The U.S. military on Friday took down an object flying over Alaskan airspace days after shooting down a Chinese spy balloon along the South Carolina coast, the White House confirmed.
John Kirby, a national security spokesperson for the White House, said the Defense Department was tracking a “high-altitude object” over Alaska at 40,000 feet that posed “a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.
The object was shot down within the last hour at President Biden’s direction, Kirby said, and landed in U.S. waters.
The government is still collecting information about the object, Kirby said. It is not yet known whether it was operated by another country, or if it was privately or commercially owned. Kirby also would not say if the object was a balloon or another device.
“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now,” he told reporters.
“We don’t understand the full purpose. We don’t have any information that would confirm a stated purpose for this object,” he continued, adding that officials expect to be able to recover the debris.
The object was shot down by military aircraft that are part of U.S. Northern Command.
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The object shot down Friday was much smaller than the Chinese balloon, Kirby said, comparing ito to a small car, while the Chinese balloon was the size of three buses.
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#BREAKING: US shoots down another ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaskan airspace https://t.co/tR5p5aVdUd pic.twitter.com/xDlSdLhY9u
— The Hill (@thehill) February 10, 2023
Kirby said the object was much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down near South Carolina last Saturday — about the “size of a small car" — and that a “recovery effort will be made” for the object, which he said landed on frozen water off the coast of Alaska. pic.twitter.com/z5fYo1JBAv
— POLITICO (@politico) February 10, 2023
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