by File photo of Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornets from 3rd Wing Bagotville with NORAD taking off from … (+)
Airspace on the US-Canada border near Michigan was closed by the FAA on Sunday afternoon and another “flying object” was shot down, according to a Michigan congressman. The incident marks the third time a strange floating object has been brought down in US and Canadian airspace in the past week and a half. And it’s the fourth foreign object detected, if you count the “radar anomaly” reported in Montana last night.
“I was in contact with the DOD regarding operations in the Great Lakes region today. The US military has disabled another ‘object’ over Lake Huron,” Representative Jack Bergman tweeted shortly before 3:30 pm ET on Sunday.
“I appreciate the decisive action of our fighter pilots. The American people deserve far more answers than we do,” continued Representative Bergman, who serves as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations.
There are no reports of “collateral damage” on the ground, according to the NBC News reporter. Monica Alba. Flight restrictions have been lifted, according to MSNBC.
The news of this latest mission comes after several different aircraft and “objects” were spotted recently across the US and Canada. A Chinese-operated spy balloon was shot down for the first time on February 4 off the coast of South Carolina after traveling across most of the US, and an object was shot down in the northernmost part of Alaska on February 10. NORAD also shot down an unidentified object over northern Canada, under the direction of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And then an “anomaly” was reported Saturday night over Montana, although it couldn’t be immediately determined what was seen on the radar.
The “anomaly” reported Saturday night was likely an aircraft flying by, according to a new tweet from Rep. Matt Rosendale, a Montana politician.
“I am in constant communication with NORCOM and they have just informed me that they have confidence that an object EXISTS and IT WAS NOT an anomaly. I’m waiting now to receive visual confirmation. The security of our nation is my priority,” Rosendale tweeted Sunday afternoon.
China has insisted that the first aircraft that started this new national obsession with floating balloons was actually just for monitoring the weather, a claim the Pentagon has denied. The balloon was used to gather intelligence signals, according to several reports that have since emerged, but it’s unclear whether all three objects that were shot down over the US and Canada in recent days had similar capabilities.
President Joe Biden drew criticism last week for taking the Chinese spy balloon across the US, prompting many Republicans to insist that President Donald Trump would never have let something like that happen. But as it turns out, Trump let it happen, the public was simply unaware of the times spy balloons were monitoring US military sites in California and Virginia.
To make matters even more complicated, the Chinese reportedly spotted their own unidentified flying object near the port city of Rizhao in Shandong province. The city is roughly halfway between Beijing and Shanghai and the latest reports indicate that the Chinese government was planning to overthrow it.
This story is developing and will be updated with more information.
