A fourth one shot down: U.S. fighter jets take out 'unidentified object' over Lake Huron

WASHINGTON - A U.S. fighter jet shot down an "unidentified object" over Lake Huron on Sunday on orders from President Joe Biden. It was the fourth such downing in eight days and the latest military strike in an extraordinary chain of events over U.S. airspace that Pentagon officials believe has no peacetime precedent.

Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a "heightened alert" after a spy balloon from China that emerged over U.S. airspace in late January, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, said in a Sunday evening briefing with reporters.

Since that balloon hovered above the nation for days before fighter jets downed it off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, fighter jets last week also shot down objects over Canada and Alaska. Pentagon officials said they posed no security threats, but so little was known about them that Pentagon officials were ruling nothing out - not even UFOs.

"We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase," said Melissa Dalton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense.

U.S. authorities have made clear that they constantly monitor for unknown radar blips, and it is not unusual to shut down airspace as a precaution to evaluate them. But the unusually assertive response was raising questions about whether such use of force was warranted, particularly as administration officials said the objects were not of great national security concern and the downings were just out of caution.

VanHerck said the U.S. adjusted its radar so it could track slower objects. "With some adjustments, we've been able to get a better categorization of radar tracks now," he said, "and that's why I think you're seeing these, plus there's a heightened alert to look for this information."

He added: "I believe this is the first time within United States or American airspace that NORAD or United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an airborne object."

Asked if officials have ruled out extraterrestrials, VanHerck said, "I haven't ruled out anything at this point."

The Pentagon officials said they were still trying to determine what exactly the objects were and said they had considered using the jets' guns instead of missiles, but it proved to be too difficult. They drew a strong distinction between the three shot down over this weekend and the balloon from China.

The latest brought down was first detected on Saturday evening over Montana, but it was initially thought to be an anomaly. Radar picked it up again Sunday hovering over Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and it was going over Lake Huron, Pentagon officials said Sunday.

U.S. and Canadian authorities had restricted some airspace over the lake earlier Sunday as planes were scrambled to intercept and try to identify the object. According to a senior administration official, the object was octagonal, with strings hanging off, but had no discernible payload. It was flying low at about 20,000 feet, said the official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Fighter aircraft tracked the object in eastern Wisconsin, "assessed it was no threat" and continued to track it across Michigan's Upper Peninsula before shooting it down, VanHerck said. It was shot down by an AIM-9X Sidewinder from an F-16 at 2:42 p.m. Sunday.

Even before the latest shoot-down became public, members of Congress on Sunday were pressing for more information from the Biden administration about the objects shot down over North America in recent days.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the lack of details from the White House.

"I have real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming with everything that it knows," Himes said during an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Rep. Michael R. Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the Biden administration with its downing of an unknown object over Canada does "appear somewhat trigger-happy, although this is certainly preferable to the permissive environment that they showed when the Chinese spy balloon was coming over some of our most sensitive sites."

U.S. officials were still trying to precisely identify the two previous objects shot down by F-22 fighter jets and were working to determine whether China was responsible as concerns escalated about what Washington said was Beijing's large-scale aerial surveillance program.

An object shot down Saturday over Canada's Yukon was described by U.S. officials as a balloon significantly smaller than the Chinese balloon - the size of three school buses - hit by a missile Feb. 4. A flying object brought down over the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday was more cylindrical and described as a type of airship.

Both were believed to have a payload, either attached or suspended from them, according to the officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Officials were not able to say who launched the objects and were seeking to figure out their origin.

The three objects were much smaller in size, had a different appearance and flew at lower altitudes than the suspected spy balloon that fell into the Atlantic Ocean after the U.S. missile strike.

The officials said the other three objects were not consistent with the fleet of Chinese aerial surveillance balloons that targeted more than 40 countries, stretching back at least into the Trump administration.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC's "This Week" that U.S. officials were working quickly to recover debris. Using shorthand to describe the objects as balloons, he said U.S. military and intelligence officials were "focused like a laser" on gathering and accumulating the information, then compiling a comprehensive analysis.

"The bottom line is until a few months ago we didn't know about these balloons," Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the spy program that the administration has linked to the People's Liberation Army, China's military. "It is wild that we didn't know."

The cases have increased diplomatic tensions between the United States and China, raised questions about the extent of Beijing's American surveillance, and prompted days of criticism from Republican lawmakers about the administration's response.