A United States fighter jet has shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada in a joint operation by the North American neighbours.
The shootdown on Saturday was the second such action in as many days and comes as North America appeared on heightened alert following a week-long saga over a suspected Chinese spying balloon.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first announced the shootdown over the Yukon territory in the country’s north and said Canadian forces would recover and analyse the wreckage.
Canadian defence minister Anita Anand declined to speculate on the origin of the object, which she said was small and cylindrical in shape.
She stopped short of describing it as a balloon but said it was smaller than the Chinese balloon shot down off South Carolina’s coast a week ago, but similar in appearance.She said it was flying at 12,100 metres (40,000 feet) and posed a risk to civilian air traffic when it was shot down at 3:41 EST (20:41 GMT).
“There is no reason to believe that the impact of the object in Canadian territory is of any public concern,” Anand told a news conference.
The Pentagon said the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) detected the object over Alaska late on Friday evening. US fighter jets from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, monitored the object as it crossed over into Canadian airspace, where Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joined the formation.
“A US F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory using an AIM 9X missile following close coordination between US and Canadian authorities,” Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said in a statement.
US President Joe Biden authorised the country’s military to work with Canada to take down the high-altitude craft after a call between Biden and Trudeau, the Pentagon said. The White House said Biden and Trudeau agreed to continue close coordination to “defend our airspace”.
“The leaders discussed the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details on its purpose or origin,” the White House said in a statement.
Shortly after the 3:41 pm (2041 GMT) downing of the object, aviation authorities also shut down part of the airspace over the northwest US state of Montana after detecting what they called a “radar anomaly,” the US Northern Command said.
In a sign of jitters over possible intrusions, Northern Command said US fighter jets took to the skies but “did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits”. Skies were then reopened to commercial air traffic. (AlJazeera)
