US warplanes have shot down a flying object that invaded Canada’s airspace. The object was shot down over the northwestern territory of Yukon, announced the country’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Twitter.
“Canadian and American aircraft were sent up, and an American F-22 successfully fired at the object,” he writes.
Trudeau ordered the shooting down after speaking with US President Joe Biden.
“Canadian forces will now retrieve and analyze the wreckage for the object,” writes Trudeau.
Small object
The North American air defense command Norad announced on Saturday evening, Swedish time, that an “airborne object at high altitude” was detected above northern Canada.
According to Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand, the object shot down was “small” and “cylindrical”. She said they are still trying to find the downed object and only then can provide more details about it.
However, Anand said the object posed a “possible threat to civil aviation”.
Later Saturday evening, local time, parts of the airspace over the US state of Montana were closed because a flying object was spotted in the area, the FAA and Montana politician Matt Rosendale said.
Re-opened
“The FAA closed a portion of the airspace over Montana to support Department of Defense activities. The airspace has reopened,” the agency wrote in a statement.
Matt Rosendale wrote on Twitter that the airspace was closed due to “an object that could disrupt commercial air traffic”. He also wrote that efforts to bring the object down to the ground will resume on Sunday morning.
The object is the third known to have invaded North American airspace in the past two weeks. On Friday, an unidentified object the size of a small car was destroyed over Alaska, and last weekend a suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down as it passed over the United States.
In the past week, the US has accused China of using a global fleet of balloons to spy on countries around the world.
China initially denied the allegations about the balloon over the US but later claimed it was a civilian craft collecting data for research purposes.