Search teams are on the ground in Canada’s Yukon Territory searching for an object that a US F-22 fighter jet shot down on Saturday, the third object downed in a week in North American airspace, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
“Recovery teams are out in the field, trying to find and analyze the object,” Trudeau told reporters Sunday morning.
“I also spoke with President Biden yesterday afternoon and jointly confirmed that we will continue to do whatever it takes to protect the sovereignty of our shared North American airspace, but also do whatever it takes to keep our citizens safe.”
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) first detected the “high-flying aerial object” flying approximately 40,000 feet over Alaska late Friday evening and jets scrambled to monitor it and “characterize the nature of the object”.
An F-22 fighter jet takes off from Langley Air Force Base. (US Norcom)
A US F-22 Raptor shot down the object using an AIM 9X missile over Canada on Saturday afternoon.
REPUBLICS REACT TO THIRD ‘OBJECT’ SHOCKED ON CANADA: ‘UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGE’
Separately, US fighters shot down another object on Friday over northern Alaska. Both incidents came about a week after the United States shot down a much larger, 200-foot-tall Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4.
US officials are still working to recover the plane that was shot down over Alaska, but “it could be some time before we get access to it,” a senior US official told Fox News, citing weather conditions around this time. of the year.
The last two objects were both unmanned and neither could be guided. The downed object over Canada is believed to be a “small metal balloon with an attached payload,” a US official said. The country of origin of both last items is unknown.
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The Federal Aviation Administration also “briefly closed some airspace over Lake Michigan to support Department of Defense activities” Sunday morning. The US military investigated a “potential contact” who was determined not to pose a threat, and the airspace was reopened.
Jennifer Griffin of Fox News contributed to this report.
