The case was confusing, it could become embarrassing: The United States admitted on Tuesday that the flying objects they shot down with a missed rocket launch at the end of last week were possibly “harmless”.
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The White House has so far had “no evidence” that these three mysterious objects were of Chinese origin or had spy functions, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
This distinguishes them from the Chinese balloon shot down on February 4, which Washington still categorically claims is intended to gather intelligence on sensitive military sites. Which Beijing denies.
These “objects” “could be balloons with innocuous commercial or scientific functions,” recognized John Kirby, spokesman for the US Executive Branch’s National Security Council.
However, he specified that in order to determine with certainty the nature, use or origin of these “objects”, it would be necessary to wait before analyzing the debris, but the recovery work promises to be uncertain.
rocket in the water
The remnants of the “objects” shot down over Alaska (northwest) on Friday, over the Yukon of northwestern Canada on Saturday and over Lake Huron on Sunday fell back to water freezes, in remote areas or in the depths of the lake.
He also specified that the F-16 fighter jet sent to shoot down one of them over Lake Huron on the Canadian border on Sunday missed its target and that a first missile “fell right into the lake. The Pentagon also confirmed a “failure” on Tuesday. The “object” was destroyed by another missile.
In the other two cases, the “objects” were destroyed on the first attempt by the attack aircraft sent towards them, this time of the F-22 type.
President Joe Biden ordered the three consecutive demolition operations in the name of transportation security, which the White House said could have been endangered by these “objects” flying at altitudes close to those of airplanes.
In the case of the Chinese balloon, the Republican opposition accused it of waiting too long to launch it.
“I never said there was a principled decision to shoot things up,” John Kirby said Monday, saying the decision to destroy the three mysterious “objects” was based on well-established protocols and procedures.
“We have not found any debris so far,” the spokesman continued, noting that the information he shared was based in particular on “observations by the pilots” of the planes dispatched to the area.
“Rudimentary”
The spokesman acknowledged that these observations were “rudimentary” as they were made by fighter jets flying “next to small stationary objects” at very high speeds.
Such was the confusion surrounding the affair that White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre very officially denied any “alien” invasion at the start of her routine briefing Monday.
The United States, on the other hand, is sticking to its description of the Chinese balloon shot down on the east coast on February 4, from which it has already recovered the first debris. The plane, they say, carried surveillance equipment and was part of China’s vast global espionage program.
China has vehemently denied this, accusing the Americans of sending balloons into its airspace. Which Washington in turn denies.
The American authorities explain that after the discovery of this Chinese balloon, they adjusted their radar systems, which led to these successive detections and destructions of “flying objects”.
John Kirby recalled that the US government had initiated reflections on these new detection parameters.
He estimates that the first recommendations on the parameters to be adopted could be made “by the end of the week”.