National Security Council official John Kirby confirmed at the White House that the US military shot down a “high-altitude object” flying over Alaskan airspace and Arctic waters on Friday afternoon.
Kirby said the US does not know who owns the object, and he would not call it a balloon, as in the one reportedly owned by the Chinese government that the US military shot down on Saturday.
“We’re calling it an object because that’s the best description we have right now,” Kirby told reporters during a White House briefing. “We don’t know who owns it, whether it is state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned. We don’t know now.
He said the Pentagon had been tracking the object for the past 24 hours.
“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 a White House briefing. “Out of an abundance of caution, and on the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to take the object down and they did and it came inside our territorial waters and those waters are frozen now.”
Fighter jets assigned to the US Northern Command downed the object “within the last hour”, Kirby said at around 2:30 p.m. et. He added that the pilots were able to determine that it was “unmanned” before it was shot down.
President Joe Biden made brief comments on the matter in response to a question from reporters at the White House. “Success,” the president said about the fall of the object.
Kirby said the pilots shot down the object over the Arctic Ocean, near the Canadian border, just off the northeastern part of Alaska.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that he was “briefed on the matter and supports the decision to take action. Our military and intelligence services will always work together, including @NORADCommand, to keep people safe.”
US officials do not understand the object’s full purpose, Kirby said, adding that the US is hopeful it will be able to recover the wreckage. “A recovery attempt will be made, and we hope that it will be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it,” he said.
Kirby said the object, which the US learned about on Thursday evening, was described as “roughly the size of a small car”.
Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder provided additional details in a briefing with reporters, noting that the object was shot down at 1:45 p.m. et.
Ryder said the US initially detected the object on ground-based radar and investigated it using aircraft. He said an F-22 fighter jet shot down the object using an A9X missile.
US Northern Command coordinated the operation with assistance from the Alaska Air National Guard, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the FBI, Ryder said.
The Pentagon said on Friday night that the debris-recovery process was underway amid a mix of snow and ice, and the response included the Alaska National Guard as well as Alaska-based units under the direction of the US Northern Command.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” that the incident was a “threat to our sovereignty.”
“We need to be clear … that we do not tolerate this,” Murkowski said, adding that she had received a classified briefing on the matter.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said he was briefed about the object by senior Pentagon officials and said the US needed to “re-establish deterrence” in response to the Chinese government, which He “believes they can intrude into American airspace whenever they wish.”
“This must stop. The best way to do that is through the type of actions we’ve taken over Alaska today and publicly reiterate that we will shoot down any and all unidentified aircraft that violate our airspace,” said Sullivan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement. “We need to properly equip our forces in Alaska with sensors and aircraft to detect and, if necessary, slow-moving Destroy everything from balloons to hypersonic missiles.”
In an interview on Fox News, Sullivan later stated that the object was shot down near the Prudhoe Bay oil fields in Deadhorse, Alaska.
The Pentagon said the object was traveling northeast over Alaska when it was first detected.
Asked why the US is taking more immediate action in bringing down the object than in response to alleged Chinese spy balloons, Ryder said, “In this particular case, given the fact that it was operating at an altitude was a justifiable threat. To civilian air traffic, the determination was made and the President ordered it taken down.”
Civilian aircraft, he said, typically operate at around 40,000 to 45,000 feet and so the object presented a “danger or potential danger to civilian air traffic”.
The suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down last week was determined by the Pentagon to be traveling at an altitude of about 60,000 feet.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va. tweeted that he was “pleased to see the President act swiftly on this new intrusion into our airspace.”
“I look forward to more information becoming public as the recovery and investigation continues,” Warner said.
Kirby said the object, located in Alaska, did not have the ability to maneuver independently like the Chinese balloon, which flew over the U.S. for eight days before splashing down off the coast of South Carolina.
Kirby said, “The first one was able to maneuver, and the Maverick, slow, fast.” “It was very purposeful.”
While the Pentagon said last week that the balloon posed no physical or military threat to the US, it raised concerns about the potential for collecting sensitive information and raised tensions between Beijing and Washington.
In several sightings, the balloon flew close to key sites related to the US nuclear arsenal. A senior State Department official revealed Thursday that it carried “multiple antennas” capable of gathering signals intelligence and solar panels to power “multiple active intelligence collection sensors.” US officials have said the balloon’s ability to collect more information than Chinese satellites was limited.
Under Biden’s authority, the balloon was shot down by an F-22 Raptor with a Sidewinder missile. The Navy has since attempted to collect its debris, which is being analyzed at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
The balloons affair caused Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel his planned visit to Beijing, which would have been the first by a US secretary of state since Mike Pompeo’s visit in 2018. The recent agitation between the two countries was expected to reduce. Instead, China and the US have clashed over an alleged spy balloon program.
It has also sparked a political firestorm in Congress, as Republicans and Democrats have demanded answers from the Biden administration about why it chose to respond to the balloon so late, and similar Chinese balloons in previous years were recently exposed. Why was it done?
“Do we have a plan for the next time this happens and how do we deal with it?” Sen. John Tester, D-Mont. asked defense officials testifying Thursday on Capitol Hill about the alleged spy balloons. “Because, quite frankly, I’ll just tell you this: I don’t want a damn balloon across the United States.”