Flying objects could turn out to be harmless, US says

WASHINGTON – A top White House official said on Tuesday that

three unidentified flying objects shot down

in the past several days might turn out to be harmless commercial or research efforts that pose no real threat to the US.

Mr John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said investigators have not found any evidence that the three objects were connected to China’s programme of balloon surveillance similar to the alleged spy balloon shot down off South Carolina’s coast on Feb 4.

He also said officials have not yet been able to find and collect the debris from the three objects shot down. That means a different conclusion could be reached if the debris is found and analysed.

Mr Kirby said military and intelligence officials have found nothing to suggest the three objects were part of an intelligence collection effort by another country.

“We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the PRC’s spying programme or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,” he told reporters, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

US fighter aircraft shot down three unidentified flying objects from Friday to Sunday: the first over Prudhoe Bay, Alaska; the second over the Yukon Territory of Canada; and the third over Lake Huron. The third object landed on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, officials said.

The Pentagon also acknowledged on Tuesday that the first missile fired by a US fighter jet over Lake Huron on Sunday missed the target. General Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Brussels that the missile that missed its target is now at the bottom of Lake Huron.

“First shot missed. Second shot hit,” Gen Milley said. “We go to great lengths to make sure that the airspace is clear and the backdrop is clear up to the max effective range of the missile. And in this case, the missiles land, or the missile landed, harmlessly in the water of Lake Huron.”

Recovery units are trying to retrieve the unidentified objects so intelligence officials can determine what they are. Efforts are also on to recover the debris left after an F-22 shot down a Chinese “spy” balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb 4.

Officials on Monday said crews had recovered “significant debris” from the craft that included “priority sensor and electronics pieces”.

Mr Kirby’s comments came as senior Pentagon and intelligence community officials, including General Glen VanHerck, the head of North American Aerospace Defence Command and US Northern Command, visited the Capitol on Tuesday to deliver a similar message to the full Senate.

The briefing was the latest effort by the administration to update lawmakers on the series of strange floating objects shot down. But the admission that the administration had more questions than answers about three of the objects prompted a fresh wave of frustration among lawmakers.

They criticised not only the slow recovery effort but also the administration’s lack of clarity about what was floating overhead in the first place.

“Everyone’s talking, acting like this is the first time we’ve ever seen these things,” said Senator Marco Rubio from Florida. “No, it isn’t.”

Mr Rubio, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, also questioned whether the craft should have been brought down, and that just recovering the debris would not give a full picture of what is happening in the skies above the US.

“The only way you’re going to get answers to that is not just to retrieve whatever is leftover, but to understand how it compares to the hundreds of other similar cases,” Mr Rubio said.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who chairs the committee, said the government’s tracking of airborne objects launched for legitimate purposes needs to be improved.

He added that “there is not anywhere near as formal a process as there probably should be”.

Mr Warner said the administration needs to be “much more aggressive” about ensuring “a much better notification process with the authorities” to register legitimate scientific, weather and other craft so officials know which outliers are potentially cause for alarm.

The full Senate was most recently briefed about

the Chinese “spy” balloon less than a week ago

in a closed-door session.

It precipitated pointed questions from Democrats and Republicans alike about why the craft had not been brought down as soon as it was detected hovering over Alaska.

Republicans emerged from Tuesday’s briefing still questioning whether administration officials were being forthcoming with the information they were delivering to Congress and questioning whether their briefings needed to be so secretive.

Yet lawmakers shared a sense that the three airborne objects brought down since the “spy” balloon incident, over Alaska, Canada and Michigan, should be considered in a separate category.

“The last three that were shot down were very, very small objects,” said Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after Tuesday’s briefing.

He noted that “at least one” of the three, however, was carrying a payload, though he did not specify the size.

Mr Kirby said the Federal Aviation Administration has determined that the objects were not operated by the US government.

One possible explanation for the objects, he said, might be that they were operated by private companies or research institutes.

“They will not dismiss as a possibility that these could be balloons that were simply tied to commercial or research entities and therefore benign,” Mr Kirby said. “That very well could be, or could emerge, as a leading explanation here.”

But he said that no company or other organisation had contacted the government to say they were the owners of the objects that were shot down. NYTIMES