A third object was taken out Sunday afternoon in Michigan, after transiting over Montana.
An as-yet unidentified object was shot down over Michigan’s Lake Huron Sunday afternoon, the third over three consecutive days. A US jet shot down a flying object over Canada Saturday, and on Friday a US fighter brought down another over Alaska.
According to Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the objects taken down Friday and Saturday are likely Chinese balloons, “much smaller” than one shot down in US coastal waters off South Carolina last week. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) temporarily closed airspace over Montana on Saturday, and Lake Michigan Sunday “during NORAD operations.”
Debris from three of the objects is still being recovered as of Sunday. Officials within the Biden administration have been cautious about connecting the most recent objects with the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, which officials said had been gathering limited intelligence about US military installations.
“We’re going to probably be able to piece together this whole surveillance balloon, and know exactly what’s going on,” Schumer said of the balloon shot down last weekend.
US officials only discovered China’s air balloon surveillance program within the past year, though the program dates at least as far back as the administration of former President Donald Trump. “We did not detect those threats and that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out,” Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a joint operation with Canada, told reporters Monday. The US intelligence community reportedly told NORAD that the balloons were a threat, but VanHerck didn’t specify at the time what US intelligence knows about the balloon program, or how it discovered the information.
US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered Canadian and US fighters — whichever had the better shot — to take down the object Saturday. US F-22 aircraft using Sidewinder missiles shot down the object, and Canadian aircraft joined US jets Friday to track it object as it transited from US airspace to Canadian.
