A US warplane shot down a new unidentified object over Canada on Saturday, marking a new incident in North American skies since the downing of a Chinese balloon.
New incident in the sky over North America. An American fighter plane shot down, Saturday, February 11, “an unidentified object” who flew over the northwest of Canada. As part of a joint operation with Ottawa, an American F-22 aircraft hit the target, announced Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Canadian Forces “will now recover and analyze the debris of the object”, he added. An incident that comes on top of several forays into the North American sky.
A “cylindrical device” of unknown origin shot down
The machine shot down on Saturday by an American F-22 was flying at an altitude of approximately “40,000 feet” (12,200 meters), according to the Minister of National Defense of Canada, Anita Anand. It was “had illegally entered Canadian airspace and posed a threat [possible] for the safety of civil flights”she added to the press.
The object was shot at “about 100 miles [160 km] of the Canada-US border” around 9:40 p.m. (French time), above the Yukon, she further specified, describing to the press a “cylindrical device”, smaller than the balloon destroyed in North Carolina last week.
“At this time, we are continuing to analyze the object, so it would not be prudent for me to speculate on its origin”continued Anita Anand, before thanking the Pentagon and members of the Canadian and American armies for their collaboration.
A “radar anomaly” but no object
Also on Saturday evening, a combat aircraft was dispatched to investigate a “radar anomaly” above the US state of Montana, the US military said. “This plane did not identify any object [permettant] to correlate radar echoes”, indicated the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the U.S. Northern Command, adding continue “to monitor the situation”.
The airspace of this territory in the northwest of the United States had been temporarily closed “to support Department of Defense operations. Airspace has been reopened”said in the evening the American civil aviation regulator (FAA).
A flying machine “the size of a small car”
On Friday, US authorities shot down another flying object “the size of a small car” above the Yukon, a territory in northwestern Canada bordering Alaska. The latter represented “a threat to the safety of air traffic”, said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Search and recovery operations for the remains of the object destroyed on Friday continued on Saturday, but were hampered by “Chilling Arctic air, snow and limited daylight”, said the U.S. Northern Command in a statement. The Pentagon cannot provide “no other details (…) about the object, including its capabilities, purpose or origin”, can we read.
A Chinese “balloon” being analyzed
These incidents come a week after Washington destroyed a balloon belonging to China and described by Beijing as an aircraft “civilian used for research purposes, mainly meteorological”. This one would have “diverted from its trajectory”had justified a spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, expressing the “regret” of his country for this violation “involuntary” of American airspace. However, images captured by American military planes show that the balloon, the size of “three buses”, was equipped with spy tools and not intended for weather.
According to Pentagon officials, the balloon first entered US airspace on January 28 over Alaska, before entering Canada on January 30, then returning to US skies at of Idaho, in the northwest of the country, Tuesday, January 31. This balloon notably flew over the state of Montana (West), which is home to nuclear missile silos, before being shot down over the Atlantic.
The American authorities are still busy collecting the remains of the balloon in the ocean, near the coast of South Carolina.