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The US military has shot down another “object” in height, this time over Lake Huron, as announced this Sunday, February 12, by two elected officials, the latest in a series of mysterious flying objects that have put US authorities on alert. and Canada.
This is the third “object” shot down in three days by the Americans in their country and in Canada, and the fourth in less than ten days, counting the Chinese balloon classified by Washington as an espionage device and which was targeted by a missile on the 4th February after flying over part of the United States.
The new object “was shot down by US Air Force and National Guard pilots,” Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin tweeted. “As a precautionary measure and on the recommendation of the military command, President Biden ordered the unidentified object to be shot down,” an administration official later added. “We assessed that it was not a military threat on the ground,” she added.
growing concern
“The American people deserve far more answers than we have,” former Republican Marine Jack Bergman added on Twitter, reflecting growing questions across the country and in the political class about the facts.
For Republican elected officials, the series of events simply represents an “act of war” by China, reports Thomas Harms, an RFI correspondent in Houston. “When I see the sites that were flown over, it is a clear provocation to obtain data on our three nuclear sites in this country. They are studying what our capabilities are in the event of a possible conflict with Taiwan,” Michael McCaul, president of the United States, said on US television. of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives.
The United States believes that the first object officially detected, a balloon, was controlled by the Chinese military and was part of a fleet sent by Beijing over more than 40 countries on five continents for espionage purposes.
New flying objects also in Canada
To the leader of the Senate Democrats, the Chinese seem like amateurs. “I think the Chinese have been humiliated. They’ve been caught in a lie. This is a real step backwards for them,” Chuck Schumer said on ABC. The Chinese government claims that it was a civil aircraft used for research purposes, mainly meteorological.
US forces then shot down two more flying objects, one on Friday, February 10, over Alaska and the other on Saturday, February 11, over Canada. The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was expected in the afternoon in the province of Yukon, in the place where the last one was shot down.
In a sign that authorities are on alert, airspace over part of Lake Michigan in the northern United States was temporarily closed on Sunday for “national defense” reasons, according to the US civil aviation regulator (FAA). .
They analyze the remains
Military teams, working with planes, boats and mini-submarines, are touring the shallow waters off South Carolina. Military images showed the recovery of a large piece of the balloon. The Federal Bureau of Investigation assumed custody of the remains for analysis.
Operations to recover the second object continue on the sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska. “Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow and limited daylight” impact operations, the military said.
Recovery teams, backed by a Canadian CP-140 patrol aircraft, are searching for remains of the third object in the Yukon, Anand said Saturday. The Pentagon noted that the FBI is working closely with Canadian police.
The US does not rule out anything
The shooting down of three unidentified flying objects in three days by US aircraft leaves many questions unresolved.
According to General Glen VanHerck, unlike the first spy balloon from China, the other three objects were not balloons, but “objects.”
“I can’t classify them as balloons. We call them objects for a reason. I also can’t explain how they stay in the air. They could work with some kind of gas balloon inside a structure, or maybe it could be a propulsion system.” declared the general.
Asked if the extraterrestrial origin of the intercepted objects was ruled out, he did not want to rule out that possibility: “I will let the intelligence community and the counterintelligence community find out. I have not ruled out anything.” However, another Pentagon source quoted by Reuters assured that there is no evidence that they are aliens.
