The White House announced that the US military shot down an unidentified object that was at a high altitude over Alaska. This is the second foreign intrusion into US airspace in two weeks since the downing of the Chinese spy balloon over a US missile base.
The White House announced Friday that a U.S. fighter jet shot down an as-yet-unidentified object at high altitude over the state of Alaska. It was the second time in a week that US planes have shot down foreign objects in US airspace.
The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet (12,200 meters), it was brought down in US waters just off the far northeast coast of Alaska, near the Canadian border. The White House said it was notified of the object Thursday night.
“The president ordered the military to take down the object,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. The incident came after the Pentagon shot down what it said was a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean on February 4.
Kirby did not describe Friday’s downed object as a hot air balloon, instead saying a fighter jet dropped a high-altitude object about the size of a small car that posed a “reasonable threat” to civilian flights.
The Pentagon added on Friday that the downed object “was not an aircraft per se”. Kirby told reporters on Friday: “We expect to be able to recover the debris, because it fell within our territorial space,” adding, “We don’t know who owns it, whether state-owned or corporate-owned. We don’t understand the full purpose.”
Kirby also said that the US military sent a plane to observe the object before it was shot down. The pilot estimated that it was “unmanned”.