This may be a bit off topic, but another unidentified target has been shot down, over Canada this time.
Flying Object Shot Down Over Canada on Orders of Biden and Trudeau - The military action over Yukon territory marks the third such incident above North America in recent days
Updated Feb. 11, 2023 7:32 pm ET
A U.S. military jet shot down another unidentified airborne object, this time over Canada, on Saturday on orders of President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of their militaries, President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau authorized it to be taken down,” according to a statement from the U.S. National Security Council. “President Biden authorized U.S. fighter aircraft…to conduct the operation and a U.S. F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory in close coordination with Canadian authorities.”
The “high altitude airborne object,” as U.S. officials described it, briefly drifted into U.S. airspace before hovering over Canadian territory and was shot down, according to U.S. officials. It was the third instance of the U.S. shooting down airborne objects over North America since a suspected Chinese spy balloon was taken down off the Atlantic coast on Feb. 4.
The latest object appeared to be a small metallic balloon with a tethered payload, flying at an altitude of about 40,000 feet, according to U.S. officials familiar with the situation.
The object was first spotted late Friday, according to a statement from the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Two American F-22 Raptor jet fighters based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, were scrambled and monitored the object over U.S. airspace first, tracking it “closely and taking time to characterize the nature of the object,” the statement said.
It then went into Canadian airspace on Saturday and was shot down using a Sidewinder short-range air-to-air missile, officials said.
Mr. Trudeau spoke with President Biden earlier Saturday.
The prime minister said Canadian forces would now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object.
Nav Canada, which manages the country’s airspace, issued flight restrictions Saturday for an “active air defense operation” applying to a 100-mile radius area around the town of Mayo, Yukon, about 475 miles east of Anchorage, Alaska.
Canada, under pressure from the Biden administration, last year revealed plans to spend tens of billions of 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.
The sighting of the object over northern Canada is at least the third in North America in more than a week. The U.S. military on Friday shot down a small airborne object floating at about 40,000 feet that was feared to pose a danger to regular aviation.
Recovery operations for that object are taking place near Deadhorse, Alaska, and include members of the Alaska National Guard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law-enforcement officials.
They are occurring under severe weather conditions that include wind chill, snow and limited daylight, Norad said Saturday. So far, it isn’t certain what that object, also shot down by an American F-22 Raptor jet fighter, was doing there or who deployed it.
“We have no further details at this time about the object, including its capabilities, purpose or origin,” the Norad statement said.
The first object taken down was what U.S. officials described as a large Chinese spy balloon that floated across the U.S. for days until it was destroyed by a U.S. jet fighter off the coast of South Carolina last weekend.
In retaliation for the suspected Chinese spy balloon, the U.S. Commerce Department on Friday added six Chinese entities it said were involved in the balloon program to its so-called entity list, which bars U.S. companies from supplying them.
The action was another step by the Biden administration to restrict exports of Western technology that China could use to advance its military capabilities. The Biden administration last year slapped export controls on manufacturing equipment China could use to develop advanced semiconductors needed for cutting-edge military systems.
The discovery of the Chinese balloon also prompted criticism of Mr. Biden from Republican lawmakers. Some in the GOP have said the Biden administration should have shot down the balloon earlier, when it flew over the Aleutian Islands or other parts of Alaska.
In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration monitors and controls airspace up to 60,000 feet for commercial and military traffic. Broad international agreement exists that the airspace under 60,000 feet is the dominion of the nation that controls the ground below it.
Commercial jetliners cruise between 35,000 and 40,000 feet. Alaskan airspace is relatively uncrowded, but it has become busier since the closure of air routes through Russia following sanctions imposed last year, especially for planes traveling between Western Europe and northeast Asia.
U.S. officials said the object shot down Friday over Alaska was about the size of a car, smaller than the suspected Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. downed on Feb. 4. The balloon was about 200 feet long and carried a payload roughly the size of a jetliner, Pentagon officials said.
China has said the balloon was conducting research, not espionage. Officials from the Pentagon, State Department and FBI released new information last week to bolster the U.S.’s assertion that the Chinese balloon was used for surveillance.
Images captured by high-altitude U-2 surveillance planes showed that the balloon was equipped with multiple antennas, including an array likely capable of pinpointing the location of communications, a senior State Department official said.
Those U-2 and other reconnaissance flights also found that the balloon carried large solar panels capable of powering intelligence collection sensors. The manufacturer of the balloon has a direct relationship with the Chinese military, the State Department official said.
Biden administration officials have identified at least four previous flights by Chinese surveillance balloons above the continental U.S. that went undetected until after they left American airspace. Three of those flights occurred during the Trump administration and one took place early in the Biden administration.
The military command in charge of U.S. air defenses failed to detect the previous suspected Chinese surveillance balloons and learned about them later from intelligence agencies.