A US F-16 fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday, the fourth time in eight days a high-flying balloon or other craft has been brought down over the US or Canada.
(Bloomberg) — A US F-16 fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday, the fourth time in eight days a high-flying balloon or other craft has been brought down over the US or Canada.
The latest object was flying at a lower altitude than the alleged Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by an F-22 off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, or the other objects targeted over Alaska and Canada on Friday and Saturday, two people familiar with the situation said.
President Joe Biden ordered the object shot down after its path and altitude raised concern, including that it could be a hazard to civil aviation, the Pentagon said in a statement.
Biden gave the order out of an abundance of caution at the recommendation of military leaders after it was detected over Michigan’s Upper Peninsula at about 20,000 feet and heading out over the lake, a senior administration official said.
While the administration has no indication that the craft had surveillance capabilities, it also can’t rule that out, the official said. It appeared to have an eight-sided structure with strings hanging off, but no discernible payload.
The latest sighting caused confusion after military officials detected a radar contact over Montana on Saturday but ruled it an “anomaly” after sending fighter aircraft to investigate. Radar contact was re-established on Sunday over Wisconsin and Michigan, leading to the shootdown.
North American Aerospace Defense Command detected the object Sunday morning and maintained visual and radar tracking of it. “Based on its flight path and data, we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana,” according to the Pentagon.
Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, said the object was brought down by US Air Force and National Guard pilots.
“We’re all interested in exactly what this object was,” she said on Twitter.
“I appreciate the decisive action by our fighter pilots” Representative Jack Bergman, a Michigan Republican, said on Twitter. “The American people deserve far more answers than we have.”
The US has claimed the balloon shot down last week was part of a global Chinese surveillance program, which China has denied. Officials have not said what the other three objects, where they came from or if they had any link to China.
(Updates with Pentagon statement in third paragraph, senior administration official starting in fourth.)
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