A US fighter jet on Saturday shot down an unidentified object over Canada, the second such incident in North American skies since the dramatic downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon a week ago.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that a joint US-Canadian military operation led to the takedown of the object, the latest in a series of mysterious air intrusions.
“Canadian and US aircraft were scrambled, and a US F-22 successfully fired at the object,” Trudeau wrote on Twitter.
Photo: Reuters
Shortly after the 3:41pm downing of the object, aviation authorities shut down part of the airspace over the northwest US state of Montana after detecting what they called a “radar anomaly,” the US Northern Command said.
In a sign of jitters over possible intrusions, the command said that US fighter jets were dispatched, but “did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits.”
Skies were then reopened to commercial air traffic.
The object shot down in the Yukon was “small, cylindrical” in shape, Canadian Minister of National Defence Anita Anand said.
“The object was flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet [12,192m], had unlawfully entered Canadian airspace and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,” Anand told reporters.
Trudeau said that Canadian forces in the Yukon “will now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object.”
He said he spoke with US President Joe Biden about the latest incursion, while Anand said she spoke with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
The new incursions into Alaska and the Yukon came after the US on Wednesday said that suspected Chinese spy balloons like the one it shot down on Feb. 4 were part of a “fleet” that has spanned five continents. NATO also voiced concern.
However, Anand said that “it would not be prudent for me to speculate on the origins of the object at this time.”
US and Canadian planes flew together to take on the object on Saturday, the US Department of Defense and Anand said.
“President Biden authorized US fighter aircraft assigned to NORAD [the North American Aerospace Defense Command] to work with Canada to take down a high-altitude airborne object over northern Canada today,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder said in a statement.
An F-22 fighter jet fired an AIM 9X missile that brought it down, he said.
The White House said that Biden and Trudeau spoke on Saturday, and “commended NORAD’s and US Northern Command’s strong and effective partnership and agreed to continue their close coordination to detect, track and defend our airspace.”
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