US military shoots down another unidentified flying object

The US military has shot down another unidentified flying object – this time over Lake Huron in Michigan.

The take down is the fourth in just over a week and the third in as many days after objects were shot down in Alaska and Canada on Friday and Saturday respectively.

Officials speaking to the Reuters news agency on the condition of anonymity declined to say what the latest object looked like.

They also did not reveal whether it was manoeuvrable or just floating with air currents.

Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin had tweeted that the object had been “downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard”.

US and Canadian authorities restricted some airspace over the lake, near the Canadian border, before aircraft were scrambled to intercept and try to identify the object.

Earlier, the White House said the unidentified objects shot down over Alaska and Canada previously did not resemble the Chinese “spy” balloon downed near South Carolina a week ago.

A spokesperson for its National Security Council said they were “much smaller” but added: “We will not definitively characterise them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on.”

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Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said recovery teams were searching for the object shot down over his country’s territory to work out what its purpose was.

A US F-22 stealth fighter jet brought it down on Mr Trudeau’s orders on Saturday, over the mountainous and sparsely-populated territory of Yukon in the northwest.

“Recovery teams are on the ground, looking to find and analyse the object,” Mr Trudeau told reporters as he headed for the region.

“There’s still much to know about it. That’s why the analysis of this object is going to be very important.”

Canada’s defence minister Anita Anand earlier would not speculate on where the object came from.

She described it as cylindrical in shape but said it was smaller than the Chinese balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina.

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It was flying at 40,000ft and posed a risk to civilian air traffic when it was brought down about 100 miles from the border at 3.41pm EST (8.41pm GMT), she added.

In the US, the Pentagon said that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) had spotted the object over the coast of Alaska late on Friday evening.

The US fighter jets were scrambled from the state’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and were joined by Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft after the object crossed into Canada.

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Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said that the US F-22 had shot down the object using an AIM 9X missile “following close coordination between US and Canadian authorities”.

Mr Trudeau said that the military will recover and analyse the wreckage, adding that he has spoken to US President Joe Biden and thanked NORAD for “keeping the watch over North America”.

The White House said Mr Biden and Mr Trudeau would continue close coordination to “defend our airspace”.

Earlier this week, Beijing admitted that the balloon shot down off South Carolina had come from China, but insisted it was a “civilian airship” that had strayed into American airspace and that it was for meteorological and other scientific research.

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