Hobbyists say U.S. ‘trigger-happy’

Shoot-downs leave balloonists concerned

Decisions to shoot down multiple unidentified objects over the U.S. and Canada this month have put a spotlight on amateur balloonists who insist their creations pose no threat.

Over the past three weeks, President Joe Biden has ordered fighter jets to shoot down three objects detected in U.S. air space — a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast and smaller unidentified objects over Alaska and Lake Huron. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week ordered another object to be shot down over the Yukon; a U.S. fighter jet carried out that mission.

U.S. government officials have yet to identify the objects, but Biden said Thursday that they were probably balloons linked to private companies, weather researchers or hobbyists.

Tom Medlin, the owner of the Tennessee-based Amateur Radio Roundtable podcast and a balloon hobbyist himself, said he has been in contact with an Illinois club that suspects the object shot down over the Yukon was one of their balloons. No one from the club responded to messages left Friday, but Medlin said that the club was tracking the balloon and it disappeared over the Yukon on the same day the unidentified object was shot down.

The incidents have left balloonists scrambling to defend their hobby. They insist that their balloons fly too high and are too small to pose a threat to aircraft and that government officials are overreacting.

“The spy balloon had to be shot down,” Medlin said. “That’s a national security threat, for sure. Then what happened is, I think, the government got a little anxious. Maybe the word is trigger-happy. I don’t know. When they shot them down, they didn’t know what they were. That’s a little concerning.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday that the Biden administration wasn’t able to confirm reports that the object belonged to the Illinois club. He said that the debris has yet to be recovered and “we all have to accept the possibility that we may not be able to recover it.”

U.S. officials said Friday that they’ve stopped searching for debris from the objects shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron after finding nothing.

Tom Medlin The Associated Press Ed Harrison launches a pico balloon, which costs about $12 and is about 32 inches in diameter, on June 11 in a field near Collierville, Tenn.