American fighter planes on Sunday shot down another suspected object, according to the Pentagon. This was the latest incident in a series of US military operations of this kind that recently took place.
The first incident was the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon by US security forces a little over a week back. After these incidents, North America has been put on high alert.
On Sunday afternoon, close to Lake Huron and the Canadian border, President Joe Biden gave the order to bring the suspected object down.
General Glen VanHerck head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Northern Command told reporters that the military has not been able to determine the nature of the three most recent objects, how they maintain their altitude, or their origin.
He said, “We’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason.”
VanHerck also clarified that he would not eliminate the possibility of aliens or any other explanation.
“I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out,” he added.
Subsequently, another defense officer claimed that the military had not found any proof that the objects were extraterrestrial.
As it was flying at 20,000 feet (6,100 metres), the object might have disrupted commercial air traffic, according to a Pentagon statement.
It stated that it was initially discovered Saturday above military installations in Montana.
Defense sources have described the object as an unmanned “octagonal structure” with strings attached. It was not thought to pose a military danger. At 14:42 local time, a missile launched from an F-16 fighter jet brought it down (19:42 GMT).
The incident has caused the shutdown of American airspace, according to the Pentagon. According to VanHerck, the military will make an effort to find the object that crashed over Lake Huron in order to learn more about it. He said it likely fell into Canadian waters.
After circling the US mainland for days, a suspected Chinese spy balloon was brought to ground off the coast of South Carolina on February 4. According to officials, it was developed in China and deployed to keep an eye on critical sites.
China claimed the object was a weather monitoring equipment that had gone awry and denied it was used for surveillance. Tensions between Washington and Beijing increased as a result of the incident and the heated discussions that followed.
