An American radar detected an anomaly in Montana (in the northern US) on Saturday. The aviation authority, the FAA, closed the airspace around Havre, near the Canadian border, for defense-related reasons.
Republican Congressman Matt Rosendale stated on his Twitter account that he was in direct contact with military commanders and that there was another unidentified flying object. The fighters went out to investigate and found nothing. False alarm? This Sunday, the radars detected another signal on Lake Huron. The fighters mobilised and neutralised a new unidentified flying object, which joins those shot down by US missiles on Friday and Saturday in Alaskan waters and the Yukon region of Canada, the three events so far involved in the mystery.
To add to the confusion, a Pentagon spokesman said this Sunday at a press conference, when asked about it, that he did not even dare rule out that they were objects of alien or extraterrestrial origin. “I will let the intelligence and counterintelligence find out.” I have not ruled anything out at this time. “We continue to assess every unknown threat or potential threat approaching North America with the intent to identify it,” said Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, Air Force Northern Command Commander.
The one shot down on Friday was the size of a small car; the one shot down on Saturday was cylindrical in shape; and the one on Sunday was octagonal.
The detection and demolition of these three objects also came the week after a Chinese balloon crossed the United States at high altitude. According to the Department of State, this balloon was equipped with antennas capable of detecting and intercepting communications signals and other instruments unsuitable for the civilian character of a meteorological balloon that China attributes to it. Washington maintains that the balloon is part of a Chinese espionage programme that has flown over more than 40 countries on five continents. The incident has raised diplomatic tension between the two superpowers.
Questions remain about the objects in Alaska and the Yukon. Of the first, the White House said it was the size of a small car (much smaller than the Chinese balloon, which would be the equivalent of several buses) and that it was flying at an altitude of about 40,000 feet (just over 12,000 meters). It did not pose a military threat, according to the Pentagon, but it did pose a risk to air traffic, as commercial planes typically have a cruising altitude of 40,000 to 45,000 feet. It was detected on Thursday and shot down on Friday by an F-22 with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile on the orders of US President Joe Biden.
The remains fell onto the frozen waters. Finding the remains of a car-sized object shot down by a short-range missile 40,000 feet above the northern Alaskan sea ice amid snow and temperatures well below freezing is no easy task. simple. For now, the Pentagon has not found the remains and does not know its capabilities, its origin, or its purpose.
The downed object over the northwestern Yukon was detected Friday by the US Joint Air Command, which coordinates the Canadian and US air forces in the region. It was shot down by another American F-22 on the orders of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had previously spoken with Biden. Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said Saturday that it looked more like the Chinese balloon but was smaller and cylindrical in shape. Its origin, capabilities, and purpose are not known either, although the fighters that followed its trajectory had more time to observe it and have recorded it with their cameras. The wreckage fell in a remote and rugged area, and recovery efforts are also underway.
FANI instead of a UFO
The leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, said this Sunday that he had spoken with the White House and that it was believed that the first two were balloons, but much smaller than the Chinese one. However, in the afternoon, General VanHerck assured: “We are calling them objects and not balloons for a reason.” More mystery.
Of the third object, the one shot down this Sunday over Lake Huron, the Pentagon reported that it was flying at an altitude of about 20,000 metres and was apparently octagonal in shape.
It is known that all three were objects, that they were flying, and that, unlike the Chinese balloon, they are not identified. As a result, they fit the definition of a UFO. But in the collective imagination, the word “UFO” is loaded with connotations that refer to extraterrestrials, so the authorities and the mainstream media have generally avoided joining the acronyms, even though they have used each of the parts (unidentified flying object, or UFO,).
Partly because of these connotations and also to open the analysis to other sightings that are not specifically objects nor strictly flying, authorities and scientists have chosen to rename UFOs as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP for its acronym in English, FANI in Spanish). The official number of registered FANI, however, has skyrocketed recently, according to a report released by the Pentagon earlier this year.
In this report, 366 UFOs and other phenomena were added to the list. Of these, “more than half had unremarkable characteristics,” according to the report. There are 195 cases, with the most common being balloons (163), drones (26) and other disturbances like birds, meteorological phenomena, or airborne debris like plastic bags (6 each).
There remain, however, 171 sightings whose explanation is unattributed. Most reports of sightings come from US Navy and Air Force pilots and operators who witnessed the phenomena in the course of their operational duties and reported through official channels. The recent cadence (from March 2021 to August 2022) has been of an unidentified phenomenon every two days or so, but they were not heard from until the report was published, and there is no evidence that the air forces tried to shoot them down.
Some of these uncharacterized phenomena “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and require further analysis,” said the Pentagon, which made public the non-confidential version of that report submitted to Congress. Officials from the United States military had already stated that they would continue to “investigate any evidence of possible involvement of foreign governments in events of unidentified aerial phenomena.”
The three consecutive demolitions on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday plus the unconfirmed alarms give way to all kinds of theories. The Pentagon assures that it has learned a lot from monitoring the Chinese balloon, and there are those who believe that this may have helped to interpret the signals from the radars and respond more quickly, but the Department of Defense does not believe that there is a relationship in this case. direct. When asked about it on Friday, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, went on to say that it was “a bit like comparing apples to apples.”
This Sunday, however, Melissa Dalton, Undersecretary of Defense for National Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, said at a press conference: “We have been taking a closer look at our airspace at these altitudes, including upgrading our radars, which may explain, at least in part, the increase in objects that we have detected in the last week.”
Republicans have criticised Biden for letting the Chinese balloon (first detected in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska in the northwest and shot down off the coast of South Carolina in the southeast) cross the country instead of attacking it, which the White House justifies in order to avoid risks to the population with the fall of the remains. Those criticisms may have led to raising one’s guard or overreacting. “I think everyone, including the media and the public, is very attentive to balloons right now,” Ryder said Friday. Homeland Security spokesman John Kirby said the object had been shot down over Alaska in a prudent exercise.
And, of course, there are the conspiracy theories, for now rather circumscribed to memes and social networks, which always appear with the word “UFO”: aliens have arrived. The hypotheses that are being handled point to a terrestrial origin, probably to objects from another country, and there is no indication of an alien origin, although General VanHerck did not dare rule it out this Sunday. UFOs became a prominent trend on Twitter this weekend before being swept away by the Super Bowl.
