(Washington) A US fighter jet shot down an unknown object in the sky off the Alaskan coast near the Canadian border on Friday, White House officials confirmed, just hours after the Canadian Minister of Defense met with his American counterpart at the Pentagon.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was briefed on the matter and “approved of the decision to act,” he wrote on Twitter. “Our military and our intelligence services will always work together, including through (Norad), to protect people,” Trudeau said.
Earlier Friday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed this latest intervention, and its location, during Friday’s White House press conference. He clarified that the order to shoot down the flying object came directly from President Joe Biden.
Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said she learned of the flying object while still at the Pentagon, and said she participated in a call with Norad commander General Glen VanHerck, “regarding a high altitude object detected over Alaska”.
The object did not enter Canadian airspace, Mr.me Anand in a written statement, adding that she had “expressed Canada’s support for taking action to bring down this object.”
“The Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defense and I will continue to work closely with our American allies to ensure the protection of North American airspace,” she added.
Mr Kirby said the object, first detected on Thursday evening, was not far from the Canada-US border when it was shot down.
Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said the object was moving in a “northeast” direction when it was shot down.
Mr. Kirby spoke of an object “the size of a small car”, but had few other details, such as its provenance or its capabilities.
“I can tell you it was an object that was at 40,000 feet” (about 12,000 meters) that didn’t seem to have the ability to maneuver, Mr. Kirby told the White House press conference. He added that this flying object was considered a threat to civilian aircraft at this altitude. “I’m not ruling anything out,” he said.
monitoring balloon
Retired General Lloyd Austin thanked Canada for its help in tracking the Chinese surveillance balloon that crossed North America last week.
It remains unclear what U.S. or Canadian intelligence this balloon may have managed to gather over North America last week before being shot down — an option Canada had rejected because the craft did not posed no threat to public safety, Minister Anand explained earlier on Friday.
The United States is analyzing the balloon that was shot down off South Carolina on Sunday, and Canada is not directly involved in the investigation, Minister Anand said.
Through the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad), the United States and Canada closely followed the balloon’s week-long journey from the Aleutian Islands off Alaska to to its abrupt end over the Atlantic, shot down by an F-22 ‘Raptor’ fighter jet.
But the minister did not provide any further details on the exact location of the balloon when Canada first learned of the incursion.
” We have […] analyzed the balloon and examined its trajectory, including its altitude and contents, and we determined that it posed no imminent risk to Canadians,” Ms.me Anand.
“Analysis of the ball and its contents […] is now led by the United States, and Canada is not involved. »
During his meeting with Minister Anand, the United States Secretary of Defense specifically mentioned last week’s balloon in extolling the merits of Norad and the importance of the initiative of the two countries to modernize a system which, according to experts , is extremely outdated.
“The United States and Canada recently worked together through Norad to track the (Chinese) high-altitude surveillance balloon that violated the sovereignty of our two countries,” said Lloyd Austin. This coordination underscored the importance of our efforts and the need for continued investment in the modernization of Norad, on both sides of the border. »
Norad’s commander, US General Glen VanHerck, acknowledged earlier this week that the balloon was not the first of its kind to enter US airspace and that previous events had gone undetected, exposing a gap that needed to be filled.
Minister Anand said on Friday there was no evidence that these previous incursions involved Canadian airspace.
“I think we’re going to continue to learn a lot about how these things are or can be detected,” Secretary Kirby said. We expect to learn a lot about our own systems, our own processes, for detection and tracking. »