The Department of Defense (DOD) on Sunday attributed the increase in detections and shootdowns of unidentified flying objects to increased scrutiny of US airspace and improvements in its radar systems.
Melissa Dalton, deputy secretary of defense for Homeland Defense, and Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of US Northern Command, held a news conference Sunday night, hours after a US warplane shot down an “object Unidentified” over Lake Huron.
FILE: United States Air Force General Glen VanHerck, commander of the United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, attends a hearing held by the House Armed Services Committee of Representatives on March 1, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The object, believed to be the same one tracked over Montana and monitored by the government the night before, was the fourth object shot out of the sky by US warplanes in eight days, along with those over Alaska and Canada and an alleged Chinese spy balloon. .
“In light of the PRC balloon we shot down last Saturday, we have been taking a closer look at our space at these altitudes, including improving our radar, which may explain, at least in part, the increase in objects. that we’ve detected over the past week,” Dalton said.
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She said officials could not “definitively assess” what these objects were, so they “acted very carefully to protect [U.S.] security and interest.
“These newer objects did not pose a kinetic military threat, but their trajectory and proximity to sensitive DOD sites and the altitude at which they were flying could be a hazard to civil aviation and therefore raised concern,” Dalton said.
Late moon over Lake Huron, Lake Huron, Michigan. (fake images)
General VanHerck said NORAD detected a “radar contact” in Canada, approximately 70 miles north of the US border, around 4:45 pm ET Saturday.
When it became clear it was an unknown object, NORAD sent F-15 fighters from Portland, Oregon and KC-135 tankers from Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington to investigate the object.
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The object crossed the sovereign space of the United States around 6 p.m. EST, but as the night wore on, officials lost track of it, VanHerck said. NORAD identified an “intermittent radar contact” in Montana hours later as it approached Wisconsin.
“It’s likely, but we haven’t confirmed that the track we saw in Wisconsin was the same track in Montana,” VanHerck said.
(Washington, DC) – FBI special agents assigned to the Evidence Response Team process material recovered from the High Altitude Balloon off the coast of South Carolina. The material was processed and transported to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, VA. – FBI photo (FBI)
The object was monitored as it passed over the Great Lakes region of Michigan. When NORAD assessed that it was not a physical or military threat, officials shot down the object about 15 nautical miles east of the Upper Peninsula over Lake Huron.
Operations are underway with multiple agencies, including the Coast Guard, to gather the remains of the object and determine where it came from.
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VenHerck declined to classify the recently downed objects as balloons.
“We call them objects for a reason. Certainly the event off the coast of South Carolina for the Chinese spy balloon was clearly a balloon,” he said. “These are objects. I can’t categorize how they stay airborne. It could be some type of gas balloon inside a structure, or it could be some kind of propulsion system. But clearly they can stay airborne.”
In this photo provided by Chad Fish, a large balloon drifts over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina, with a fighter jet and its wake below, on Saturday, February 4. (Chad Fish via AP)
He cautioned journalists not to attribute the objects to any specific country, as officials are waiting to get their hands on the remains and further assess and analyze what they are.
VanHerck said that, to the best of his recollection, it was the first time in US history that NORAD or US Northern Command had “taken kinetic action against an airborne object.”
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Asked by a reporter if he had ruled out aliens, VanHerck said, “I haven’t ruled anything out at this point.”
