According to comments released Saturday, President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to shoot down an unidentified object that was violating Canadian airspace.
Following the discovery of the cylindrical object by the North American Aerospace Defense Command on Friday evening, Canadian and American jets intercepted it, and a US F-22 – deployed for the third time this week – shot it down Saturday afternoon.
The decision to shoot down the object was decided “out of an abundance of caution and at the suggestion of their militaries,” according to a White House statement.
“I authorised the downing of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,” Trudeau said in a tweet on Saturday. “The object was shot down over the Yukon by @NORADCommand. Aircraft from Canada and the United States were scrambled, and a US F-22 successfully fired at the object.”
“This afternoon, I spoke with Vice President Biden. The wreckage of the object will now be recovered and analysed by Canadian Forces. “Thank you to NORAD for keeping an eye on North America,” Trudeau said.
The new incident occurs just one day after another F-22 crashed an unexplained cylindrical object over Alaska airspace, which is being collected by the US military near the Alaskan town of Deadhorse.
The intercepts come after a cross-country odyssey earlier this month in which a Chinese spy balloon sailed over the United States from Montana to South Carolina before collapsing over the Atlantic.
NORAD detected the item above Alaska on Friday evening, according to the US Defense Department.
“As Canadian officials execute recovery operations to learn more about the object,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.
Anita Anand, Canada’s Defense Minister, stated that she and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed the event. “We will always protect our sovereignty together,” Anand stated in a Saturday tweet.
“This was the first time a NORAD operation had brought down an aerial item,” Anand said at a press briefing Saturday evening.
The object seemed to be a little cylindrical object, smaller than the one shot down off the coast of North Carolina last week, according to Canada’s defence minister. The object, which was flying at around 40,000 feet, constituted a “reasonable threat to the safety of civilian aircraft,” she claimed.
Anand said it was shot down around 100 miles from the US-Canada border in central Yukon at 3:41 p.m. ET. The operation included both American and Canadian aircraft. American F-22s took out from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, and Canadian F-18s took off from Cold Lake, Alberta. Canada’s Chief of the Defense Staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre, stated the item was killed by an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile fired from an F-22.
Anand did not confirm whether the object came from China, saying it is too early to tell.
Anand had met with Austin in Washington on Friday, and the downing of the spy balloon over the Carolinas was on the agenda. During a morning briefing, she told reporters that the balloon was largely tracked and studied by NORAD. “Last year, we announced a C$40 billion [$30 billion] upgrading to our continental defence and NORAD,” she noted. “This occurrence emphasises the significance of that programme.”
This improvement focuses on boosting NORAD’s ability to detect and track intrusions into North American airspace, according to Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary for homeland defence and hemispheric affairs, who spoke before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
“We’re working with Canada to upgrade the existing North Warning System, including the creation of a new sensor system dubbed Crossbow that will improve NORAD’s ability to identify impending airborne threats,” Dalton said.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) praised the members of the United States Air Force who shot down the unidentified object in Canadian airspace. Sullivan asked for a redoubling of efforts “to collect, exploit and analyse the unidentified aircraft shot down over Alaska and Canada … to properly understand the nature of the threat we are facing right now,” in a tweet on Saturday.
The FAA reported late Saturday that some airspace above Montana had been blocked for Defense Department activity. A short time later, the airspace was reopened. NORAD stated in a statement that it noticed a “radar abnormality” and dispatched fighter fighters to investigate. However, NORAD stated that no item correlated to the radar hits.
Montana Senators. Both Steve Daines and John Tester issued remarks claiming they had spoken with Pentagon authorities about the situation.
When asked why there seemed to be more balloon downings and similar occurrences recently, a US official stated, “We are being more careful today.”
The Chinese balloon in the Atlantic and the mystery craft above Alaska are still being recovered. NORAD stated on Saturday that the work in the High North is being delayed by inclement weather.
“Arctic weather conditions, including wind cold, snow, and short sunshine, are a factor in this mission,” the statement said. “Recovery activities are taking place on sea ice.”
Officials at the White House and the Pentagon still do not have a positive identification or the nation of origin of the device shot down over Alaska, and they would not confirm that Friday’s event was a Chinese-made surveillance balloon like the one that was hit off the coast of South Carolina.
This paper was co-authored by Sue Allan, Lee Hudson, Joseph Gedeon, Zi-Ann Lum, Lara Seligman, and Alex Ward.