White House Confirms They Shot Down Another “High-Altitude Spy Object” Over Alaska
Appearing at the White House podium, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communication John Kirby announced, “The Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours.” “We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate owned or privately owned, we just don’t know,” Kirby said.
The object first came to the attention of the US government “last evening.” Kirby told reporters that the US assessed the “object” to be unmanned before it was eventually shot down. Biden was first briefed Thursday night “as soon as the Pentagon had enough information.” The high-altitude object, Kirby said during a White House press briefing, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.
There were two efforts to get closer to the object and evaluate it as it flew. The first engagement by fighter aircraft took place late Thursday night and the second Friday morning. Both engagements yielded “limited” information, Kirby told reporters. “We were able to get some fighter aircrafts up and around it before the order to shoot it down, and the pilots assessment was this was not manned,” Kirby added. WATCH:
There’s now more information on that object that the military shot down over Alaskan waters, which we reported on earlier.
It was a “high-altitude object,” flying at about 40,000 feet that was about the size of a “small car,” according to National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby.
The description of the object was unusual.
ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz first reported that when fighters were scrambled, the pilots did visuals, got images, and said there was no sign the object had propulsion.
It was described as “cylindrical and silver-ish gray” and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said.
Asked if was “balloon-like,” the official said, “All I say is that it wasn’t ‘flying’ with any sort of propulsion, so if that is ‘balloon-like’ well — we just don’t have enough at this point.”
Sounds more UFO-ish, if they can’t even identify what it is. But at least this time they were able to detect it.
They first detected it on Thursday evening. It was picked up by ground radar, and they flew planes up to check it out.
But they didn’t shoot it down until Friday afternoon around 1:45–after they had more planes check it out and after they got the order from Joe Biden. They shot it down over frozen water, so they believe they will be able to recover it. They said they shot it down because it could pose a danger to civilian air traffic.
A reporter asked if they could derive some “policy” from this, to which Kirby gave an unintentional indictment of the Biden team.
“I wouldn’t derive from these 2 incidents some sort of policy,” Kirby said.
You can say that again; that’s the problem.
Some wondered why it wasn’t taken down Thursday.
They said they told Biden Thursday, but he didn’t order it shot down until Friday. It’s not clear why it took that long.
Others noted that this is what should have been done with the Chinese spy balloon last week — shooting it down near Alaska.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said in a statement, according to Fox, that we needed to send a message to China and others “to publicly reiterate that we will be shooting down any and all unknown aircraft that violate our airspace.” He said we “also need to appropriately equip our military in Alaska with the sensors and aircraft needed to detect and, if necessary, destroy everything from slow-moving balloons to hypersonic missiles. Alaska is the front line of defense for our nation. The past few weeks have made this even more evident.”
Hopefully, they learned something from this and will solve the “domain awareness gap” the NORAD Commander claimed they have had in detecting things. As Sullivan said, that’s essential to our national security, as well as to send the right message to China and anyone else that they can’t just breach our airspace.
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