(MENAFN- AzerNews) The U.S. military shot down a flying object over Lake Huron near
the U.S.-Canada border, U.S. officials said on Sunday, in the
fourth such interception by American fighters this month.
Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told
Reuters that the military had shot down the object.
Separately, U.S. Representative Jack Bergman said an object had
been 'decommissioned.'
Meanwhile, Canadian investigators are hunting for the wreckage
of an unidentified flying object that was shot down by a U.S. jet
over Yukon territory on Saturday.
'Recovery teams are on the ground, looking to find and analyze
the object,' Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on
Sunday.
'The security of citizens is our top priority and that's why I
made the decision to have that unidentified object shot down,' he
said, adding that it had posed a danger to civilian aircraft.
North America has been on high alert for aerial intrusions
following the appearance of a white, eye-catching Chinese airship
over American skies earlier this month.
The 200-foot-tall (60-meter-high) balloon - which Americans have
accused Beijing of using to spy on the United States - caused an
international incident, leading Secretary of State Antony Blinken
to call off a planned trip to China only hours before he was set to
depart.
Surveillance fears appear to have U.S. officials on high
alert.
Twice in 24 hours, U.S. officials closed airspace - only to
reopen it swiftly. On Sunday, the Federal Aviation Administration
briefly closed space above Lake Michigan. On Saturday, the U.S.
military scrambled fighter jets in Montana to investigate a radar
anomaly there.
U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who represents a
district in Michigan, said the military had an 'extremely close
eye' on an object above Lake Huron, which is east of Lake Michigan
on the U.S.-Canada border.
Canada also closed airspace on Sunday near Tobermory, Ontario,
which is on Lake Huron near the U.S. border, according to Nav
Canada, a private non-profit that operates Canada's air traffic
control system.
China denies the first balloon was being used for surveillance
and says it was a civilian research craft. It condemned the United
States for shooting it down off the coast of South Carolina last
Saturday.
With military and intelligence officials newly focused on
airborne threats, at least two other flying objects have since been
destroyed over North America.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told U.S. broadcaster
ABC that U.S. officials think the two latest objects were also
balloons. The original balloon was brought down off the coast of
South Carolina on Feb. 4. A second was shot down over sea ice near
Deadhorse, Alaska, on Friday. The third was destroyed over the
Yukon on Saturday.
'They believe they were (balloons), yes, but much smaller than
the first one,' Schumer said.
The White House said only that the recently downed objects 'did
not closely resemble' the Chinese balloon, echoing Schumer's
description of them as 'much smaller.'
'We will not definitively characterize them until we can recover
the debris, which we are working on,' a spokesperson said.
Schumer said he was confident U.S. investigators scouring the
ocean off South Carolina to recover debris and electronic gadgetry
from the original balloon would get to the bottom of what it was
being used for.
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