A US warplane shot down an unidentified object over Canada on Saturday afternoon, on the orders of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, marking a new incident in North American skies since the downing of a supposed Chinese spy balloon last week.
Justin Trudeau announced on Saturday that a ” unidentified object was shot down while flying over the northwest of the country, a day after the United States destroyed a flying object over Alaska. ” I ordered an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace to be brought down tweeted Justin Trudeau. ” Planes from Canada and the United States were dispatched to the scene, and the firing ” of an AIM 9X missile from an American F-22 ” has reached his target.
US President Joe Biden had authorized the aircraft, one of the aircraft of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), to ” working with canada Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder explained.
The Canadian Forces “ will now collect and analyze the debris from the object added the Canadian Prime Minister.
The object was flying at an altitude of 12,200 meters, detailed the Minister of National Defense of Canada, Anita Anand, during a press conference on Saturday evening, and was shot down about 160 km from the Canada-Canada border. American around 8:40 p.m. UT.
The object is a ” cylindrical device smaller than the balloon destroyed in North Carolina last week, said the Canadian Minister of Defense.
” For now, we are continuing the analyzes of the object, so it would not be prudent for me to speculate on its origin. “, she added, before thanking the Pentagon and the members of the Canadian and American armies for their collaboration.
Third slaughter in a week
Earlier in the afternoon, Anita Anand, had claimed on Twitter to have exchanged with her American counterpart, the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Lloyd Austin, reaffirming that ” we will always defend our sovereignty together “.
Justin Trudeau spoke to US President Joe Biden about the downed target over the Yukon, a territory in northwestern Canada bordering Alaska where US forces destroyed another flying object on Friday, ” the size of a small car because he represented a threat to air traffic safety “, according to John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council of the White House.
It is therefore the second flying object shot down by the United States in some 24 hours. Search and recovery operations for the remains of the object destroyed on Friday continued on Saturday but were hampered by “ cooling arctic air, snow and limited daylight “, said the U.S. Northern Command in a statement, adding that the Pentagon could not provide ” no other details (…) about the object, including its abilities, purpose or origin “.
And on Saturday night, airspace was temporarily closed in Montana due to the presence of a ” object that could interfere with commercial air traffic “, according to the elected of the House of Representatives Matt Rosendale. The Department of Defense ” will continue efforts to observe and neutralize the object in the morning “, first informed the American civil aviation regulator (FAA). Before the Pentagon evokes a ” radar anomaly detected but no object identified…
The downings come a week after Washington destroyed a balloon off its Atlantic coast, which had flown over sensitive military sites and had been described by Beijing as an aircraft ” civilian used for research purposes, mainly meteorological “.
Footage captured by US military aircraft shows that the Chinese balloon that flew over the United States last week was well equipped with spy tools and not intended for weather forecasting.
This diplomatic clash had led the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken to postpone a rare visit to China.
The American authorities are still busy collecting the debris from the balloon in the Atlantic, near the coast of South Carolina.
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(With AFP)