And Then There Were Four: What We Know About the 'High-Altitude Objects' Shot Down by USAF
17:47 GMT 13.02.2023 (Updated: 13:40 GMT 16.02.2023)
© AP Photo / U.S. Navy
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Since the US detected a Chinese high-altitude balloon floating over the country late last month, the Pentagon has stepped up its vigilance of US and Canadian airspace and shot down both the Chinese balloon and three other mysterious objects, each reportedly different from the others.
After the first object was concluded by the Pentagon to be a Chinese "spy balloon", US military command said it had realized that several mysterious objects seen in previous years were also spy balloons, and accused Beijing of operating a vast intelligence-gathering operation using the devices. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) also stepped up its analysis of radar returns on the edges of US airspace, and the scrutiny resulted in more objects being spotted and subsequently shot down.
"We don’t yet know whether these phenomena have been there for a while and we’re just now seeing them, or if this is new. Between data from object recovery and going through our technical radar data, we are working toward better understanding,” a Pentagon official told US media.
Aside from the Chinese balloon, which Beijing has claimed as theirs but rejected US claims of it being a spy balloon, no theories about the origins of the other three objects has been publicly stated.
Object 1: Chinese Balloon
The US first detected the balloon on January 28 as it crossed Alaska, but it didn’t catch news headlines until February 2, when it passed over a US Air Force Base in Montana that houses nuclear missile silos.
The 200-foot-tall balloon was flying at roughly 60,000 feet, or twice as high as commercial airliners travel and above the upper limit of most fighter aircraft. However, in terms of how high such balloons can reach, it was quite low.
10 February 2023, 19:32 GMT
The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed that the balloon was theirs, but rejected US accusations of it being used for covert intelligence-gathering. Instead, they say the balloon is a research airship used by civilian scientists that became caught in Westerlies, or upper-level east-blowing winds, and they lost control over it.
A USAF F-22 Raptor shot down the balloon on February 4 after it had transited US territory and reached Atlantic waters off the coast of South Carolina. It was retrieved and is being analyzed. According to reports, the balloon is made of plastic, not rubber, which is atypical of weather balloons but not unheard of. The US has not made public any information about any monitoring systems they previously claimed were on the balloon after taking close-up photos using a U-2 spy plane.
Object 2: 'Car-Sized' Craft Over Alaska
Six days after the Chinese balloon was downed, news broke of a second high-altitude object being shot down, this time over northern Alaska.
The object was described as “roughly the size of a small car” and was flying at roughly 40,000 feet, where it was deemed to pose a danger to commercial air travel. It was shot down over the frozen territorial waters near Prudhoe Bay, an oil field town on Alaska’s northern coast, after having flown across the massive state.
Other descriptions have abounded. One official said the object was “cylindrical and silver-ish gray” and appeared to float like a balloon without “any sort of propulsion.” Another said the object shattered into pieces when it impacted the ice. A third indicated it was substantially smaller than the Chinese balloon.
Recovery efforts continue, but have been hampered by the extreme Arctic weather. The Pentagon has notably avoided calling the object a balloon, and made no claims about its national origin.
However, some have floated the theory that, either purposefully or accidentally, the US shot down a failed US weather balloon launched from western Alaska. The conclusion was arrived at by tracing wind directions backwards from the shootdown site to a known National Weather Service radiosonde launch site.
Tweet showing likelihood that "car-sized object" the US Air Force shot down over Alaska on February 10, 2023, was a National Weather Service radiosonde, or weather balloon
Object 3: Downed Over Yukon
The day after the object over Alaska was shot down, NORAD sent another F-22 fighter jet to take down an object over Canada’s neighboring Yukon Territory, upon request from the Canadian government.
The object was described as “potentially similar” to the object downed over Alaska in both size and shape.
13 February 2023, 08:24 GMT
“Recovery teams are on the ground, looking to find and analyze the object,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters.
Also on February 11, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told US media that US officials believe the two objects downed over the Yukon and Alaska were both balloons. He made no claim about theories of national origin being circulated among US officials.
Object 4: Octagonal 'Radar Anomaly'
The next day, February 12, a fourth object was spotted and downed over Lake Huron, one of the four Great Lakes that straddle the US-Canada border.
This object was also distinct from the other three, and was described as an “octagonal object” flying at about 20,000 feet. It was reportedly first spotted over Lake Michigan and tracked across the US state of Michigan before being shot down by a US Air National Guard F-16 Falcon fighter jet.
"I'm not going to categorize them as balloons,” NORAD chief Gen. Glen D. Vanherck said during a Sunday press conference. “We're calling them objects for a reason."
Vanherck added that NORAD believes it was the same object that was responsible for a “radar anomaly” over Montana, far to the west, that temporarily closed airspace a day prior - a theory seemingly supported by tracing wind paths backwards from the Lake Huron shootdown site.
More?
A senior US military commander indicated on Monday that balloons had also been spotted across the Middle East region, but dismissed the notion they posed any kind of danger.
9 February 2023, 20:44 GMT
“There certainly are balloons in the CENTCOM AOR [US Central Command Area of Responsibility],” US Air Forces Central Commander Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich told reporters. “They have not been a threat. They’ve flown through a few times since I’ve been in command, but nothing that I would be concerned about in any way,”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry also accused the US of sending balloons over Chinese nearly a dozen times in the last year. Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters on Monday that “It is nothing rare for US balloons to illegally enter other country’s airspace... The US needs to reflect upon its own behavior, instead of slandering, smearing and provoking confrontation.”
In the 1950s, the US operated its own spy balloon program called Project Genetrix, which were disguised as weather balloons and sent over China and the Soviet Union to gather intelligence.
