Third object shot down in a week over North America raises questions

Vancouver, British Columbia: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday that on his order a US fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” that was flying high over the Yukon, acting a day after the US took similar action over Alaska.

North American Aerospace Defence Command, the combined US-Canada organisation that provides shared defence of airspace over the two nations, detected the object flying at a high altitude on Friday evening over Alaska, US officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday.

Trudeau spoke with President Joe Biden, who also ordered the object to be shot down. Canadian and US jets operating as part of NORAD were scrambled and it was a US jet that shot down the object.

Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand told a news conference in Ottawa that the object, flying at about 40,000 feet (12 kilometres), had been shot down at 3.41pm EST (7.41am AEDT), about 100 miles (160 kilometres) from the Canada-US border in the central Yukon. A recovery operation was under way involving the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP.

Hours later, in the US, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Saturday night it had closed some airspace in Montana to support Defence Department activities. NORAD later said the closure, which lasted a little more than an hour, came after it had detected “a radar anomaly” and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. The aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits, NORAD said.

The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington.Credit: AP

F-22 fighter jets have now taken out three objects in the airspace above the US and Canada over seven days, a stunning development that is raising questions on just what, exactly, is hovering overhead and who has sent them.

At least one of the objects downed was believed to be a spy balloon from China, but the other two had not yet been publicly identified.

While Trudeau described the object on Saturday as “unidentified”, Anand said it appeared to be “a small cylindrical object, smaller than the one that was downed off the coast of North Carolina”. A NORAD spokesman, Major Olivier Gallant, said the military had determined what it was but would not reveal details.

Anand refused to speculate whether the object shot down over Canada came from China.

“We are continuing to do the analysis on the object and we will make sure that analysis is thorough,” she said. “It would not be prudent for me to speculate on the origins of the object at this time.”

The Chinese balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, with a US fighter nearby, on February 4.Credit: AP

Anand said to her knowledge this was the first time NORAD had downed an object in Canadian airspace.

“The importance of this moment should not be underestimated,” she said. “We detected this object together and we defeated this object together.”

She was asked why a US jet, and not a Canadian plane, shot the object down.

“As opposed to separating it out by country, I think what the important point is, these were NORAD capabilities, this was a NORAD mission and this was NORAD doing what it is supposed to do,” she said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to US President Joe Biden before ordering the shootdown.Credit: AP

Anand didn’t use the word “balloon” to describe the object. But later, General Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, said the instructions given to the planes was “who ever had the first, best shot to take out the balloon had the go-ahead”.

Trudeau said Canadian forces would recover the wreckage for study. The Yukon is westernmost Canadian territory and the among the least populated part of Canada.

After the airspace closure over Montana, several members of Congress, including Montana senators Steve Daines and Jon Tester, said they were in touch with defence officials. Daines tweeted that he would “continue to demand answers on these invasions of US airspace”.

Just about a day earlier, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said an object roughly the size of a small car was shot out of the skies above remote Alaska. Officials couldn’t say if it contained any surveillance equipment, where it came from or what purpose it had.

Kirby said it was shot down because it was flying at about 40,000 feet (13km) and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights, not because of any knowledge that it was engaged in surveillance.

According to US Northern Command, recovery operations continued on Saturday on sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska.

In a statement, the Northern Command said there were no new details on what the object was. It said the Alaska Command and the Alaska National Guard, along with the FBI and local law enforcement, were conducting search and recovery.

“Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow and limited daylight, are a factor in this operation, and personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety,” the statement said.

On February 4, US officials shot down a large white balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

The balloon was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for “several years”, the Pentagon has said. The US has said Chinese balloons have flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it learnt more about the balloon program after closely monitoring the one shot down near South Carolina.

China responded that it reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticised the US for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice”.

The Navy continued survey and recovery activities on the ocean floor off South Carolina, and the Coast Guard was providing security. Additional debris was pulled out on Friday, and additional operations will continue as weather permits, Northern Command said.

AP

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