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US and Canada shoot down more unidentified objects
A second unidentified object has been shot down in US airspace in the space of a week, this time over Alaska on Friday. On Saturday, a third was detected and shot down over Canadian airspace.
Pair of combat fighter jet on a military mission with weapons - rockets, bombs, weapons on wings flies high in the sky above the clouds
US President Joe Biden reportedly ordered the US military to shoot down another “high-altitude” object that appeared in the skies above Alaskan waters on Friday.
On Saturday, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted “I ordered the takedown of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORANDCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and US aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object” marking the third unidentified object in a week.
These two incidents come after the US military shot down a large balloon suspected to be of Chinese surveillance technology off the coast of South Carolina the previous weekend, placing Washington and Ottawa on high alert since.
Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, answered questions on Friday about the second “high altitude” object’s origins, size, and purpose, confirming only that the object found over Alaska was “not similar in size or shape” and “much, much smaller” compared to last week’s Chinese balloon.
Speculation on the correlation between objects has been quashed by the Pentagon, to be confirmed only when the debris is recovered. Search operations by US Navy divers and FBI agents have been stalled due to bad weather, results of which will be compared to material recovered from the alleged Chinese spy craft.
The second object hovering at 40,000 feet above US territory, was deemed a “reasonable threat” to civilian air traffic safety, according to John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council. Whether it was a drone, private or governmental, or another object cannot be confirmed at this stage.
The Pentagon revealed this week that the balloon is part of a “larger” surveillance program, which Beijing continues to deny with Chinese authorities accusing U.S. members of Congress for “political manipulation and hype”.
The indignation of the Chinese was sparked following the US unanimously passing an uncharacteristically swift resolution condemning China for violating US sovereignty. In a briefing on Friday, Mao Ning, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said “China is strongly dissatisfied with this and firmly opposes it.”
U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, had been scheduled to visit China, postponing his trip because of the discovery of the suspected Chinese spy balloon which reportedly carried communication and intelligence tools.
The debris found from the balloon is helping investigators map a history of breaches of US airspace spanning as far back as the Trump administration with another breach early in January 2021.
The repeated discovery of unidentified objects further escalates tensions between the US and China with the Chinese accusing the Pentagon of “information warfare”.
