WASHINGTON A senior White House official said Tuesday, April 14 Three unidentified flying objects have been shot down in the last few days may prove to be benign commercial or research efforts that pose no real threat US.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said investigators have yet to find any evidence linking the three objects to the three objects China’s balloon surveillance program, similar to the balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina this month.
Continued after the ad
However, he warned that authorities were still unable to find and collect the debris from the three objects after they were shot down and that a different conclusion could be drawn if the debris were found and analyzed.
Kirby said military and intelligence officials also found nothing, suggesting the three objects were part of another country’s intelligence procurement.
“We have not seen any signs or anything specifically suggesting the idea that these three objects were part of the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) espionage program or that they were definitely involved in any outside intelligencegathering efforts,” he told reporters.
Over the course of a busy weekend, US warplanes shot down three unidentified flying objects between Friday and Sunday: the first over Prudhoe Bay, Alaska; the second in Canada’s Yukon Territory; and the third over Lake Huron, Michigan. The third object landed on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, officials said.
Pentagon officials also acknowledged on Tuesday that the first missile fired by a US fighter jet over Lake Huron on Sunday missed its target.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Brussels that the missile that missed its target is now on the bottom of Lake Huron.
“First shot wrong. The second shot hit,” Milley said. “We are making great efforts to ensure the airspace and landscape are clear up to the maximum effective range of the missile. And in that case, the missile lands, or the missile landed harmlessly in the waters of Lake Huron.”
Recovery units attempt to recover the unidentified objects so Intelligence officers can determine what they are. Recovery efforts are also underway for the debris found after a F22 shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4thand authorities said Monday that crews recovered “significant debris” from the ship, including “priority debris sensors and electronic parts.”
Kirby’s comments came as senior Pentagon and intelligence officials, including Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of the North America Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command, visited the Capitol on Tuesday to deliver a similar message to the Senate. The briefing was the government’s latest attempt to update lawmakers on the string of strange floating objects that have been shot down in recent days.
More questions than answers
But the admission that the government had more questions than answers about three of the objects sparked a new wave of frustration among lawmakers, who have criticized not only the slow recovery effort but also the government’s lack of clarity about what happened across the skies of North flew America.
“Everyone talks and acts like we’re seeing these things for the first time,” Senator Marco Rubio said. “No, it’s not,” said Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He said salvaging the wreckage would not provide a full picture of what is happening in US skies. “The only way to get answers on this is not just to recover the remains, but to understand how this compares to hundreds of other similar cases,” Rubio said.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, chair of the commission, said the government’s tracking of aerial objects launched for legitimate purposes needs to be improved, adding that “there isn’t as formal a process as it is likely to be.” should”.
Warner said the government needs to be “much more aggressive” to ensure “a much better reporting process with authorities” to record legitimate scientific, meteorological and other artisanal information so authorities know which outliers may be of concern.
The Senate was recently briefed on the Chinese spy balloon in a closed session less than a week ago, prompting pointed questions from Democrats and Republicans alike as to why the object wasn’t shot down once it was spotted hovering over Alaska.
Republicans walked out of Tuesday’s briefing questioning whether administration officials were truthful with the information they were providing to Congress and questioned whether their briefings needed to be so classified.
However, lawmakers shared the sentiment that the three objects spotted and shot down over Alaska, Canada and Michigan since the spy balloon incident should be considered in a separate category.
“The last three that were shot down were very, very small objects,” said Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after Tuesday’s briefing. He noted that “at least one” of the three was carrying a payload, though, although he didn’t specify the size.
Kirby said the Federal Aviation Administration determined the objects were not operated by the US government. A possible explanation for the objects could be that they were operated by private companies or research institutes.
“You’re not going to rule out the possibility that these are balloons that are simply associated with commercial or research facilities and are therefore harmless,” Kirby said. “That could very well be an important explanation here, or it could turn out to be.”
However, he said no companies or other organizations had contacted the government to say they owned the segregated items.