A US warplane shot down an unidentified object over North American airspace, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday. It was the second day in a row in which the US military shot down an unidentified airborne object.
“I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,” Trudeau said on Saturday afternoon. A US F-22 fighter plane with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which protects Canadian and American airspace, shot down the object over Yukon, Canada.
Trudeau said that he had spoken with the US president, Joe Biden, on Saturday afternoon and that Canadian forces will recover and analyses the object.
Fighter jets have now shot down three objects in the airspace above the US and CANADA in the last week.
Canadian defence minister Anita Anand declined to speculate about the origin of the object, which she said was cylindrical in shape.
She stopped short of describing it as a balloon but said it was smaller than the Chinese balloon shot down off South Carolina’s coast a week ago, but similar in appearance. She said it was flying at 40,000 feet and posed a risk to civilian air traffic when it was shot down at 3.41am local time (2041 GMT).
“There is no reason to believe that the impact of the object in Canadian territory is of any public concern,” Anand told a news conference.
Hours later, airspace over the western US state of Montana was temporarily closed Saturday evening after a “radar anomaly” was detected but no object was found by fighter aircraft dispatched to investigate, NORAD said.
At a White House press briefing on Friday afternoon, national security council spokesperson John Kirby described the object as being the size of a small car and said it was flying at an altitude of 45,000 ft, the level of a commercial plane.
On Saturday, NORAD and the US northern command said they, along with the Alaska National Coast Guard, FBI and local law enforcement, were conducting search and recovery activities of the object.
“Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow and limited daylight are a factor in this operation, and personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety. Recovery activities are occurring on sea ice,” the statement said. “We have no further details at this time about the object, including its capabilities, purpose or origin.”
US officials say the balloon was part of a fleet that has been used to collect intelligence in more than 40 countries on five continents. They maintain that balloons went into US airspace at least three times during Donald Trump’s presidency and twice so far during Biden’s.
Despite the technology carried by the balloon, the Pentagon said the balloons do not give China any intelligence-collecting capacity beyond existing technology, such as satellites.
Blinken said the spy balloon was “an irresponsible act and a clear violation of US sovereignty and international law that undermined the purpose of this trip”.
