By JIM MORRIS
February 12, 2023 GMT
FILE - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks in Vancouver, British Columbia, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2023. On Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023, Trudeau said that on his order a U.S. warplane shot down an unidentified object that was flying high over northern Canada, acting a day after U.S. planes took similar action over Alaska. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau said Saturday that on his order a U.S. fighter jet shot down an
“unidentified object” that was flying high over the Yukon, acting a day after
the U.S. took similar action over Alaska.
North American Aerospace Defense Command, the combined
U.S.-Canada organization that provides shared defense of airspace over the two
nations, detected the object flying at a high altitude Friday evening over
Alaska, U.S. officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday.
Trudeau spoke with President Joe Biden, who also ordered the
object to be shot down. Canadian and U.S. jets operating as part of NORAD were
scrambled and it was a U.S. jet that shot down the object.
Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand told a news conference
in Ottawa that the object, flying at around 40,000 feet, had been shot down at
3:41 p.m. EST, approximately 100 miles from the Canada-U.S. border in the
central Yukon. A recovery operation was underway involving the Canadian Armed
Forces and the RCMP.
Hours later, in the U.S., the Federal Aviation
Administration said Saturday night it had closed some airspace in Montana to
support Defense Department activities. NORAD later said the closure, which
lasted a little more than an hour, came after it had detected “a radar anomaly”
and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. The aircraft did not identify any
object to correlate to the radar hits, NORAD said.
F-22 fighter jets have now taken out three objects in the
airspace above the U.S. and Canada over seven days, a stunning development that
is raising questions on just what, exactly, is hovering overhead and who has
sent them.
At least one of the objects
downed was believed to be a spy balloon from China, but the other two had
not yet been publicly identified.
While Trudeau described the object Saturday as
“unidentified,” Anand said it appeared to be “a small cylindrical object,
smaller than the one that was downed off the coast of North Carolina.” A NORAD
spokesman, Maj. Olivier Gallant, said the military had determined what it was
but would not reveal details.
Anand refused to speculate whether the object shot down over
Canada came from China.
“We are continuing to do the analysis on the object and we
will make sure that analysis is thorough,” she said. “It would not be prudent
for me to speculate on the origins of the object at this time.”
Anand said to her knowledge this was the first time NORAD
had downed an object in Canadian airspace.
“The importance of this moment should not be
underestimated,” she said. “We detected this object together and we defeated
this object together.”
She was asked why a U.S. jet, and not a Canadian plane, shot
the object down.
“As opposed to separating it out by country, I think what
the important point is, these were NORAD capabilities, this was a NORAD mission
and this was NORAD doing what it is supposed to do,” she said.
Anand didn’t use the word “balloon” to describe the object.
But later, Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defense staff, said the instructions
given to the planes was “who ever had the first, best shot to take out the
balloon had the go-ahead.”
Trudeau said Canadian forces would recover the wreckage for
study. The Yukon is westernmost Canadian territory and the among the least
populated part of Canada.
After the airspace closure over Montana, multiple members of
Congress, including Montana Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester, said they were
in touch with defense officials. Daines tweeted that he would “continue to
demand answers on these invasions of US airspace.”
Just about a day earlier, White
House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said an object
roughly the size of a small car was shot out of the skies above remote Alaska.
Officials couldn’t say if it contained any surveillance equipment, where it came
from or what purpose it had.
Kirby said it was shot down because it was flying at about
40,000 feet (13,000 meters) and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of
civilian flights, not because of any knowledge that it was engaged in
surveillance.
According to U.S. Northern Command, recovery operations
continued Saturday on sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska.
In a statement, the Northern Command said there were no new
details on what the object was. It said the Alaska Command and the Alaska
National Guard, along with the FBI and local law enforcement, were conducting
search and recovery.
“Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow, and
limited daylight, are a factor in this operation, and personnel will adjust
recovery operations to maintain safety,” the statement said.
On Feb. 4, U.S.
officials shot down a large white balloon off the coast of South
Carolina.
The balloon
was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for
“several years,” the Pentagon has said. The U.S. has said Chinese balloons have
flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it
learned more about the balloon program after closely monitoring the one shot
down near South Carolina.
China responded that it
reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticized the U.S.
for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international
practice.”
The Navy continued survey and recovery activities on the
ocean floor off South Carolina, and the Coast Guard was providing security.
Additional debris was pulled out Friday, and additional operations will
continue as weather permits, Northern Command said.
https://apnews.com/article/united-states-government-canada-ottawa-93071207f2bbdf93b591d6b40ce1cb5a?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_03
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/warplane-shot-down-object-over-northern-canada-pm-trudeau/article66498661.ece
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2023/02/11/trudeau-us-warplane-shot-down-object-over-canada/
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