11th February, 2023
The United States military has shot down another high-altitude object over Alaska suspected to be security threat.
This is coming six days after the US shot down Chinese Balloon over its territorial water.
The White House announced that President Joe Biden ordered the military to down what it described as a “high-altitude object” hovering over Alaska on Friday afternoon.
Fighter jets shot down the object at 1:45 p.m. ET.
According to John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, the Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours.
He said the object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.”
Kirby added that out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did.
“And it came inside our territorial waters – and those waters right now are frozen — but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters. Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour,” he said.
Kirby said: “We do not know who owns it, whether it’s state owned or corporate owned or privately owned.”
The BBC reports that the object was first spotted on Thursday night, though officials did not specify a time.
He said two fighter jets had approached the object and assessed there was nobody on board, and this information was available to Biden when he made his decision.
Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, in a tweet, said he supported the shooting down of the obect.