President Joe Biden ordered this Friday to shoot and shoot down an unidentified "object" that had entered Alaskan airspace; the same as the Chinese balloon shot down last Saturday near the coast of South Carolina after having crossed the entire United States from the Northwest to the Southeast.
The device now shot down was "much smaller" than the balloon in question: it was the size of a "small vehicle" and its origin and nature are unknown for now, as explained on Friday afternoon by the White House Homeland Security spokesman. , John Kirby.
The object was flying at about 12,000 meters (40,000 feet): an altitude that made it a "potential threat" to civilian aircraft, although it is not known to endanger people on the ground.
The contraption was shot down over the waters off the Alaskan coast. The Pentagon hoped to recover the remains as soon as possible in order to determine what it was.
The operation was very similar to the one carried out on February 4 to bring down the huge Chinese airship that Beijing described as a simple "weather observation" device but which, according to the Pentagon, was equipped with antennas capable of capturing "intelligence signals." The famous balloon was part, said the Department of Defense, of a broad aerial espionage program that China has deployed over "more than 40 countries on five continents."
As in the case of that "spy" balloon, an F-22 fighter jet based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson shot down the object that appeared over Alaska with an AIM-9X short-range air-to-air missile.
Prior to the shootdown, the Federal Aviation Administration restricted flights over an area of approximately 10 square miles within US airspace off Bullen Point in Alaska, about 100 miles from the Canadian border and within the Polar Circle. Arctic.
The artifact was traveling northeast when it was shot down. Several US military helicopters immediately went to the area to try to locate and later recover the remains. The weather conditions were adverse, with temperatures of 27 degrees below zero.
On the other hand, and in relation to the Chinese balloon, Washington plans sanctions against half a dozen companies from the eastern giant involved in the production of this type of surveillance devices.
