According to a White House official, the fragments of the three objects fell in remote places that were difficult to access.
The United States said Monday it still does not know the origin of the three high-flying objects shot down in recent days as they were blown away by the winds over North America.
The government said it did not believe the objects were surveillance devices, although it had left the possibility open.
“They had no propulsion,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the White House. “They weren’t maneuvered. They had no surveillance (capability), but we can’t rule it out.”
“We’re in uncharted territory on all of this,” he added.
He explained that the fragments of the three objects fell “in remote locations that are difficult to access”: ice on the coast of far northwest Alaska, in the Yukon Territory of northwest Canada, and in the depths of Lake Huron on the US border .and Canada.
According to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, US personnel have yet to recover any fragments of the three objects.
Also read US shoots down 4 objects in 8 days; unheard of in peacetime
Austin told reporters Monday in Brussels, where he is at a NATO meeting, that weather has hampered efforts in Alaska and that remote terrain in Canada is hampering the search there.
The Pentagon’s priority, he said, is “to recover fragments so we can get a better picture of what those objects were.”
Kirby declined to refer to the three objects as balloons.
“We don’t know who they belonged to,” he said, in contrast to the Chinese balloon that was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on February 4 after traversing US territory for eight days.
China continues to insist the balloon was a weather research device that was blown off course by the winds, but US officials say parts they recovered from the seabed show it was a reconnaissance mission.
The military’s Northern Command said in a statement Monday that crews “recovered sufficient fragments, including the main sensor, electronic parts and large parts of the structure.”
Also Read: US Denies Flying Balloons Over China
Kirby said President Joe Biden has made it a priority to determine the origin and owner of the three objects shot down by military pilots on his orders, or in the case of the object shot down in the Yukon, in consultation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau .
He also said the three objects were shot down because they posed a “real threat” to civil aviation, as the two were moving at about 40,000 feet near Alaska and the Yukon, and the one in Lake Huron halfway.
After discovering the Chinese globe, US radars were recalibrated to find more objects.
“One of the reasons we’re seeing more is because we’re looking for them more,” he said.
Earlier, Kirby dismissed China’s claim that the US flew more than 10 balloons over its territory.
Also read Beijing: More than 10 US balloons flew over China
Both countries use spy satellites, but a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, accused the United States of flying the balloons over China, though he did not elaborate on how they were handled or whether they had alleged ties to the US government .
“It is not true. We don’t. It’s absolutely not true,” John Kirby, the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator, told MSNBC. “We don’t fly balloons over China.”
Both Kirby and White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre clarified that the unusual activity over the weekend had “nothing to do with extraterrestrials or extraterrestrials.”
On Sunday, a US Air Force general said he did not rule out aliens as an explanation for the objects, according to Portal reports.
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