Unidentified objects: What’s behind the rise in aerial shootdowns?

A string of shooting downs involving balloons and other flying objects has occurred over North America as the US military becomes sensitive to an unidentified aerial phenomenon.

To Jeremy Hsu

The increase in US fighter jets shooting down unidentified airborne objects over North America is no coincidence. Instead, the time has come for the U.S. and Canadian militaries to step up scrutiny of all flying objects in the wake of the first February 4 downing of a balloon suspected of being a spy from China. , comes after years of military reports on mysterious incidents filed under the catchall term of an unidentified aerial phenomenon.

“This is nothing new,” says Brynn Tannehill of RAND Corporation, a California-based think tank. “I suspect the filters in the U.S. system have hitherto ignored things that were too late, too high or too small to be considered a threat.”

Military radar systems operated by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a military organization run by the United States and Canada, are seeing more of what was already there after being tuned to have greater sensitivity. increase. This has led White House officials to describe these flying objects as posing a threat to civilian air traffic, leading to several additional flying objects being tracked and shot down within days. rice field.

NORAD Commander Glen VanHerck also discusses the possibility of looking back. Unfiltered radar data to find additional such flying objects.

NORAD now relies on Cold War-era radar stations to monitor North American airspace. Canada will spend approximately C$40 billion on NORAD’s modernization program over the next 20 years, including C$7 billion on radar systems and other sensors that can track potential threats from the Canadian-U.S. border to the Arctic. are going to spend

U.S. military officials have yet to publicly confirm the origin of the object, other than the first surveillance balloon launched by China. White House spokesperson Carine Jean-Pierre said, “There are no signs of alien or extraterrestrial activity in these recent removals.

The Pentagon had tracked an unidentified aerial phenomenon witnessed by US military personnel prior to the downing. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence previously found in its 2022 annual report that balloons account for 163 of the 366 phenomena. This is by far the most common explanation.

Of these phenomena, another 26 were characterized as drones and 6 were described as “clutter” such as birds, weather phenomena, and plastic bags.

U.S. officials have so far only identified the first object shot down on February 4 as a surveillance balloon launched by China. new york times A leading Chinese scientist has publicly stated in 2019 that he had traveled most of the world, including passing through North America, by sending a steerable balloon.

China’s foreign ministry describes the balloon as a capricious weather device. The US also claims he has flown high-altitude balloons over China more than 10 times since early 2022, a claim the White House flatly denies.

Determining the origin of modern flying objects may not be easy. Especially when they are built with off-the-shelf off-the-shelf parts. “If someone throws a clock radio at you and the broken piece inside says ‘Made in China,’ that doesn’t mean China threw it at you,” he said. say. She said the White House was “struck between responding quickly and getting the facts right.”