Radar anomaly prompts US FAA to briefly close some Montana airspace

WASHINGTON – The US military said late on Saturday that a radar anomaly prompted the temporary closure of airspace to civilian airplanes in Montana, but no threatening object was detected.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) sent fighter aircraft to investigate, but the aircraft “did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits”. It added that Norad will continue to monitor the situation.

Earlier on Saturday, a US F-22 fighter jet

shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada,

the second such shoot-down in as many days.

Canada and the United States have been on heightened alert following an episode earlier in February when a Chinese high-altitude balloon that the US said was spying on it was tracked from Montana to South Carolina and then shot down off the coast.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) earlier on Saturday closed and then reopened airspace in Montana after temporarily barring flights in an area of about 50 nautical miles by 50 nautical miles (about 93km by 93km) around Havre, Montana, near the Canadian border.

The FAA issued similar flight restrictions in response to the earlier suspected Chinese spy balloon.

Three lawmakers said on Twitter that there was an unidentified object seen in Montana airspace on Saturday.

Representative Matt Rosendale, a Montana Republican, said on Twitter that he was in contact with the US military “and monitoring the latest issue over Havre and the northern border”.

He said the issue was because of “an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic – the DOD (Department of Defence) will resume efforts to observe and ground the object in the morning.”

Senator Jon Tester of Montana wrote on Twitter that he was “aware of the object in Montana airspace and (would) remain in close contact with senior DOD and administration officials”. REUTERS