered across the country?

The two officials on the Pentagon conference call with reporters weren’t able to answer that question, with VanHerck calling it a “policy decision.” Dalton acknowledged that researchers and companies send up lots of devices “for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate research.”

The inability of US officials to say anything about the sources of the latest three downed objects has spawned theories that they could be balloons relaying signals to China or Russia, an alien object or just airborne junk.

“There is a lot of garbage up there,” Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

One possibility is that they were nodes in a larger spying enterprise that went undetected before US radars and other sensors were optimized to detect slow-flying objects above 50,000 to 60,000 feet, said Charlie Moore, a retired lieutenant general and former vice director of operations at Norad who teaches at Vanderbilt University.

US officials have briefed dozens of foreign diplomats on the matter last week and say they will know more once they recover the wreckage of the Chinese balloon, whose payload has been located — but not retrieved — in about 50 feet (15 meters) of water off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. US and Canadian search crews are also still looking for the three other objects that were shot down.

The episodes have created a new wave of partisan bickering, with Republicans arguing Biden should have shot down the Chinese balloon when it was first spotted over Alaska instead of letting it drift across the country.

That has only contributed to the anxiety in Washington about the potential threat posed by China, which has denounced the US for downing what it says was simply a weather balloon that went astray.

“We have probably reached peak media and political frenzy related to the PRC spy balloon,” said Jacob Stokes, a former Obama administration foreign policy adviser who is now at the Center for a New American Security, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

“But even when the public attention subsides, the US government will likely be working to respond to this problem for a long time to come.”

Updated: 2-14-2023

Mystery Objects Not Yet Linked To China’s Spy Balloon Program, White House Says

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

Several objects shot down remain elusive, while FBI is analyzing electronics recovered from suspected Chinese spy balloon.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. hasn’t seen any evidence that the three objects shot down since Friday over the U.S. and Canada were part of China’s spy balloon program, though searchers have yet to recover debris from them, a senior White House official said.

The search for the remnants of the objects is hampered by the remoteness of the search area and frigid conditions there, said John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, Tuesday.

“We don’t know of any evidence right now that confirms that they were in fact doing intelligence collection by another government,” Mr. Kirby said. “But again, don’t have the debris.”

While U.S. officials have said confidently that the balloon shot down over the South Carolina coast earlier this month was a Chinese spy balloon, U.S. officials still don’t know even how the three other objects were being propelled, let alone who sent them or what their purpose was. Officials haven’t even described them as balloons, instead using the term “objects.”

“We’re pretty comfortable in ruling out that they were U.S. government objects,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. But Mr. Kirby said intelligence agencies haven’t dismissed the possibility they were commercial or research balloons.

Following a classified briefing Tuesday in the U.S. Senate, senators said the objects appeared to have posed no threat.

“There are a lot of things that are put up in the air by commercial interests, by governments, by agencies, by universities and so forth and we don’t track all of them, but we’re probably going to do a better job doing it in the future,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah).

Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), said he suspected no more objects were floating over the U.S., “but we don’t know that for sure.”

“It’s an expensive endeavor to scramble planes and jets, shoot these down and then muster recovery teams,” he said. “We just have to decide whether that’s going to be our continuing approach anytime you see one of these.”

Mr. Kirby said intense operations were under way to recover debris from the takedowns that occurred over Alaska on Friday, Canada’s Yukon territory on Saturday and Lake Huron on Sunday.

“We’re up against it when it comes to just the weather and the general geographic conditions, but we’re going to keep at it,” Mr. Kirby said Tuesday before acknowledging the U.S. may never recover all the debris. “At this point in time, we absolutely still want to recover it because that’s our best way of knowing for sure what these things were.”

The remote locations made recovery difficult given the latitude of the debris in some cases, as well as the fact some may have fallen into icy, remote bodies of water, he said.

Meanwhile, no significant developments had emerged in the recovery of debris from the suspected spy balloon the Air Force shot down off the Atlantic coast earlier this month, Mr. Kirby said.

He said divers were able to get into the water over the weekend and retrieve a significant amount of debris, including some of the structure and some of the electronics, he said.

Those items had been shipped to the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Quantico, Va., where they are being analyzed to learn more about the surveillance balloon.

In Brussels, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley acknowledged reports that the first missile fired at the object over Lake Huron missed, requiring a second shot. Mr. Kirby said he believed the munition landed in the lake and sank to the bottom.

The inter-agency task force created by President Biden to look at policy issues surrounding the balloons and the unidentified flying objects has begun its work, Mr. Kirby said.

That group, which includes personnel from the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, among others, will review the policy implications of shooting down the objects and determine the best way forward if other objects are discovered. So far, the U.S. isn’t seeing any in U.S. airspace, Mr. Kirby said.

There is no blanket policy, he said, to shoot down any new objects, and each issue is looked at on a case-by-case basis, he said.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the Biden administration’s denial that the U.S. had sent balloons over China.

“We do not send spy balloons over China. Period,” Mr. Blinken said in an interview with NPR that aired Tuesday.

On Monday, China alleged that the U.S. had flown high-altitude balloons over its airspace more than 10 times since the start of 2022, the first time China has made such an accusation since the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted over the U.S. earlier this month.

‘Leading Explanation’ For 3 Objects Shot Down Over Weekend Is They Were ‘Benign’ Balloons, White House Says

Republicans call for Biden to speak to Americans directly about the high-altitude objects.

The White House on Tuesday emphasized that there could be a benign explanation for the three high-altitude objects downed by the U.S. military over the weekend.

The U.S. intelligence community “will not dismiss as a possibility that these could be balloons that were simply tied to commercial or research entities and therefore benign,” John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, told reporters.

“That very well could be or could emerge as a leading explanation here.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre echoed Kirby’s comment when she spoke later Tuesday with reporters.

“There’s strong consideration that these objects are indeed benign,” she said, but then added that she wouldn’t say more so as not “get ahead” of the intelligence community’s process.

Jean-Pierre said intelligence experts are considering “as a leading explanation” that the objects were benign and from commercial or research entities.

When asked if President Joe Biden should regret or be embarrassed by having potentially ordered the downing of weather balloons, she said that’s not known at this point, but she didn’t think the president should be embarrassed by the fact that he took action to make sure that the country’s civilian airspace is safe.

Kirby said debris for the three objects still hasn’t been found, and there are no indications so far that they were part of China’s spy balloon program.

In addition, the White House spokesman addressed reports that the first missile fired by a U.S. fighter jet over Lake Huron on Sunday didn’t hit its target.

“It has been reported to us that it that it went directly into the lake, into the water. I’d refer you to the Pentagon for any additional detail on it,” he said.

The object shot down on Saturday over Canada’s Yukon appeared to be a small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it, according a CNN report on Tuesday citing information from the Pentagon that was shared with U.S. lawmakers.

Some Republicans called for Biden or other top administration officials to talk more directly to the American public about the recently downed objects.

“I just know that we need some more transparency,” GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters on Tuesday, after he attended a closed-door briefing for lawmakers on the matter.

“I understand the need for national security secrets, but now that this cow is out of the barn, the president and the director of national intelligence needs to address it.”

Kennedy said he and other lawmakers still had a lot of questions and concerns in the wake of the briefing: “We have unity in confusion.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, defended the Biden administration.

“I think some of our Republican colleagues are being at the very minimum premature and often just very political. There’s a lot of information to assess, there’s a lot of information to recover, and the administration is on top of this,” Schumer said.

Updated: 2-15-2023

Could These UFOs Be Aliens? Some See Official Denials As Hot Air

Details are sparse about the three objects shot down in the wake of the Chinese balloon episode; ‘how would you know?’

WASHINGTON—The White House is trying to reassure the world that America isn’t blasting alien spacecraft out of the sky.

But of course they would say that.

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

Details of the three shootdowns by fighter jets in recent days are sparse, leaving a vacuum in Washington that is being filled by otherworldly speculation.

Senators were told in a classified briefing Tuesday that the unidentified flying objects haven’t been retrieved yet, meaning the U.S. hasn’t been able to study them.

Asked whether Biden administration briefers ruled out extraterrestrial involvement, Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) said, “I don’t know how you ever confirm that” with a laugh.

“How would you know?” said Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.). “I don’t think you have enough information to say that.”

U.S. officials still don’t know how the objects were being propelled or who sent them, but say they were likely harmless and certainly of this world.

Some lawmakers wouldn’t rule out extraterrestrial activity, perhaps not wanting to alienate concerned voters who are deluging them with questions about the prospect of invaders from the sky.

“I went grocery shopping this weekend when I was home, and I will have to say, that was the most asked question I got,” Sen. Katie Britt (R., Ala.) said, when queried about possible alien involvement. “People want to know that they’re safe and that our homeland is safe.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), the only current senator who has actually been to space as an astronaut, said he couldn’t confirm any close encounters.

“I haven’t seen ’em,” Mr. Kelly said, making a beeline for the elevator after votes. “So if they’re green? They’ve got big eyes? I would say yes,” he joked as the elevator doors closed.

The talk of possible alien visitors has been fueled by the mystery surrounding the objects. After shooting down what officials say was a Chinese surveillance balloon earlier this month, officials have been far less forthcoming about the subsequent contacts.

The community that believes in extraterrestrials has been buoyed by the discoveries of the past week.

“If it is the visitors it won’t surprise me. I learned long ago never to second-guess that remarkable, complex and secretive presence,” said Whitley Strieber, a writer who says he was abducted by aliens in 1985.

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

Mark Rodeghier, scientific director of the Center for UFO Studies, remains skeptical, saying he hasn’t seen evidence that these are “core UFO phenomena”—in part because the military was able to shoot them down with mere missiles.

Washington has found itself in a frenzy over flying objects before. In July 1952, a series of sightings over the capital of bright lights caused authorities to scramble F-94 jets from Delaware’s New Castle Air Force Base.

The pilots were unable to find anything. A headline on the front page of the Washington Post read: “ ‘Saucer’ Outran Jet, Pilot Says; Air Force Puts Lid on Inquiry.”

Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command revived worries about a possible war of the worlds.

On Sunday, he told reporters he wasn’t ruling out anything, including extraterrestrial involvement, saying he’d “let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out.”

A Defense Department official followed a few hours later with a statement saying there is “no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.”

Officials say they still haven’t determined exactly what they were destroying, but defended the decision to shoot them down. The objects invaded airspace in different locations—over Alaska on Friday, Canada’s Yukon territory on Saturday and Lake Huron on Sunday.

Reported sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, known popularly as UFOs, have climbed significantly in the past two years, and almost half the new sightings remain unexplained, U.S. spy agencies and the Pentagon said in a report released last month.

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

The study led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the number of UAP sightings—often by Navy and Air Force pilots—stands at 510, with 366 of those reports coming in since March 2021.

Slightly more than half of the objects are likely unmanned aircraft, balloons or airborne debris, according to analysis by a new Pentagon office focused on the issue, but 171 remain “uncharacterized and unattributed,” the report said.

The objects the U.S. shot down in the past week were unmanned and no communications signals were detected, according to Department of Defense officials.

Last year, the House Intelligence Committee’s subcommittee on counterterrorism, counterintelligence and counterproliferation heard testimony from defense officials on reports of “unidentified aerial phenomena” and the risks they pose to national security. Aliens didn’t make an appearance in the testimony.

Some Republicans called for the president to give a national address to quash fears of anything. President Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to tamp down out-of-this-world rumors on Monday, saying with a chuckle, “I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no—again, no indication—of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.”

Asked later in the same briefing about the possibility of aliens, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “I don’t think the American people need to worry about aliens, with respect to these craft. Period.”

Still, Mr. Kirby couldn’t rule out that the objects were for surveillance.

The White House said Monday it planned to create a team expected to study airborne objects and the potential security and safety risks they pose.

The new group would comprise elements of the Pentagon, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies, said U.S. officials.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has tapped Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), who chairs the defense appropriations subcommittee, “to conduct a careful, bipartisan examination of these various incidents.”

Mr. Tester said he plans to hold hearings on the matter.

Asked if he could reassure the American people that aliens aren’t involved, he said, “Absolutely.” He then paused and smiled. “I don’t think.”

Updated: 2-21-2023

Spy Balloons Are The Slow And Silent Future Of Surveillance

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

The slow-moving inflatable crafts have distinct advantages for surveillance, and the recent controversy with China is only the beginning.

When Russ Van Der Werff heard about the Chinese surveillance balloon detected drifting over the US, potentially spying on sensitive installations, he was concerned, naturally. But as vice president for stratospheric solutions at Aerostar, a company that makes high-altitude balloons, he was also kind of psyched.

For years Van Der Werff has been working to convince government and commercial customers that Aerostar’s products offer serious advantages as surveillance platforms. It isn’t always easy. “There’s always someone saying, ‘Oh, now the balloon kooks are here,’” he says. “Well, now it looks like other people think it’s a good idea, too.”

For all the furor caused by China’s ill-fated balloon, its turn in the spotlight has been something of a coming-out party for a technology that’s spent the past decade quietly polishing its abilities.

“We don’t believe a stratospheric balloon is the be-all and end-all,” Van Der Werff says, “but there are times when it’s a better fit.”

Balloons have been used for military surveillance since 1794, when France deployed one during its war with Austria. Both sides used them during the American Civil War, and the US Navy used blimps to hunt Nazi submarines during World War II.

But the development of airplanes and high-altitude spy planes made lighter-than-air craft seem quaint, and the US Navy retired its last airship in 1962.

In time new technology would bring balloons back around. In the late 1990s, NASA started testing super-pressure or ultra long duration balloons (ULDBs) that could stay aloft in the stratosphere for months at a time.

Thanks to new high-strength polymers, the craft could carry payloads weighing thousands of pounds to heights above 100,000 feet.

In 2012, Google hired Aerostar to build ULDBs for Project Loon, a fleet of dozens of stratospheric balloons that provide internet connectivity to remote areas.

By pumping air into or out of a smaller balloon within the outer envelope, the Loon ULDBs could rise or sink as needed to catch winds moving in a desired direction. That meant they could go (more or less) where they wanted to and remain (more or less) over a given target area.

Three Objects Shot From Sky In A Week; Sightings In US Including China

Aerostar’s current model, called Thunderhead, brings the same technology to reconnaissance and surveillance missions. “I can keep it in an area for weeks at a time without interruption,” says Van Der Werff. From their launchpad in South Dakota, Aerostar’s solar-powered balloons can find their way to anywhere in the world; the longest flight to date lasted 150 days.

To understand how useful performance like this can be, consider the alternatives. Low-Earth-orbit satellites whiz along at 17,500 mph about 150 miles above the ground, meaning that they can cover the whole surface of the Earth but only stay over a particular target for a matter of minutes.

“The value of the intelligence you collect goes up exponentially with the loiter time,” says Arthur Holland Michel, author of the book Eyes in the Sky, about high-altitude surveillance.

“If you can hang out over an adversary’s sensitive facility for days, you’re able to see temporal patterns—where people go, how they move, what sort of schedules they have.”

Geosynchronous satellites are good at maintaining a steady gaze, as they’re permanently fixed above a certain spot on the globe. The problem is that they’re 22,000 miles up—too far to get a detailed look at things.

Then there are airplanes. These can get to an area of interest quickly and remain on station over a specific spot. But their endurance is limited and you can’t fly them through hostile airspace.

“The US has quite a lot of experience in flying not over a country, but sort of along its borders and looking diagonally to the territory,” Michel says. But that approach is pretty useless when it comes to a big country like China, Russia or the US.

Stratospheric balloons can overcome many of these problems. Because they fly higher than planes and are mostly made of material that’s transparent to radar, they’re much harder to spot when they slip over the borders of unfriendly countries.

“The radar cross-sectional area of the balloon is very low,” says David Stupples, a professor of electronic engineering at the University of London who specializes in space-based surveillance.

What Stupples is saying essentially is that from the perspective of a radar antenna, the balloon is very small and hence difficult to detect.

And balloons move more slowly, on the order of 40 to 50 mph, which is actually an advantage when it comes to avoiding detection. “Air defense radars are looking for fast-moving metal aircraft,” Stupples explains.

Because the velocity of a target changes the frequency of the returned signal, radar operators can filter out slow-moving targets like rainstorms and flocks of birds by ignoring everything with a small frequency change. But doing so also filters out balloons. “Something slow is going to get lost in the clutter,” he says.

If a country suddenly decides it wants to detect high-altitude balloon systems—as the US apparently has—then it needs to look at everything with a small frequency change and try to pick out potential targets from amid a great deal of noise. That means a lot of false positives.

“We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky,” said President Joe Biden in a speech about the balloon shoot-down on Feb. 16. “We’re now just seeing more of them, partially because the steps we’ve taken to increase our radars—to narrow our radars.”

Because they’re unmanned, high-altitude balloons are more or less expendable. Even if one is detected and shot down, there isn’t going to be an international incident on the scale of earlier ones involving spy planes, such as when the Soviets captured U-2 pilot Gary Powers in 1960, or when the Chinese seized a US surveillance plane in 2001.

“Yes, China’s balloon sparked an international incident,” Michel says, “but it does not even come close to what would have happened if China flew a human-crewed jet over the US.”

Having an aircraft that can get closer to its target than a satellite may have been especially important to China, if it was trying to sniff out America’s newest secure communications technology. This technology, called LPI/LPD, or “low probability of intercept/detection,” works by transmitting at very low power so that a signal is deliberately lost against background noise.

Ultimately, the one advantage of stratospheric balloons that could really change the game is cost. “We have to brace ourselves for the fact that this is going to become an increasingly available technology available to friends and foes alike,” says Michel, adding: “States and nonstate actors alike.”

“What you’ve done is, you’ve brought signals intelligence to the midrank countries of the world,” Stupples says.

Between that and all the recent free publicity, the odds just got a lot better that a high-altitude spy balloon could be coming your way soon. You probably won’t realize it, though.

Updated: 2-16-2023

In Speech, Biden Says Unidentified Flying Objects Not Linked To Chinese Spy Activity

President says three of the aerial objects taken down by U.S. were likely tied to private companies or related to recreation or research.

WASHINGTON—President Biden said the three highflying objects taken down over North America following the shooting down of an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon were likely tied to private companies or related to recreation or scientific research, saying they were removed out of an abundance of caution.

Following days of questions about the administration’s response, Mr. Biden said of the three objects that “nothing right now suggests they’re related to China’s spy balloon program.” He said he has directed his team to develop sharper rules for distinguishing objects that present safety risks and require action.

“But make no mistake, if any object that presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people. I will take it down,” he said.

The concern over high-altitude objects started earlier this month, when the U.S. tracked what it believed to be a Chinese balloon over North America, shooting it down once it headed into open ocean off the Carolinas.

That was followed by takedowns of other objects over Alaska, Canada and Lake Huron, prompting the president to create an interagency task force to look at policy issues surrounding the balloons and the unidentified flying objects.

Officials have said the task force is expected to soon complete its recommendations.

The group includes personnel from the Defense Department, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, among others, and was asked to review the policy implications of shooting down the objects and determine the best way forward if other objects are discovered.

In the three most recent incidents, officials said they haven’t determined what the objects were but defended the decision to shoot them down. The Pentagon hasn’t said it has recovered any debris from the three most recent objects shot down, nor have any of the objects been linked to China.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said earlier in the week that the U.S. hadn’t seen any additional objects in U.S. airspace. He said that there was no “blanket policy” to shoot down any new objects and that each issue is looked at on a case-by-case basis.

The White House has faced calls to provide more information to both Congress and the public. While the administration has provided briefings to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, members of both parties have said they want more information on both the balloon as well as the three other shootdowns.

“The cow is now out of the barn. At this juncture, the president needs to talk straight up to the American people about what’s happening in our airspace,” tweeted Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.).

“The American people should be given more information. They’re ready for it,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.). ”And they need and deserve to know it.”

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