Search teams are on the ground in Canada’s Yukon Territory searching for an object that a US F-22 fighter jet shot down on Saturday, the third object shot down in a week over North American airspace, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
“Recovery teams are on the ground, searching and analyzing the object,” Trudeau told reporters on Sunday morning.
“Yesterday afternoon, I also spoke with President Biden and confirmed together that we will continue to do whatever is necessary to protect the sovereignty of our shared North American airspace, but also to do whatever is necessary to keep our citizens safe.”
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) first detected the “high-altitude airborne object” hovering at about 40,000 feet over Alaska on Friday night and sent aircraft to monitor it and ” characterize the nature of the object”.
An F-22 fighter jet takes off from Langley Air Force Base. (US NORCOM)
A US F-22 Raptor shot down the object using an AIM 9X missile over Canada on Saturday afternoon.
REPUBLICANS REACT TO THIRD ‘OBJECT’ DOWNED ON OVER CANADA: ‘UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGE’
Separately, US warplanes shot down another object Friday over northern Alaska. Both incidents came about a week after the United States shot down a much larger, 200-foot-tall Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.
US officials are still working to recover the plane that was shot down over Alaska, but “it could be some time before we have access,” a senior US official told Fox News, citing weather conditions at this time of year.
The last two objects were unmanned and neither could be steered. The downed object over Canada is believed to be a “small metallic balloon with an attached payload,” a US official said. The country of origin of the last two objects is unknown.
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The Federal Aviation Administration also “briefly closed some airspace over Lake Michigan to support Department of Defense activities” Sunday morning. The US military reviewed a “potential contact” that was determined not to be a threat and airspace was reopened.
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
