U.S. Shoots Down New High-Altitude ‘Object’ Over Alaska

The U.S. military on Friday shot down an “object” flying in territorial waters over Alaska less than a week after an F-22 fighter jet shot down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby announced the move on Friday afternoon during a White House press briefing.

President Biden ordered the object to be shot down.

The object went down at 1:45 p.m. ET over the Arctic Ocean near the northeast border of Alaska and Canada and was described as “cylindrical and silver-ish gray” and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said.

An F-22 Raptor out of Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Alaska and assigned to U.S. Northern Command shot down the object with an AIM 9X Sidewinder missile.

“I can confirm that the Department of Defense was tracking a high altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours out. The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight. Out of an abundance of caution and the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object. And they did. And it came in inside our territorial waters,” Kirby said.

“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now,” Kirby added. “We do not know who owns it, whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately-owned. We just don’t know.”

Kirby also said the object was “roughly the size of a small car.”

The pilots were able to determine that it was “unmanned” before it was shot down.

A U.S. official said the government did not know who owned or sent the object.

There were “no affirmative indications of military threat” to people on the ground from the object.

Officials said they could not confirm whether there was any surveillance equipment on the object that was shot down.

Reports indicated a U.S. Air Force HC-130J was flying off the Alaskan coast near Prudhoe Bay as of 3:40 p.m. ET, flying as low as 725 feet at times.

“We do expect to be able to recover the debris since it fell not only within our territorial space, but on what we what we believe is frozen water, ” Kirby said to reporters at a later time. “So, a recovery effort will be made, and we’re hopeful that it will be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it.”

Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters he didn’t want to “characterize” the object’s physical attributes yet.

He said “we don’t know origin of this object,” but that, based on a “reasonable threat to civilian air traffic,” the decision was taken to bring it down.

Brig. Gen. added that there was “no indication at this time that it was maneuverable. It entered US airspace and we took it down.”

“The important thing to understand here is that any time we detect anything we observe it and then take appropriate action,” Ryder continued. “In this particular case, it was operating ant an altitude that posed a reasonable threat to civilian air traffic and the president decided to take it down.”

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