President Joe Biden reportedly ordered an American F-16 to shoot down an aerial object over Lake Huron on February 12.
Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said We did not determine that it posed an imminent threat to ground-based infrastructure from a military standpoint, but we did determine that it posed a risk to air traffic control and could be used for illegal surveillance. He added, “Our team will now work to recover the object in an effort to learn more.”
According to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs Melissa Dalton, “in light of the People’s Republic of China balloon that we took down last Saturday, we have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar,” which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we detected over the past week.
She also said that corporations, countries, and research institutions can use high-altitude objects for “non-evil activities, such as legal research.”
This is the third consecutive day that an unidentified object has been shot down over North American territory. On Saturday, an unidentified object was destroyed over northern Canada. On Friday, a US F-22 intercepted an unidentified object in Alaskan airspace.
Ryder said that the object that was destroyed on Sunday was the same one that had been seen by radar over Montana on Saturday night, which caused the airspace to be temporarily closed.
