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On Saturday, a US fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Canada, the second such take-down in North American skies since the dramatic downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon a week ago.
The object, the latest in a series of mysterious air intrusions, was ordered down by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Canadian and United States aircraft were scrambled, and a United States F-22 successfully fired at the object,” Trudeau tweeted Saturday.
According to Trudeau, Canadian soldiers in the Yukon “will now recover and study the object’s wreckage.”
He claimed to have spoken with US President Joe Biden about the most recent incursion, while the Canadian Minister of National Defence claimed to have spoken with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Anita Anand, Canada’s minister of defense, tweeted that the two “reaffirmed that we’ll always protect our sovereignty together.”
The action on Saturday occurred after the United States and NATO expressed worry on Wednesday over reports that a “fleet” of suspected Chinese surveillance balloons, including the one it shot down, had traveled to five different continents.
Saturday, US Department of Defense reported that US and Canadian aircraft flew in tandem to attack the target.
According to a statement from the Pentagon’s Pat Ryder, President Biden gave the go-ahead for US fighter aircraft assigned to NORAD to collaborate with Canadian forces to shoot down a high-altitude flying object over northern Canada today.
It was downed by an AIM 9X missile fired by one of the two F-22 fighter jets that were watching the item, according to the report.
The US Northern Command and NORAD “agreed to continue their tight collaboration to detect, monitor, and defend our airspace,” according to the White House’s statement following their Saturday conversation.
Fighter planes downed another object on Friday off the northern coast of the US state, close to the community of Deadhorse, while the object destroyed on Saturday was shot down over the bordering Yukon province.
The Arctic “wind chill, snow, and limited daylight” hampered search and recovery efforts for the object’s remains on Saturday, according to a statement from Northern Command.
The Pentagon could not provide “any other information… concerning the device, including its capabilities, purpose, or origin,” it said, adding that “recovery activities are occurring on sea ice.”
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 11, 2023
Riff of diplomacy
Last month, a huge balloon containing electronics that the Pentagon described as a spy ship sailed above Canada and the US, igniting a diplomatic row with China, which confirmed ownership of what it claimed was a harmless weather balloon that had been blown off course.
That balloon entered US airspace in Alaska on January 28 and traveled across Canada and much of the US before being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off South Carolina on February 4. Its journey forced US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a rare trip to Beijing.
The course of the balloon passed over a number of US military facilities, some of which contained silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.
Republican senators slammed Biden’s action, with some arguing that the balloon should have been shot down when it entered US airspace rather than allowing it to pass unhindered over land before taking it down over ocean.
According to the Northern Command statement, federal recovery teams, which include both divers and remotely controlled, unmanned minisubs, are still searching for balloon wreckage in shallow coastal waters.
US officials claim that pictures of the balloon reveal it had many sensors and surveillance devices that could intercept conversations.
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