A U.S. fighter jet shot down an "unidentified object" over Lake Huron on yesterday, making it the fourth downing in eight days.
Officials are working to recover the high-altitude, unidentified object that was successfully shot down by the U.S. military over Lake Huron yesterday. The Department of Defense says the object's path and altitude raised enough concerns to take it down. An F-16 shot down the object, which was flying at about 20,000 feet over Michigan after it was detected yesterday morning.
Defense officials didn’t assess it to be a “kinetic military threat” to anything on the ground but did assess it was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities. So far, objects have been shot down over Canada, Alaska, Lake Huron and off the coast of South Carolina. The object downed yesterday was described as having an "octagonal" shape.
- An unidentified object was shot down on Friday in Alaskan airspace by an F-22. Pilots said the object didn't appear to be carrying surveillance equipment. NORAD said yesterday that the debris from this object had not yet been recovered. Some pilots involved in the incident claim the object "interfered with sensors" on their planes.
- An F-22 shot down an object flying at 40k feet over central Yukon in north Canada on Saturday on the joint orders of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Joe Biden. This object was described by Canada's Defense Minister Anita Anand as a "cylindrical object," and said it was smaller than the Chinese balloon.
- NORAD has said it recently adjusted its filters to better spot slow-moving targets above a certain altitude. Before the adjustment, objects flying slowly and at a high altitude were filtered out of the results.
- General Glen VanHerck, commander of the US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, stopped short of classifying the three objects shot down over the weekend as balloons, saying," I'm not going to classify them as balloons. We're calling them objects for a reason."
- General VanHerck also said he was "not able to categorize how they stay aloft."
- After yesterday's press briefing, an unidentified defense official added that there was "no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns."
Source: ABC News