Politics

US military shoots down another flying object over Lake Huron

New York, Feb 12 (EFE).- The US military on Sunday shot down another unidentified flying object, this time as it was overflying Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes, according to Congressman Jack Bergman, a statement that government sources confirmed to CNN and ABC.

This is the third “object” downed by the US military in the past three days over North America, after the shootdown on Friday of a balloon-like object over Alaska and the downing of another similar object over Canada on Saturday.

Bergman, via Twitter, said that he had been in contact with the Defense Department about this operation over the Great Lakes near the border with Canada, which became known after the temporary closing of airspace over Lake Michigan.

The Republican congressman representing the state of Michigan tweeted: “I’ve been in contact with DOD regarding operations across the Great Lakes region today. The US military has decommissioned another ‘object’ over Lake Huron. I appreciate the decisive action by our fighter pilots. The American people deserve far more answers than we have.”

Also on Twitter, Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin said that US Air Force and National Guard pilots had downed the object they had been following over Lake Huron.

“We’re all interested in exactly what this object was and (its) purpose,” she tweeted, adding that she will “ask Congress for a full briefing.”

No details have been released as yet about this new object, and very little information has been made public about the two prior shootdowns over the weekend, as search teams recover the remains of the objects, although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that the government believes that both the Alaska and Canada objects were balloons, albeit smaller than the Chinese balloon that the US shot down off the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4 after it had flown over the continental US from Montana to South Carolina.

The Democratic senator, who was informed about the Alaska and Canada objects by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, said that those balloons were flying at 12,000 meters (about 40,000 feet), an altitude at which they posed a “danger” to commercial aviation.

Schumer emphasized that up until a few months ago the US did not know anything about these balloons, adding that the US Army and intelligence services are now focused on gathering all the information they can and recovering the debris from the shootdowns.

He told ABC that Beijing was probably using a “crew of balloons” that had “probably been all over the world”.

On Friday, the US downed another object of unknown origin that was flying at high altitude over Alaska, the remains of which fell into frozen waters.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Saturday that an object overflying the remote northwestern province of Yukon had been shot down with a missile by a US F-22 fighter jet after “violating Canadian airspace.” Canada had authorized the shootdown.

Both incidents occurred amid the diplomatic crisis that erupted between the US and China last week when the US military shot down an alleged Chinese “spy” balloon that had overflown a large portion of the continental US at about 60,000 feet, first Alaska, then a portion of Canada, then in a southeasterly direction over Montana, Missouri and finally South Carolina.

The Biden administration accuses China of having developed a military “program” of spy balloons and that it had already overflown more than 40 countries on five continents.

China has claimed that the balloon the US shot down on Feb. 4 was merely a weather balloon that “went off course” due to unavoidable problems.

The Feb. 4 balloon incident has strained US-China relations, motivating Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel his planned trip to Beijing.

EFE –/bp

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