U.S. Navy sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C. on Feb. 5. An "anomaly" that military officials were tracking through the weekend before fighter jets downed an unknown object over the Great Lakes was first detected in Canadian airspace.--ap handout courtesy U.S. Navy
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An “object” that caused airspace over Havre, Montana to be restricted by the military of Saturday entered in that country after skirting by Medicine Hat.
High ranking military and elected officials in both countries appeared on Monday to update the media after a third flying object believed to emanate from China was shot down by military aircraft.
Canadian Coast Guard ships patrolled an area of Lake Huron in search of what’s believed to be a high-altitude balloon that was downed on Sunday. That happened about a day after something similar was first sighted in Eastern Montana after entering the country from the north.
In Ottawa, Norad commander Gen. Glen VanHerck told a media briefing Sunday that it is “likely,” but also impossible to confirm, that the object at the bottom of Lake Huron was originally detected in Canadian airspace.
VanHerck said Norad first detected what appeared to be the object on Saturday at about 2:45 p.m. MST, about 110 kilometres north of the Canada-U.S. border. It crossed into U.S. airspace over Montana about an hour later, but fighter jets were unable to locate it.
Later that night, radar picked up a new signal approaching Wisconsin and Michigan, and continued to track it until President Joe Biden gave the order to shoot it down Sunday afternoon.
“It’s likely, but we have not confirmed that the track that we saw at Wisconsin was … the same track in Montana,” VanHerck said.
It was the third unidentified object to be shot down over North American airspace since the U.S. downed what it says was a Chinese surveillance balloon Feb. 4.
Several residents living along the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary reported seeing military aircraft flying north and south in the late afternoon on Saturday.
The previous night, jets from Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake were directed to a similar object sighting in the Yukon Territory, though it was dispatched by missiles from Alaskan-based U.S. fighter aircraft.
Earlier this month, a suspected balloon that was first spotted over Montana was downed near the coast of South Carolina after it travelled on high-speed winds at great altitude.
At the White house, White House national security spokesman John Kirby, said that while the Biden administration does not yet have evidence that they were equipped for spying purposes – or even belonged to China – officials have not ruled that out.
The three objects were traveling at such a low altitude as to pose a risk to civilian air traffic
“These were decisions based purely and simply on what was in the best interests of the American people,” Kirby said.
The weeks-long succession of objects, starting with a giant white orb first detected over U.S. skies in late January, has puzzled American officials and captivated curiosity around the world.
Though the three most recent objects differed in size, maneuverability and other characteristics from the surveillance balloon shot down Feb. 4 off the Carolina coast, officials moved to eliminate each one from the sky – actions that Pentagon officials believe has no peacetime precedent.
VanHerck confirmed in the briefing that part of the escalation for all of the sudden sightings is that Norad – a system originally designed to spot foreign aircraft and missiles – has recalibrated to better detect smaller, slower-moving objects.
“If you have radars on all the time that were looking at anything from zero speed up to, say, 100 miles (160 kilometres) per hour, you would see a lot more information,” VanHerck said.
“So, with some adjustments we’ve been able to get a better a categorization of radar tracks now. And that’s why I think you’re seeing these overall.”
At the same time, the smaller and slower an object is, the harder it is to get a bead on, said John Kirby, the White House co-ordinator of the National Security Council.
“Slow-moving objects at high altitude with a small radar cross-section are difficult to detect on radar,” he told the White House briefing.
The U.S. is convinced the original balloon was a Chinese surveillance device, but they know far less about the other three devices and their provenance, Kirby said. Academic, scientific or corporate research by privately or state-owned equipment remains a possibility.
“That said, because we have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are, we acted out of an abundance of caution to protect our security, our interests and flight safety.”
