Little known about 3 ‘objects’ shot down by US military in 3 days

Washington, Feb 12 (EFE).- Little is known about the three objects shot down in as many days in the US and Canada, according to United States Department of Defense officials on Sunday.

In a telephone press appearance, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs Melissa Dalton said that both the object shot down Sunday afternoon over Lake Huron, Michigan, as well as the two in Canada and Alaska in previous days, were destroyed as a precaution and that there has been no collateral damage in any of the operations.

Dalton and the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad), General Glen VanHerck, said some of the remains of the object shot down Sunday in Michigan have possibly fallen into Canadian waters of Lake Huron.

Since the alleged Chinese surveillance balloon was detected and shot down on Feb. 4, the US has “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’ve detected over the past week,” Dalton said.

“As we learn more about these objects, and certainly the PRC (China) balloon, we’re going to enhance our understanding of the characteristics of them. That will perhaps enable us to look back at prior instances that were potentially overlooked,” she said.

Dalton recognized that it is possible that there are many objects flying over the country for “purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate research,” but since none of those destroyed in recent days could be identified, they were taken down out of an “abundance of caution.”

The government continues to call the devices “objects,” without going into depth in their description, and General VanHerck said that it is unknown how the three most recent objects stay up, their means of propulsion, or where they are coming from.

“We’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason,” he said, while the Chinese object was clearly a balloon.

The head of Norad insisted that there has been no “hostile” act by these devices, but if an unidentified object enters US or Canadian airspace they will act to identify it and find out if it is a threat.

In this case, the governments of Canada and the US discuss and assess whether it may pose a risk to their national security, for example if it flies over sensitive defense areas such as missile silo fields, if it may affect the security of civil aviation or if it may pose a risk to people on the ground.

If any of these risks are present, authorities will act as they have been in recent days, VanHerck said.

The device shot down Sunday afternoon while flying over Lake Huron is the third “object” neutralized in the last three days in North America, after the one shot down on Friday over Alaska and another on Saturday in Canada, and comes eight days after the shooting down of the alleged Chinese surveillance balloon over the Atlantic. EFE

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