The US military shot down a fourth unidentified flying object on Sunday night, this time over Lake Huron, in the north of the country and near the Canadian border.
Representative Elissa Slotkin, D-Michigan, was the first to go public with a tweet: “The object has been shot down by United States Air Force and National Guard pilots.”
The Pentagon later gave some details. The operation materialized at 2:42 p.m. "at the direction of President Biden" and on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin." An F-16 fighter fired an AIM9x missile to "successfully" shoot down an airborne object that was flying at approximately 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) above Lake Huron.
The contraption's trajectory and altitude "raised concerns," including the danger it could pose to civil aviation.
The location chosen for the demolition avoided the risk of debris falling on the ground and could harm someone while "improving the chances of recovery" of components and pieces of the object in order to study them and find out what it is.
As for the unidentified objects shot down by two F-22s on Friday and Saturday over Alaska and northwestern Canada, US Homeland Security officials believe they were both balloons: the same as the "spy" device. ” Chinese shot down by another F-22 a week before off the coast of South Carolina, but in both cases with a “much smaller” size, and of unknown nature and origin until now.
The head of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, was the first to spread this belief yesterday that both the Chinese airship and the objects shot down in Alaska and Canada were balloons. He did so in statements to ABC after White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan informed him on Saturday night. Hours later, the Fox network corroborated this information through a "senior official" who added that the small elements shot down on Friday and Saturday were carrying cargo.
The informant added that the device shot down over the Canadian territory of Yukon looked like "a metallic balloon." And Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand added that it was a "smaller cylindrical object than the one shot down off the coast of South Carolina." Both descriptions were compatible with the one previously exposed by another US official who indicated to ABC that the Alaskan object was a "cylindrical and silver-gray" contraption that seemed to float "like a balloon", without "any type of propulsion".
But the confusion remained enormous as different units of the US and Canadian militaries and intelligence services continued to collect, salvage and analyze the remains of the three objects, in all cases in adverse weather conditions and those in Alaska and Canada with temperatures below zero.
Two other incidents yesterday increased the general confusion and nervousness of the countries concerned. First, on Saturday night, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) imposed a brief flight restriction on airspace over central Montana after its radar detected "an anomaly" that prompted it to send planes to the area to investigate, in principle without results.
The Norad, operated jointly by the US and Canada, had just completed the demolition of the object that appeared in Canada. And it must be remembered that Montana is the state in which the Chinese balloon caused the most alarm when it flew over an area near the Malmstrom air base, which is home to one of the three nuclear missile silo fields in the country.
Hours later, when Defense detected the object that it would bring down on Sunday afternoon over Lake Huron, that previous radar incident in the northwestern state made all the sense: "Based on the flight path and other data, we can reasonably connect this object with the radar signal picked up over Montana, which flew near sensitive Department of Defense sites," the Pentagon said. "We did not assess that it was a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground," he added.
Later, and while there was speculation in the US that the objects shot down over Alaska and Canada could also have been launched by Beijing to "test" US defense systems, the Chinese newspaper The Paper reported on the appearance of a Unidentified flying object over the Yellow Sea, near the port of Qingdao. An official said that the "relevant authorities" of the Asian country were preparing to shoot down the item. More mystery.
In any case, the bilateral tensions fueled by the discovery and destruction of the enormous Chinese "spy balloon" that crossed North America between January 28 and February 4, until it was shot down 11 kilometers off the coast of South Carolina, are in progress. increase.
After determining that the balloon in question was definitely a surveillance device equipped with antennae to pick up intelligence signals and was part of a vast aerial espionage program over more than 40 countries, the US Department of Commerce listed five companies and a Chinese research institute on its blacklist of entities subject to sanctions.
The measure will prevent those companies, dedicated to aviation and electronics, from selling US parts and technology without special permission. Washington links the six firms to Chinese military programs related to aircraft and balloons used for spying.
Meanwhile, the US 7th Fleet Command, based in Japan, reported joint exercises by the US Navy and Marine Corps in the South China Sea. Specifically, the USS Nimitz carrier strike group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted “integrated expeditionary strike force operations” there on Saturday with ships, ground forces and aircraft. Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea and rejects military activity by other nations there.
The drums of the Cold War are beating louder and louder.
