Three unidentified objects shot down by US fighter jets since Friday may turn out to be balloons connected to \u201cbenign\u201d commercial or research efforts, a White House official said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US has not found any evidence to connect the objects to China\u2019s balloon surveillance program nor to any other country\u2019s spy program, national security council spokesperson, John Kirby,\u00a0told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [People\u2019s Republic of China\u2019s] spying program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, a \u201cleading explanation\u201d may be that the objects were operated privately for commercial or research purposes, Kirby said, though no one has stepped forward to claim ownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The unidentified object shot down by a US fighter jet over northern Canada on Saturday was a \u201csmall, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it\u201d, according to a Pentagon memo to US lawmakers obtained by\u00a0CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The details about the mysterious object \u2013 one of three shot down by the US in an eight-day period after a suspected Chinese spy balloon traversed the US mainland and was brought down over the Atlantic Ocean on 4 February \u2013 come amid growing frustration over a lack of information from Joe Biden\u2019s presidential administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The object shot down over Alaska on Friday was the \u201csize of a small car\u201d, the memo states. It also warns against drawing hasty conclusions: \u201cIt should not be assumed that the events of the past few days are connected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The object shot down over Lake Huron on Sunday was previously described as an \u201coctagonal structure\u201d with strings attached to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon, and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,\u201d a national security council spokesperson told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also on Tuesday, Gen Mark Milley, the US\u2019s highest ranking military official, acknowledged at a briefing in Brussels that the first attempt to shoot down the object over Lake Huron missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first missile \u201clanded harmlessly\u201d in the water while a second missile successfully downed the object, Milley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very, very careful to make sure that those shots are in fact safe,\u201d Milley said, according to the\u00a0Associated Press. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the guidance from the president. Shoot it down, but make sure we minimize collateral damage and we preserve the safety of the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US senators received a classified briefing about the objects on Tuesday. The briefers included an assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs as well as Gen Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, according to\u00a0Politico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The information vacuum has fueled speculation about the origins of the unidentified flying objects detected and shot down over Deadhorse, Alaska; Yukon, Canada; and Lake Huron, Michigan, since Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a\u00a0press briefing\u00a0on Monday, administration officials defended Biden\u2019s decision to shoot down the objects and also attempted to bat back at least one strand of the conspiracy theorizing inspired by the spate of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no \u2013 again, no \u2013<\/strong> indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,\u201d the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said at a briefing on Monday. \u201cI wanted to make sure that the American people knew that \u2013 all of you knew that \u2013 and it was important for us to say that from here because we\u2019ve been hearing a lot about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pressed on whether political pressure played into the decision to shoot down the objects, Kirby said: \u201cThere were very good reasons to do it \u2026 These were decisions based purely and simply on what was in the best interests of the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The three objects shot down during the three-day period beginning Friday did not pose any threat to people on the ground, Kirby said, and were not sending communication signals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, their altitude \u2013 significantly lower than the Chinese balloon from earlier \u2013 meant that they did pose a \u201cvery real potential risk to civilian air traffic\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three unidentified objects shot down by US fighter jets since Friday may turn out to be balloons connected to \u201cbenign\u201d commercial or research efforts, a White House official said on Tuesday. The US has not found any evidence to connect the objects to China\u2019s balloon surveillance program nor to any other country\u2019s spy program, national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[9517,5178,1904,1953,13175,7421,7703,8032,5183,9127,10133,7547,9463,2471,6213,9526,3334,5572,5254,7693,7964,11973,6719,3805,11377,5807,5655,5752,9761,11259,9531,7422,11279,10841,5594,6348,8869,6571,2982,3954],"class_list":["post-29612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-alaska","tag-biden","tag-brussels","tag-canada","tag-car","tag-chinese","tag-classified","tag-conspiracy","tag-debris","tag-february","tag-fighter-jet","tag-jet","tag-jets","tag-joe-biden","tag-john-kirby","tag-lake-huron","tag-michigan","tag-military","tag-missile","tag-national-security","tag-north","tag-one","tag-pentagon","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-risk","tag-security","tag-security-council","tag-shoot","tag-shot","tag-soy-ballons","tag-spy","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-traffic","tag-us","tag-water","tag-white","tag-white-house","tag-will"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}