New information has emerged about the object that was shot down in the American sky.
Officials said there was no indication of collateral damage and that the facility fell into the lake and officials expect to recover it. The FAA briefly closed a portion of the airspace over Lake Michigan on Sunday to support Defense Department activities, the agency said in a statement. The airspace has since been reopened. Michigan Representatives Jack Bergman and Elisa Slotkin announced earlier Sunday that they spoke to the Department of Defense and that an “object” over Lake Huron had been shot down.
“I was in contact with the Department of Defense regarding operations throughout the Great Lakes region today. The US military shot down another ‘object’ over Lake Huron. I appreciate the decisive action of our fighter pilots,” Bergman tweeted. “The American people deserve a lot more answers than we do.”
Slotkin tweeted: “The facility was shot down by US Air Force and National Guard pilots. Great job by all who executed this mission both in the air and back at HQ. We are all interested in what exactly it was. She added that she would continue to ask Congress for a full briefing.”
MORE – F-16 fighter jet downed the octagon-shaped object over Lake Huron at an altitude of 20,000 feet.
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv)February 12, 2023
US Northern Command and NORAD were originally detected a radar contact and sent fighter jets to investigate, said a senior administration official. Those aircraft did not identify any objects, leading NORTHCOM and NORAD to believe it could be an anomaly and continue to monitor the situation.
Ali NORTHCOM/NORAD reestablished radar contact on Sunday and detected an unmanned object from Montana flying over Wisconsin and Michigan, the official said. Discovered the unmanned object was located over the upper peninsula of Michigan at about 6,000 meters.
The object’s trajectory and altitude raised concerns, including that it could poses a danger to civil aviationcontinued the official, and the president Joe Biden, out of an abundance of caution and on the recommendation of military leaders, ordered the unidentified object to be shot down. It’s unclear whether the facility has surveillance capabilities, the official added. It is presented as an octagonal structure with hanging wires, but no visible load.
After a Chinese surveillance balloon was shot down this month, the U.S. military is now looking at a wider range of radar data as it monitors North American airspace, two U.S. defense officials told NBC News. It remains unclear whether the military now observes objects that were present but were not observed, or there are new aerial objects that were not present before. A US defense official said the North American Aerospace Defense Command is looking at more raw radar data than before.
“The easiest comparison is an online car search, when you use filters for color, model, etc. and you see the search results, then you go back and say turn off the color filter and you see more options,” the official told NBC. “The data has always been there, but because of the way we process radar data into visualizations for decision-making, nsome of these data were screened. Now we’re actively tweaking that process to improve how we see, which of course affects what we see.”
“We still don’t know if these phenomena have existed for a while and we’re just now seeing them, or if this is new,” the official added. “Between object recovery data and pass-through or technical radar data, we’re working towards a better understanding.”
(WORLD)