Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that on his orders a US warplane shot down an unidentified object flying high over northern Canada, acting a day after US planes took similar action over Alaska. Photo / AP
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that on his orders a US warplane shot down an unidentified object flying high over northern Canada, acting a day after US planes took similar action over Alaska. Photo / AP
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday that on his order a US fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” that was flying high over the Yukon, acting a day after the US took similar action over Alaska.
North American Aerospace Defence Command, the combined US-Canada organisation that provides a shared defence of airspace over the two nations, detected the object flying at a high altitude Friday evening over Alaska, US officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday.
Trudeau spoke with US President Joe Biden, who also ordered the object to be shot down. Canadian and US jets operating as part of Norad were scrambled and it was a US jet that shot down the object.
Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand told a news conference in Ottawa that the object, flying at around 12,192m (40,000 feet), had been shot down at 3.41pm EST, approximately 160km from the Canada-U.S. border in the central Yukon. A recovery operation was underway involving the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP.
Anand said it appeared to be “a small cylindrical object, smaller than the one that was downed off the coast of North Carolina”.
However, Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff General Wayne Eyre said: “The instructions that were given to the team was whoever had the first, best shot to take out the balloon had the go-ahead.”
Hours later, in the US, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Saturday night it had closed some airspace in Montana to support Defence Department activities. Norad later said the closure, which lasted a little more than an hour, came after it had detected “a radar anomaly” and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. The aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits, Norad said.
F-22 fighter jets have now taken out three objects in the airspace above the US and Canada over seven days, a stunning development that is raising questions on just what, exactly, is hovering overhead and who has sent them.
The United States says it is a Chinese spy balloon moving east over America at an altitude of about 18,600m, but China insists the balloon is just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds. Photo / AP
At least one of the objects downed was believed to be a spy balloon from China, but the other two had not yet been publicly identified. While Trudeau described the object Saturday as “unidentified,” a Norad spokesman, Major Olivier Gallant, said the military had determined what it was but would not reveal details.
Trudeau said Canadian forces would recover the wreckage for study. The Yukon is the westernmost Canadian territory and among the least populated parts of Canada.
Just about a day earlier, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said an object roughly the size of a small car was shot out of the skies above remote Alaska. Officials couldn’t say if it contained any surveillance equipment, where it came from or what purpose it had.
Kirby said it was shot down because it was flying at about 13,000m and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights, not because of any knowledge that it was engaged in surveillance.
According to US Northern Command, recovery operations continued on Saturday on sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska.
In a statement, the Northern Command said there were no new details on what the object was. It said the Alaska Command and the Alaska National Guard, along with the FBI and local law enforcement, were conducting search and recovery.
“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,” the statement said.
On February 4, US officials shot down a large white balloon off the coast of South Carolina.
The balloon was part of a large surveillance programme that China has been conducting for “several years,” the Pentagon has said. The US has said Chinese balloons have flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it learned more about the balloon programme after closely monitoring the one shot down near South Carolina.
China responded that it reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticised the US for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice”.
The US Navy continued survey and recovery activities on the ocean floor off South Carolina, and the US Coast Guard was providing security. Additional debris was pulled out on Friday, and additional operations will continue as weather permits, Northern Command said.
