The latest aerial downing came roughly one week after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina, days after it was first reported to be hovering over the continental United States.
The first object, which was shot down from 40,000 feet over Alaska on Friday, Feb. 10, was downed after President Biden gave the order.
The second object was shot down on Saturday in northern Canada after Prime Minster Justin Trudeau green-lit the mission and Biden authorized fighter jets to fly into Canada.
The third object, labeled an “unidentified aircraft,” was downed via a F-16 fighter jet Sunday over Lake Huron after initially being spotted Saturday in Montana.
The White House on Monday said the uncertainty of the surveillance capabilities of the three objects led to Biden’s orders for the military to shoot them all down.
“We don’t think — we don’t know for sure whether they had a surveillance aspect to them, but we can’t rule it out. So, there was a little bit, there was enough uncertainty there that again, out of an abundance of caution, doing the prudent thing, the president directed that they get taken down,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Kirby also said that Biden will establish an interagency team to look into unidentified objects in U.S. airspace.
We have a skimmable list of what we do and don’t know about the incidents in the full report at digital-release.thehill.com.
