Roving Periscope: “Spy balloons” or UFOs over the US, Canada, China, and Taiwan?

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: The case of the US and Canada shooting down at least four “spy balloons” in their airspaces in recent days is becoming interesting by the day.

Amid the US and China accusing each other of using “spy balloons”, the issue took an interesting turn on Sunday when a top American general did “not rule out” that these objects could also be aliens or Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)!

On Monday (February 13, 2023) also, the US military fighter jets brought down yet another flying object, the fourth such shootdown over North America in less than 10 days.

Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said in an official statement that on US President Joe Biden’s order, a US F-16 fighter aircraft shot down an object at 2:42 PM (local time) over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border.

Although it “did not pose a military threat,” Ryder said the object could have interfered with domestic air traffic as it was traveling at a height of 20,000 feet and might have had surveillance capabilities. The object reportedly appeared octagonal in shape, with strings hanging off but no discernible payload.

The incident refreshed questions about the series of unusual objects appearing over North American skies in preceding weeks after which tensions between Washington and Beijing increased.

The US had ‘identified’ the first object as a Chinese surveillance balloon flying in from South America and shot it down off the coast of South Carolina when it entered the US airspace on February 4. On Friday, it shot down a second object over sea ice near Deadhorse.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also revealed on Saturday last week that a “UFO” that entered Canadian airspace was shot down on his orders. He tweeted, “I ordered the downing of an ‘unidentified flying object’ that violated Canadian airspace.

On Monday (February 13), China, which earlier insisted the said objects were merely weather balloons gone astray, also claimed the US balloons entered Chinese airspace “over 10 times since January 2022.” Even Taiwan claimed “dozens” of Chinese balloons entered its airspace.

The media, quoting Glen VanHerck, the US Air Force General overseeing North American airspace, said on Sunday, after a series of shoot-downs of unidentified objects, he would “not rule out” aliens or any other explanation yet, deferring to US intelligence experts.

Asked whether he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for three airborne objects shot down by US warplanes in as many days, he said: “I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven’t ruled out anything.”

“At this point, we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it,” said General VanHerck, who heads the US North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Northern Command.

His comments came during a Pentagon briefing on Sunday after a US F-16 fighter jet shot down an octagonal-shaped object over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border, acting on orders from US President Joe Biden.

It was the third unidentified flying object to be knocked out of the sky by US warplanes since Friday last week, following the February 4 downing of a suspected Chinese weather balloon that put North American air defenses on high alert.

However, another US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said separately after VanHerck’s news briefing that the military had seen no evidence suggesting that any of the objects in question were of extraterrestrial origin.

VanHerck said the military was unable to immediately determine the means by which any of the three latest objects were kept aloft, the means of their propulsion, or where they were coming from.

“We’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason,” said VanHerck.

The incidents came as the Pentagon undertook a new push in recent years to investigate military sightings of UFOs, rebranded in official government parlance as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAPs.

But, the government’s effort to investigate anomalous, unidentified objects — whether they are in space, the skies, or even underwater — has led to hundreds of reports that are being investigated, senior military leaders said.

So far, however, the Pentagon has not found evidence to indicate Earthly visits from intelligent alien life, they added.