- Sam Cabral – Julio Kim
- BBC – Washington
A White House spokesman suggested that the downed object did not have maneuvering capabilities
The White House said a “high-altitude object” was shot down over Alaska on Friday.
White House spokesman John Kirby said the object was “regarding the size of a small car” and was over a sparsely populated area.
Kirby added that President Joe Biden made the decision to drop the object, the identity of which was not known.
This comes following the United States shot down a Chinese balloon over its territorial waters last Saturday.
Kirby explained, in a press conference at the White House on Friday, that the object that was flying over Alaska was moving at an altitude of 40,000 feet and might pose a threat to civilian aircraft.
He confirmed that the unidentified object fell in frozen US waters, adding that the scope of the debris fall “was much smaller” than the balloon that was shot down last week off the coast of South Carolina.
“We don’t know who owns this object, or whether it is owned by a state, a company, or whether it is private property,” Kirby said.
The object was spotted for the first time last Thursday, but officials did not mention a specific time for monitoring it.
He added that two fighter planes approached the object and assessed that it was unmanned, and this information was within reach of Biden when he made his decision.
The Director of the Pentagon Media Center, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, confirmed that an F-22 fighter jet shot down the moving object, which was flying at an unknown speed, with a side missile at 18:45 GMT.
Ryder said that a large part of the wreckage was recovered, stressing that it was loaded in containers and transported to “laboratories for further analysis that may help in reaching a greater understanding of the nature of this balloon and its monitoring capabilities.”
image copyright Getty Images
An F-22 fighter jet shot down the object that was flying over Alaska
The concerned officials have not yet determined whether this object was used for surveillance purposes, as Kirby corrected a reporter who used the name “airship” to refer to that flying object.
It did not say where the object was dropped, but the Federal Aviation Administration said it closed the airspace over Deadhorse in northern Alaska before it was shot down by the US fighter.
The White House confirmed that no other objects of a nature threatening the United States appeared at that time.
Kirby said that the object did not appear to have the ability to maneuver like a Chinese balloon, suggesting that it was “flying in the wind.”
A few hours following the balloon was shot down last Saturday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tried to contact his Chinese counterpart via a private crisis line.
But Chinese Defense Minister Wei Feng did not answer the call, according to the Pentagon.
Chinese officials accused the United States of “political manipulation and propaganda”.
