BREAKING: U.S. Closes Airspace Over Lake Michigan

U.S. military shoots down unidentified object over Lake Huron
NBC Universal
JULIE TSIRKIN AND COURTNEY KUBE AND SUMMER CONCEPCION AND DAN DE LUCE AND MONICA ALBA
February 12, 2023, 1:04 PM

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military shot down an unidentified object Sunday over Lake Huron, the Defense Department confirmed — the fourth flying object in less than two weeks to have been downed over North American airspace.

In a statement, the Pentagon said an F-16 fighter firing an AIM9x missile shot the object down at 2:42 p.m. at roughly 20,000 feet.

President Joe Biden gave the order based on the recommendations of military leadership after the object's path and altitude raised concerns about risks to civil aviation. It was judged not to be a military threat, but it could have had surveillance capabilities, the statement said.

A senior administration official described the object as an octagonal structure with strings hanging off but no discernible payload.

The official said U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command initially detected a radar contact and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. The aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits, which led NORTHCOM and NORAD to believe it could be an anomaly and to continue to monitor the situation.

But on Sunday morning, NORAD detected an object and maintained visual and radar tracking of it, the Pentagon statement said. "Based on its flight path and data we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana, which flew in proximity to sensitive DOD sites."

The location of the shootdown was chosen to minimize risks to people on the ground and to improve chances to recover the debris, the statement said. There were no indications any civilians were hurt or otherwise affected, it said.

The Federal Aviation Administration briefly closed some airspace over Lake Michigan on Sunday to support Pentagon activities, the agency said in a statement. The airspace has been reopened.

Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., whose district includes the area where the object was shot down, tweeted that he had been briefed and in a later post called the response a "decisive action, using the right equipment."

He also noted the challenges debris recovery could present. "Lake Huron is very, very cold this time of year. They’re going to have to use some special diving capabilities to get down there."

Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., tweeted earlier Sunday: "The object has been downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard. Great work by all who carried out this mission both in the air and back at headquarters. We’re all interested in exactly what this object was and it’s [sic] purpose." She added that she will continue to ask Congress for a full briefing.

After news broke that the object had been downed, Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., tweeted that the Pentagon had notified them that an object over Lake Huron had been shot down.

After the Chinese surveillance balloon was downed this month, the U.S. military is now looking at a wider range of radar data as it monitors North American airspace and is looking at more objects and smaller objects that it might have filtered out as clutter in the past, two U.S. defense officials said. The Washington Post was first to report the shift.

It remains unclear whether the military is now spotting objects that have been present but not noticed or there are new aerial objects that were not present before.

A U.S. defense official said NORAD is looking at more raw radar data than previously.

“The easiest comparison is an online search for a car, when you use filters for color, model, etc., and see the search results, then go back and say, ‘Turn off the color filter,’ and you see more options,” the official told NBC News. “The data was always there, but due to how we process radar data into visualizations for decision-making, some of that data was screened out. We’re actively adjusting that process now to refine how we see, which of course affects what we see.

“We don’t yet know whether these phenomena have been there for a while and we’re just now seeing them or if this is new," the official added. "Between data from object recovery and going through our technical radar data, we are working toward better understanding."

On Feb. 4, an F-22 Raptor shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon with a missile off South Carolina near Myrtle Beach.

Then, on Friday, the U.S. military shot down a "high-altitude object" flying over Alaskan airspace and Arctic waters. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby described the object, flying at roughly 40,000 feet, as “roughly the size of a small car.”

And Saturday, a U.S. fighter jet shot down another unidentified object over Canada on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's orders.

Here's why mysterious flying objects are suddenly popping up all over the place, according to the military command that's been shooting them down
Jake Epstein, Grace Eliza Goodwin | INSIDER
February 14, 223

Four suspicious flying objects have been shot down over North American skies in recent days.

The NORAD commander explained why more of these objects seem to suddenly be popping up.

NORAD changed its radar filters to help spot smaller, slower objects after a Chinese spy balloon drifted over the US.

A US Air Force general overseeing a bilateral command tasked with defending US and Canadian airspace explained that's there's a reason mysterious flying objects seem to suddenly be popping up all over the place. The command has changed the way it looks for them and is now finding more of these objects.

Four objects, one Chinese surveillance balloon and three other smaller objects, were shot down in the span of about a week, and the North American military command that's been involved in shooting down these objects flying over the US and Canada revealed in a briefing Sunday that the uptick in discovery and engagement follows a tweak of its radar filters after the Chinese spy balloon drifted across the continental US earlier this month.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command, said that NORAD started searching for much smaller, slower-moving flying objects, while also making adjustments to filtration based on altitude. Typically, NORAD's radar detection is searching for fighter jets or bombers, which move at high speeds.

"What we're seeing is very, very small objects that produce a very, very low radar cross-section," VanHerck said. "These are very, very slow objects in the space, if you will, going at the speed of the wind essentially."

VanHerck said he believes the increased ability to detect these objects can be attributed to the radar adjustments and that operators are on "heightened alert" and looking more closely for these smaller and slower objects. Since the US Air Force shot down the Chinese balloon in early February, fighter jets have downed three additional airborne objects.

An F-22 Raptor, a stealth fifth-generation fighter jet, fired a single AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missile to down the Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4, sending the large system plummeting over 60,000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean.

Just days later, on February 10, an F-22 used an AIM-9X to down an unidentified object over Alaska. US officials said this object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a threat to civilian aircraft. On February 11, the next day, an F-22 fired an AIM-9X to take down an object over northern Canada.

The F-22, which notched its first three air-to-air kills after nearly two decades in service, was finally given a rest on Sunday, when an F-16 — still using the AIM-9X — took down an object over Lake Huron that was flying at a low altitude of 20,000 feet, well below the cruising altitude of many commercial airliners.

While the US identified the first object as a high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon, North American militaries have yet to explain publically what the other objects are — aside from offering a few details about size and shape — and what purpose they serve.

Melissa Dalton, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, said on Sunday that although the US has not been able to identify what these recent objects were from over the weekend, the decision to shoot them down was still made out of an "abundance of caution to protect our security and interests."

She added that the recent objects did not pose a "kinetic military threat," but they were traveling in proximity to "sensitive" US military sites and that their relatively low altitude could possibly threaten civilian aircraft.

"We have been more closely scrutinizing our air space at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we've detected over the past week," Dalton noted. "We also know that a range of entities, including countries, companies, research organizations operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate research."

As recovery teams work to collect debris from the downed objects, it's not immediately clear where they all came from. Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters at a briefing last week that China operates a global network of surveillance balloons that extends across five continents and multiple regions, but it is unclear if the objects that were downed in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon were also of Chinese origin.

Bottlecap Balloon Brigade - an Illinois hobby group - claims its $13 weather balloon last pinged near Yukon on February 10 - hours before F-22 brought down UFO in SAME area with $400k missile
By LEWIS PENNOCK FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:52 EST, 16 February 2023 | UPDATED: 19:45 EST, 16 February 2023

Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade reported one of its balloons 'missing in action' around the same time location jets downed an object over Alaska

It's now suspected the object shot down using $400,000 Sidewinder missile may have been the group's balloon

Hobby balloons cost as little as $12 and carry device that transmits their location

A mystery object shot down by U.S. fighter jets amid ongoing hysteria sparked by a Chinese spy balloon may have been a $12 inflatable launched by a hobby group in Illinois.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB) reported one of its balloons 'missing in action' around the same location - and at the time time - a U.S. Air Force jet downed an unidentified object near Alaska using a $400,000 Sidewinder missile.

NIBBB said its 'K9YO' balloon last reported its location shortly before 1am GMT on Saturday, February 11 (8pm EST on February 10), near the coast of southwest Alaska.

Later on Saturday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared an 'unidentified object' was downed over Canada's Yukon territory, several hundred miles from K9YO's last known location.

Modeling shared by NIBBB shows its balloon was headed in the direction of Yukon before it vanished - and opens up the possibility it was one of the suspicious objects down by the U.S. military.


The hobby balloon's last known location over Alaska came several hours before a fighter jet downed an unknown object several hundred miles away over Canada. A map of the hobby balloon's predicted path indicates it was heading towards the site where the UFO was downed


An unidentified object shot down by U.S. fighter jets using a $400,000 Sidewinder missile could have been a balloon launched by an Illinois-based hobby group. It's been speculated the hobby group could have used the balloon pictured above, which can be bought for under $15

More story and many pics at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11760443/Did-Joe-Biden-shoot-hobbyists-12-balloon-380-000-missile.html

This could be the start of some epic trolling

oliver clotheshoffe wrote:

This could be the start of some epic trolling  

Yep.