SKY-HIGH CONFUSION
After China balloon, other objects a mystery
What started as an Air Force takedown of an isolated and conspicuous suspected Chinese spy balloon has turned into a deepening aerial enigma.
Over three days starting Friday, U.S. fighter jets fired air-to-air missiles at three more objects, apparently balloons, knocking them from freezing northern skies. But nobody, including U.S. officials, seems to know what the U.S. downed, or the source of the objects.
One object fell to frozen waters north of Alaska on Friday. Another, ordered terminated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, met its frigid fate over Canada’s northwestern Yukon Territory on Saturday. A third was shot down over Lake Huron on Sunday.
American officials have offered a fairly thorough accounting of the Chinese balloon. It was on a spy trip, they said, before it was downed Feb. 4 in shallow water off South Carolina’s coast, capping a cross-continental flight that spanned sensitive military sites.
China has insisted that the balloon blew off course on a meteorological mission.
The last three objects, much smaller than the alleged spy balloon, are far more puzzling. The Pentagon has tried to avoid describing the devices as balloons, but it is not clear what else would be able to fly at such heights without propulsion.
On Tuesday, senators in Washington received a classified briefing on the objects. Lawmakers had little to provide when pressed on what they had learned.
“They’re not at a stage where they’re going to categorically identify them,” Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said of the intelligence community.
Sen. James Risch of Idaho, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, offered that the three latest instruments were “very, very small” — smaller than a vehicle. One object had a payload, he added.
All three objects were potential threats to civilian air travel, according to American and Canadian officials, who work jointly to patrol North America’s skies.
The objects shot down north of Alaska and in Canada were flying at about 40,000 feet, and the device downed over Lake Huron was drifting at around 20,000 feet.
Commercial planes typically cruise at between 30,000 and 42,000 feet. The hulking Chinese balloon was flying much higher — some 60,000 feet in the air — but its size allowed onlookers to watch it from the ground. Authorities have said it was about the size of three buses.
Balloon sleuths floated some theories about the objects. Perhaps they are part of a foreign spy program. Maybe they are lost research or weather balloons, felled by an oversensitive U.S. eager to shoot things down and send a message to Beijing.
Some have even wondered if the UFOs came from extraterrestrial sources. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that there was “no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.”
“I loved ‘E.T.,’ the movie,” Jean-Pierre told giggling reporters. “But I’m just going to leave it there.”
U.S. officials have charged that China has launched a growing global surveillance balloon program that went undetected during former President Donald Trump’s administration.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of North American Aerospace Defense Command, has said at least four Chinese balloons snuck into American airspace undetected — three during the Trump years and a fourth early in the Biden administration — before this month’s air show.
But there is so far no evidence that the last three objects had any links to China, let alone to spycraft. The three were not sending detectable communications signals and did not appear to have maneuvering capabilities, according to the White House.
“We have no specific reason to suspect that they were conducting surveillance,” John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said Monday. “But we can’t rule it out.”
The relatively low heights where the three objects flew have added to the puzzle.
Research balloons larger than 12 pounds, which are typically tracked by air traffic control, move through so-called controlled airspace — up to 60,000 feet — but then exit within an hour and soar to around 100,000 feet, said Terry Deshler, a professor emeritus at the University of Wyoming.
Deshler, who studies atmospheric science and has long worked in ballooning, said he thinks it is unlikely that any of the objects were on research or weather tracking missions.
“That would be surprising — if they’re some kind of one-off scientific research project,” Deshler said by phone Tuesday. “It’s a mystery.”
The White House said answers will come when the objects are retrieved. But the recovery process could be drawn out.
One object’s remains rest on arctic sea ice. Another fell to a vast, snowy Canadian forest. The third sits at the bottom of a Great Lake.