The White House announced Friday February 10, that President Joe Biden ordered the military to shoot down what it described as a ‘high-altitude object’ hovering over Alaska earlier in the day.
‘The Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters when asked about rumors of another suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.
The high-altitude object, Kirby said, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and ‘posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,’ per Politico.
He continued, ‘Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object following the Pentagon’s recommendation, and they did.
And it came inside our territorial waters ‘and those waters right now are frozen’ but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters.
Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour.
It’s the second time in a little less than a week that US fighter jets have shot down an object flying over American airspace.
The new object, Kirby added, was taken down with US Northern Command fighter aircraft ‘near the Canadian border’ on water that is frozen in the Arctic Ocean.
‘The general area would be just off the very, very northeastern part of Alaska near the Canadian border,’ Kirby said of the location.
The object first came to the attention of the US government ‘last evening.’
Kirby told reporters that the US assessed the ‘object’ to be unmanned before it was eventually shot down.
‘We were able to get some fighter aircrafts up and around it before the order to shoot it down, and the pilots assessment was this was not manned,’ Kirby said.
Kirby said the US is not referring to the object as a balloon and has yet to attribute it to China or any other entity.
‘We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now.
‘We don’t know who owns it, whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned, we just don’t know,’ Kirby said.
Kirby said the object was much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon — about the ‘size of a small car’ as opposed to the ‘two or three buses size’ Chinese balloon.
The object was spotted Thursday night and the president was briefed shortly after. According to a senior military official, the military picked up the object using a ground-based radar and F-35 fighter jets to observe it.
On Friday, U.S. Northern Command on Friday scrambled two F-22 fighter jets to intercept the object over northeastern part of Alaska, near Canada. It was shot down around 1:45 p.m. Eastern time.
Efforts are underway to attempt to recover the debris where it fell onto a frozen region of territorial waters.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) Friday applauded the military for taking quick action.
‘As I’ve been doing for the past week, including in a classified briefing with senior Pentagon officials yesterday, I strongly encouraged the NORTHCOM Cmdr this morning to shoot down this latest unidentified intrusion into Alaska air space. I commend them for doing so today.’
