U.S. shoots down "high-altitude object" over Alaska

[C C]

Looks like the easy days might be over for invasive craft. Can no longer have free rein to wander all over the continent under the guise of being a UFO that national defense is too embarrassed to acknowledge or seriously respond to.
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https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-fight...ka-3772621
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-h...-rcna70166

INTRO: The U.S. military on Friday afternoon shot down a "high-altitude object" flying over Alaskan airspace and Arctic waters, National Security Council official John Kirby confirmed at the White House.

Kirby said the U.S. does not know who owns the object, and he would not call it a balloon, like the one allegedly owned by the Chinese government that the U.S. military shot down Saturday.

“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now,” Kirby told reporters during the White House briefing. “We do not know who owns it, whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned. We just don’t know.”

The Pentagon had been tracking the object over the last 24 hours, he said.

"The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight," Kirby told reporters during the White House briefing. "Out of an abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object and they did and it came inside our territorial waters and those waters right now are frozen." (MORE - details)

[Yazata]

You beat me to it, CC.

I wonder what it was. The government is being very cagey about that, refusing to call it a balloon or an aircraft, just calling it an object.

It was flying over the Alaska north slope I guess, and was shot down after it has moved over the Arctic Ocean where it apparently fell on ice.

So why were they so trigger happy this time, with an object over an exceedingly remote area, as opposed to last time when an obvious intelligence gathering vehicle passed over the entire Lower-48?

It smells political to me. Joe Biden was stung by the perception (even in his own party) that he had dithered too long with the spy balloon, allowing it to complete its mission. So he might have wanted to seem tough and resolute with this one, whatever it was.

[stryder]

You beat me to it, CC.

I wonder what it was. The government is being very cagey about that, refusing to call it a balloon or an aircraft, just calling it an object.

It was flying over the Alaska north slope I guess, and was shot down after it has moved over the Arctic Ocean where it apparently fell on ice.

So why were they so trigger happy this time, with an object over an exceedingly remote area, as opposed to last time when an obvious intelligence gathering vehicle passed over the entire Lower-48?

It smells political to me. Joe Biden was stung by the perception (even in his own party) that he had dithered too long with the spy balloon, allowing it to complete its mission. So he might have wanted to seem tough and resolute with this one, whatever it was.

It could of been a relay device to communicate with the original balloon, if that's the case then it's not just something that blew off course but something that had a network connecting to it. So that might be the reason for not going into too much detail.

[Kornee]

Lets see. A small car sized balloon (it had to be a balloon) clearly described as having no means of propulsion or steering, separated by ~ several thousand miles from the famously downed big balloon, adrift at a very different altitude, could reasonably be a 'relay device' remote comms connected to that big bad blown up balloon?
Best to ease up on over the top sci-fi speculation folks.

[Assuming there was an intended relay connection, the balloon to balloon separation would have been much greater again, as the large balloon would have by the time of little balloon shoot down over Alaska, drifted much farther Eastward if not shot down last week. Curvature of the Earth alone would preclude a usable line of sight comms link.]

[C C]

Doesn't seem to be anything new up to this point. Despite the insistence on ambiguously referring to it as an "object", it was obviously another inflated "vessel" of some kind. Probably an ordinary weather or other mundane balloon. Which would indeed point to Biden just being trigger-happy because he got burned on the giant, "spy" intruder version last time. And the "reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight" being an excuse in case it was private and properly registered property, etc.
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Everything We Know About The ‘High-Altitude Object’ Shot Down Over Alaska
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/ev...r-AA17mRVa

The object was flying around 40,000 feet in the air, according to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, causing a “reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.” The object did not appear to be “self-maneuvering” and was unmanned, Kirby said, noting the object was “at the mercy of prevailing winds.” U.S. fighter aircraft completed its first fly-by of the object Thursday before a second pass Friday morning, Kirby said, though both brought back “limited” information about the object.

[C C]

Canada shoots down UFO in airspace one day after similar incident over Alaska
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news...o-29194487

INTRO: Canada has shot down an 'unidentified object' after it entered its airspace, the country's prime minister has said. It comes one day after the US president ordered a fighter jet to shoot down an unidentified "high-altitude object" off Alaska.

In a tweet, Justin Trudeau wrote: “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."

The North American Aerospace Defense Command said earlier today that it was monitoring “a high altitude airborne object” over northern Canada with military aircraft operating in the area from Alaska and Canada... (MORE - details)

[Yazata]

The object was flying around 40,000 feet in the air, according to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, causing a “reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.” The object did not appear to be “self-maneuvering” and was unmanned, Kirby said, noting the object was “at the mercy of prevailing winds.” U.S. fighter aircraft completed its first fly-by of the object Thursday before a second pass Friday morning, Kirby said, though both brought back “limited” information about the object.

That sounds like about as good a description of a balloon as possible, without actually calling it a 'balloon'. The "limited information" part probably refers to them not knowing whose balloon it was or what its purpose was.

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Canada shoots down UFO in airspace one day after similar incident over Alaska
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news...o-29194487

INTRO: Canada has shot down an 'unidentified object' after it entered its airspace, the country's prime minister has said. It comes one day after the US president ordered a fighter jet to shoot down an unidentified "high-altitude object" off Alaska.

In a tweet, Justin Trudeau wrote: “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."

The North American Aerospace Defense Command said earlier today that it was monitoring “a high altitude airborne object” over northern Canada with military aircraft operating in the area from Alaska and Canada... (MORE - details)

https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status...9116871681

Trudeau says the Canadian military will recover and analyze the wreckage.

https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status...1331554306

The Yukon only has a relatively short coastline on the Arctic Ocean. My guess is that this object was first detected over Alaska, US jets were scrambled, then it crossed into Canada, so NORAD rang up the Canadian PM and asked 'what do you want to do about it'? (NORAD is a joint US/Can command.)

This hypothesis would put it in roughly the same region as the "object" the US shot down - northeast Alaska/northwest Canada, the arctic coast on either side of the border. So... is there some kind of weather or atmospheric research effort underway in that area that releases balloons? Is an oil company or mining company using balloons for surveys? Is somebody counting caribou?

[Yazata]

Twitter is buzzing with word that the Billings Montana airport has been closed and aircraft routed away from it due to a "national security situation". Air Force jets have been scrambled from both the Seattle and Portland areas.

Maybe it's something, maybe it's nothing.

But combined with the spy balloon excitement, it's something that makes me go "hummm..."

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And the notam directing pilots away from Billings has been lifted and things are going back to normal.

These "national security" airspace closures can happen for lots of reasons, ranging from military maneuvers to transport of very high level VIPs (Airforce 1 etc.)

[C C]

Twitter is buzzing with word that the Billings Montana airport has been closed and aircraft routed away from it due to a "national security situation". Air Force jets have been scrambled from both the Seattle and Portland areas.

Maybe it's something, maybe it's nothing.

But combined with the spy balloon excitement, it's something that makes me go "hummm..."

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And the notam directing pilots away from Billings has been lifted and things are going back to normal.

These "national security" airspace closures can happen for lots of reasons, ranging from military maneuvers to transport of very high level VIPs (Airforce 1 etc.)

Apparently there was a fourth object that they're going to wait till morning to shoot down. (Not sure it's the source of the above.)

The FAA closed the airspace around Havre, Montana, for around an hour on Saturday night due to ''an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic"
Airspace has reopened and the Department of Defense will wait until Sunday morning to shoot it down: it is the fourth 'object' over North America in a week
Four hours previously, a U.S. F-22 shot down a 'small cylindrical object' flying over the Yukon, in a joint U.S.-Canadian operation

[Yazata]

Montana Congressman Matt Rosendale says he was told by the military that "Airspace is closed due to an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic - the DOD will resume efforts to observe and ground the object in the morning."

Apparently the US military doesn't work at night. (Union work rules.)

https://twitter.com/RepRosendale/status/...1608034306

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I wonder if some foreign power is flooding our airspace with these things, or whether they have always been there but were ignored until the Spy Balloon goosed the military.