New Delhi: The United States shot down another "unidentified airborne" object over Lake Huron on Sunday, a day after it brought down a similar "cylindrical" object over Canada. It was the fourth such downing in eight days.
Pentagon Press Secretary Brig Gen Pat Ryder said that an F-16 fighter jet, at the direction of President Joe Biden, fired an AIM9x to successfully shoot down the airborne object flying at approximately 20,000 feet altitude in US airspace over Lake Huron in the State of Michigan.
This is the third shooting down of an unidentified aerial object in a week, after the downing of a Chinese surveillance balloon in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina last Saturday. The previous two were shot down by US fighter jets in Alaska on Friday and over Canadian airspace on Saturday.
Unlike the first balloon, which the US claims is from China, the origins of the remaining three balloons have yet to be revealed by US and Canadian officials.
On the suggestion of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Biden ordered the shooting down of the flying object on Sunday. Its path and altitude sparked worries, including the possibility that it could be a hazard to civil aviation.
The location chosen for this shootdown afforded the opportunity to avoid impact on people on the ground while improving chances for debris recovery, the Pentagon official said.
"There are no indications of any civilians hurt or otherwise affected," he noted.
North American Aerospace Defense Command maintained a visual and radar track on the object after detecting it Sunday morning.
"Based on its flight path and data we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana, which flew in proximity to sensitive DOD sites. We did not assess it to be a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground, but assess it was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities. Our team will now work to recover the object in an effort to learn more," Ryder said.
(With inputs from PTI)